The Real Housewives of New Jersey – Season 3, Episode 9
NOTE: Hoboken-based comedienne (and lifelong North Jersey Italian woman) Eileen Budd is back with a new recap. Enjoy and comment below!
It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas
In this episode, everyone’s decorating for the holidays. Joe Guidice is on a ladder trimming the Christmas tree. He appears to have on a trapeze outfit – but that may be because the ladder is really high and he’s dressing appropriately for the job. The Guidice children are scurrying around talking about presents for the family but one of the precious little tykes takes time out to whack her baby sister across the face. Maybe the greedy little toddler asked Santa not to have the family house foreclosed on and the gilded chandelier stripped from the ceiling and auctioned off.
Teresa talks about her brother and sister-in-law’s upcoming holiday party and expresses the usual love she feels towards Melissa. “Every time she leaves I get a headache.” Yeah, us too, T., especially after she’s been singing.
T. asks her husband, Joe Zeppole, if he’s stressed out about the stuff that’s been in the paper regarding their financial problems. Joe responds, “Why should I be stressed?” Uh, maybe because you declared bankruptcy and you are moonlighting as a trapeze artist to pay the bills? (Hey, if you saw a prior episode, you know that Joe can do the splits.)
Teresa complains about how the papers say mean things about them. “Now I know how Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt feel.” Uh, Teresa, the papers wonder if Brad and Angelina will ever get married or adopt another kid – not whether the gold faucets in their bathrooms will be repossessed.
Joe may not be stressed but he’s not looking forward to the Gorga’s party either especially since he tells Teresa, “your cousin and that chicken-a** Richie are going.” To quote Elton John, “Can you feel the love tonight?”
The Gorgas are going all out decorating for their big holiday shindig. Melissa wonders why the lights aren’t going on in the middle of the tree while her husband is sitting down scoffing a bag of chips and her ignored baby son thrashes around on the rug. He looks like he’s drowning in riptidings of joy. The kid has on a little cap and a vest like he’s playing Robert DeNiro as a baby in the prequel to the prequel of The Godfather.
The doorbell rings and Fabulous Fred, an event planner Melissa has hired to help plan Jesus’ birthday party, has arrived. Fred envisions carolers, ice sculptures of Melissa and Joe in the yard, and a casino inside their home. What could be more fitting to honor our Savior’s birth than a few rounds of Blackjack and a throw on the roulette wheel?
Joe wants to know what this party is going to cost and Fred explains that “if you want the roly-poly servers with their bellies sticking out, it will be one price but if you want the models who speak correctly, that’s another price.” I’m sure if Fab Fred were around back in the day, Mary would’ve hired Fred to throw her son a birthday bash in the manger but she may have been a few sheckels short. She’d probably have to go the even cheaper route and settle for a donkey and a few wise guys with gold teeth to serve the refreshments. Fred also proposes “a winter wonderland of dessert,” which makes me wonder if Kathy would be insulted that she wasn’t going to be asked to make her cannoli Yule logs. Too bad because I could just see Kathy arriving at the party on a sleigh, distributing gifts of tiramisu, sfogliatelle, and baba rum to all the good boys and girls from a big red sack she carries over her back.
But Kathy is too busy decorating her own tree to bake this time. She has all new ornaments including a tree topper mask that looks like a cross between Phantom of the Opera and a court jester. Who puts a Mardi Gras mask on top of their Christmas tree? What’s next – flinging Mardi Gras beads on the branches while an angel ornament flashes her breasts yelling, “Throw me something mister?” If the mask itself is not hideous enough, Kathy surrounds it with long cinnamon colored plumes prompting husband Rich to exclaim, “What’s with the feathers? What’s it a rooster tree?”
Meanwhile, Caroline and Albert go to a jeweler to have a custom-designed piece made for daughter, Lauren, as her Christmas present. Since Lauren is missing her brothers since they moved to Hoboken, the designer has come up with an idea for