Hoboken-based comedienne (and lifelong North Jersey Italian woman) Eileen Budd is back with a new recap…comment below!
Two half men
We start with a rehash of the clash of the tiny Titans at the christening of Melissa and Joe’s baby. Joe the Zeppole recounts how his brother-in-law Joe the Hothead started it. “I see this little midget comin’ at me.” (To be fair, I’m not sure if Joe said “fidget” or “midget,” but, in any case, if either Joe is calling the other a midget, it’s like John Edwards calling Arnold Schwarzenegger a no-good, cheating baby daddy.)
Always the voice of reason, Caroline tells Teresa that she should try to talk to her brother about the christening brouhaha but T. says she can’t because she doesn’t know where her brother works. What – is he in the CIA? He’s Italian. He’s from NJ. He’s got a lot of money. He’s either got a concrete business, a garbage disposal business, or he’s governor.
T’s sister-in-law, Melissa Gorga, continues to diss her. She’s invited to cousin Kathy Wakile’s house for dinner. Sitting at the dining table, wearing a jaunty bejeweled beret (watch out Ashley – you’ve got competition), she loves to use the word “fake.” Last week, she called T. a faker when it comes to giving parties. This week she called her a faker at the christening. Then she exasperatedly exclaims, “My husband couldn’t take one more fake moment.” Melissa, maybe you can show us your intelligence and expand your vocabulary a bit. Or maybe you can just fake it.
Hothead Joe gets worked up talking about his brother-in-law, slams his hands on the table, and calls him “poison.” Kathy calmingly says, “Relax.” She tells the camera, “He’s a Gorga and they have this switch that makes them snap.” Unfortunately, Hothead Joe seems to snap at the drop of a zeppole. Meanwhile, Kathy’s husband, Rich Wakile, sporting a crucifix around his neck the size of Piscataway, tries to lighten up the situation. Kathy’s husband ain’t even Italian – he’s Syrian or Armenian or something like that. He should stay out of the Italian feuds and stick to the Middle East peace talks.
All of this drama is happening around Halloween so we get shots of everyone dressing up in costumes. At her house party, Teresa becomes “Super T” in a Wonder Woman-like outfit complete with gold tights and a cape flying around the house. “You look like a nerd,” her daughter lovingly compliments her mother’s efforts to make the night fun. Posing for a family photo, T’s hubby, Joe, dons a smoking jacket and has a pipe sticking out of his mouth. He kinda looks like a version of Mr. Potato Head, only with a pipe stuck into a zeppole instead of a spud.
Melissa dresses up in a sexy, tight catsuit and her husband, Joe, shimmies into a gold halter dress, high heels, and black wig. Everyone said he looks just like his sister, Teresa, right down to the same 5 o’clock shadow. Even the blonde family friends – Kim D. and Kim G. – get into the Trick or Treat act, but one of them says she’s dressed as “half a hooker” so I guess she was just into the Trick part. They all go out to Club 466 where the “goombas and muscle heads” go. Kathy joins them dressed in a stretchy blue onesie and beads in her hair. I wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be a character from Avatar or a cross between a Smurfs condom and Bo Derek.
Fashion Faux Pas and Mas
Meanwhile, plans are amiss for another fashion show put on by Kim D., owner of Posche, the store the ladies like to frequent. At the store, 54-year-old Kim G. talks smack about Teresa because T. calls her an old lady. “She wishes she could look like me – with that fat, crooked ass,” Kim G. grouses. Jacqueline apparently sees things differently. When Teresa visits Jacqueline to munch on prosciutto and sip on champagne in the middle of the day as most housewives are wont to do, Jacqueline says to T., “Why can’t I have your ass?” Even Santino, Jacqueline’s Spaniel, seems to approve. And who’s a better assessor of butts than a dog?
The day of the fashion show arrives and, of course, it’s at The Brownstone, owned by Caroline Manzo and her husband Albert. Melissa, Teresa, and Jacqueline are all scheduled to be in the fashion show. As Melissa is getting her make-up done backstage, Teresa walks in and gives her a peck on the cheek as if there’s no bad blood between them. “Melissa doesn’t faze me,” T. says. Waving her hand over her face, she says to the camera, “Do I look fazed?’ No, Teresa, you don’t, because in order to be fazed, it would imply some thought process would need to occur beforehand.
Old lady Kim G. comes to watch the show and someone quips, “She has on a prom dress.” Hey, leave Kim G. alone. If she has on a prom dress that means she, perhaps unlike some of the others, at least made it to high school at some point in her life.
The girls work the runway with a parade of some of the tackiest dresses to ever grace the Garden State (and that’s going some). Jacqueline, decked out in a short, beaded silver dress, resembles a mini refrigerator Elton John might keep stocked with Pellegrino beneath his piano. Teresa, in an off- the-shoulder black atrocity most likely left over from an 80’s Madonna tour, blows kisses to the audience. Speeding down the runway while sticking her neck out side to side, Melissa, wearing a white dress with ostrich feathers, looks like an albino Big Bird on crack. Today, we’ll learn the letter “F” as in Fugly.
No episode would be complete without a major blow up. So it comes as no surprise that after the fashion show, Kathy decides to confront Teresa about her part in the ruckus at the christening. Into the camera, T. makes fun of her soft-voiced cousin. “What’s happening?” T. says in her sotto voce impression of Kathy that sounds like Dr. Drew dispensing Thorazine to Gary Busey before tucking him into bed. Kathy tells Teresa that she looked after T.’s abandoned baby, Audriana, when the fight broke out at the christening. Enraged that she should be accused of being a negligent mother, the Gorga switch is flipped and Teresa goes wild. “Do not go there,” Teresa lashes out. “The baby was not unattended.” Kathy is insistent though, making it seem like she was Elliot Ness saving the baby carriage from careening down the steps during the shoot-out with Al Capone’s henchmen. Caroline steps in because she doesn’t want the two of them arguing in her place of establishment. “Kill each other in your own homes,” she offers caringly.
Taking a cue from one of the characters in my other favorite show, Mob Wives, Teresa admonishes Kathy with, “Bitch, show some class.”
My favorite scene of the night? Teresa’s husband, Joe, excusing himself from duty, when T. asks him to change baby Audriana’s diaper. “I’m eating right now,” he retorts annoyed at the request. But Joe, when are you not eating? You were probably noshing on a hunk of provolone when Audriana was conceived.
On the next episode: More bitches with no class.
Feel free to leave a comment below or you can contact Eileen Budd at pretty.funny@hotmail.com.
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