Editor’s Note: Italian comedienne Eileen Budd is back with new recaps of season 3 of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Find more at www.hudsonreporter.com. Reader discretion is advised!
The families are getting ready for Thanksgiving and in an Italian household, that’s huge. We’re talking manicotti, linguini with clam sauce, calamari fra diavolo – and that’s just to stuff the turkey!
So Melissa and Joe are off to Corrado’s market to buy turkey, “mutz,” hot and sweet sausage, six loaves of bread, and a million other food items for the gang they invited over for Thanksgiving dinner. The butcher shows them a whole pig and they tell their kids that the pig’s just “taking a nap.” “Then why are his eyes open?” one of the kids wants to know. My Uncle Donooche was kinda like that. He could sleep with his eyes open right at the kitchen table after he downed a jug of his homemade wine that he kept by his feet all through dinner.
Then the butcher shows them a cut of meat that’s “the butt.” Joe jokingly proclaims that he’s an “a– man.” Maybe that should read that he’s an “a–, man.”
Joe goes a little crazy though with the food shopping. He wants to get pineapple. Really, Joe? You think Don Ho is coming to dinner? So then he goes and gets a stack of pies to put in the shopping cart but Melissa nixes them. What kind of dope buys pies in a supermarket for dessert on Thanksgiving anyway? If you can’t make the dessert yourself, at least buy it from it a decent pastry shop.
Fortunately, Kathy steps up on the dessert front and winds up making mini apple pies, mini pumpkin pies, three types of tiramisu, and a giant cannoli. Not a bunch of little cannolis like a normal person would make, but a giant cannoli like a Horn O’Plenty filled with ricotta and chocolate chips. As she’s whipping up the mascarpone, her Middle Eastern husband, Rich, licks the spoon and asks what she’s making. She looks at him in disbelief with those owl eyes the size of – well, giant cannolis – and explains to him that it’s tiramisu. Rich makes an excuse for his ignorance by explaining, “I’m not Italian.” Are you for real, Rich? You live in the New York/New Jersey area and you don’t know what tiramisu is? Why don’t you just go out to Thanksgiving dinner with Donald Trump and Sarah Palin at the Albanian owned pizza franchise La Famiglia, and use a fork to eat your slice? Then you can tell everyone like Sarah Palin did that she had “real New York pizza.”
Meanwhile, Teresa and her zeppole husband, Joe, are hosting their own “Friends Thanksgiving” shindig so they’re on the hunt for a fresh turkey. Driving in the car, worldly Joe explains to his airhead wife that “In Italy, turkey ain’t even a holiday.” Teresa seems surprised — not that an animal can’t be a holiday because, after all, we do have Groundhog Day, right? — but that a European nation wouldn’t celebrate a day when Pilgrims and Native American Indians got together to party. Joe is more annoyed that they’re stuck in traffic. “Friggin’ turkey is pissing me off now,” Joe announces in the holiday spirit. Then Teresa, who’s driving, gets lost, and Joe asks her, “You’re sure your head ain’t full of helium?” Joe, didn’t we just say she was an airhead?
They finally get to the turkey farm and the owners tell T. and Joe, “You can meet it before you eat it.” As the guy hauls out a poor, live female turkey for inspection, T. and Joe huddle together, appalled at the prospect of their new acquaintance getting the axe. Joe went up a zillion points in my book for recognizing that the turkey seemed scared. They shy away from having it slaughtered. The guy assures them both that the turkey doesn’t know its fate. “The turkeys don’t know what’s gonna happen to them?” Teresa complains about the shop owners. “How do they know? They’re not friggin’ turkeys!” Then T. and Joe select a turkey that’s been killed the day before, secure in the knowledge that they were not responsible for its demise.
Meanwhile, Caroline and husband, Albert, go to visit the parents of their daughter’s boyfriend, Vito, who own an Italian deli somewhere up in God’s country. Lauren and Albert make a big deal of it but the wise and jaded Caroline puts things in perspective. “It’s not a summit. We’re going to a deli.” Yeah, but maybe it’s not a bad idea for Obama to call the world leaders together for a G5 Summit at an Italian deli. After all, how can you not all agree on the issues of the world economy when you’re experiencing the tastiness of a freshly made prosciutto ball? Albert is too busy texting on his BlackBerry to pay much attention to his daughter’s possible future in-laws. But he does take time out to let Vito’s father know that, even though he’s rich now, he grew up poor. “I feel sorry for rich people – they don’t know how to be poor.” Gimme a break, Albert. That sounds like something Donald Trump would say to Sarah Palin over a forkful of pizza. Poor Vito, who toils 12 hours a day at this deli, looks on despondently. He’ll never have the respect of his future father-in-law. Vito is Sicilian – and that’s already one strike against him – and even though he graduated from Fordham, after attending for four years, his greatest accomplishment is, “He knows how to slice mortadella.” What was his major, Cold Cuts? Judging from the extra 50 lbs. he’s packing, he had an intensive internship.
Of course, we have to have the obligatory shot of Hoboken and the Manzo boys in their luxury condo. Cousin Ashley comes to visit to pay homage to her mother’s stripper pole gift. After seeing the magnificent view of the New York skyline out their window, she laments that she can’t live in New York. Young but wise Albie tells her that even if she did move to New York, she’d be moving back after three months because she doesn’t have the money. Not so, Albie. She can pay rent for a year just by selling off her inventory of hats! Back home, Ashley surprises her mother and stepfather by cleaning her room and the kitchen and taking the dog for a walk. They confront her for her motive in such a drastic change in behavior. She innocently feigns, “I’m just thinking of ways to improve myself.” Hmm, maybe you can read a book on how to get a personality while you’re on the self improvement kick. Wanting to live in New York City but knowing her parents won’t foot the bill, she pleads, “I just want to be Carrie Bradshaw.” Well, I guess I could see the analogy – they both like to wear stupid hats.
Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner?
Okay, so Thanksgiving finally arrives and the girls are busy cooking. Melissa, in a leopard print, off-the-shoulder top, dons a mink apron (yes, a mink apron) for the food preparation. 20 minks would feel honored to have sacrificed their lives for the privilege of having pasta fazool smeared on them. Melissa good-naturedly accepts her own destiny as the men drink in the other room. “Women cook and men just sit around.like ‘Where’s my food, bitch?’” As Kathy showcases her desserts “made with love” (she’s like the selfless Mother Teresa of Sweets), Joe calls everyone outside for a surprise. He’s installed a mechanical bull in the front yard for everyone to ride. Nothing quite says, “Thank you, God, for all of our many blessings” than a bucking robotic bovine.
Joe climbs on for a wild ride and announces, “This is like what my wife feels like.” Nice sentiment in front of your kids and her family. Of course, Joe has to turn everything into a sexual act so he places Melissa on the bull facing him. All I could think of when I looked at her was, Those minks weren’t the only things that sacrificed their lives…. But apparently Melissa considers herself to be fortunate because when she says grace at dinner, she thanks Jesus for her blessings including “my incredible husband.”
Back at Teresa and Joe’s house, havoc is being wreaked by their little girls in the kitchen as T. is running around trying to get everything ready for her guests – the Manzos, Jacqueline and her husband, and Ashley. Juicy Joe was supposed to help but he was a tired little zeppole and was still in bed sleeping. Little Melania sticks her finger in the chocolate cake shaped like a turkey despite her mother’s caution to not touch anything. Then one of the little Children of the Corn attacks another one and there is hair pulling and hitting and general mayhem, while Teresa, slowly having a nervous breakdown, tries to rationalize to the girls why even though she always likes the bows in their hair to be perfect and their dresses to be perfect and the house to be perfect, 20 people are coming for dinner and Mommy can’t be perfect all the time as she throws the silverware on the table.
By the time the guests arrive, Joe has made it down the stairs to answer the doorbell and regale them with tales of the turkey farm. “It was the most disgusting thing ever. I had turkey poop in my throat.” I guess they can skip the grace being said at Teresa and Joe’s Thanksgiving dinner. But T. does count her blessings and tells Caroline, “You’re like the older sister I never had.” And Caroline confidently responds, “Your older, hotter sister.” Well, if she had been T.’s older sister, Caroline sure got both her and Teresa’s share of the ta-tas in the family.
And then we go back and forth between Teresa’s house and brother Joe’s house and the discussion of who should make up with whom. Both regret the great divide that has come between them. Joe Gorga says, “We had amazing parents that made me who I am today.” Well, not for nuthin’ Joe, but that kinda makes them not so amazing. Our heart strings are tugged at when a flashback of Teresa’s housewarming party has T. lovingly bringing up her baby brother to stand next to her saying, “Don’t we look like twins?” followed by T.’s husband, Juicy Joe, shouting out, “Tre, I’m never gonna kiss you again.”
Everyone wants T. and her brother to make up and something tells me those crazy kids will get back together and, someday, ride that mechanical bull off into the sunset. That’ll give Kathy, who cries at the drop of Ashley’s hat, something happy to cry about for a change.
I do have one question though: Why do all the baby boys have on these little black, brimmed caps that make them look like little, old men about to play a round of bocce ball?
Time for my pick of the worst scene of the night. Well, actually, it was a commercial. Some programming executive made the stupid decision to show an Olive Garden commercial in the midst of an episode showing Italians doing nothing but eating a bounty of homemade delicacies.
Join in next episode when Melissa sings, Kathy’s pre-pubescent son tells her he drinks on Friday nights, and Ashley is back with another jaunty knit hat!
For recaps from the last two seasons, see www.hudsonreporter.com. Eileen Budd can be reached at pretty.funny@hotmail.com or leave a comment on the website.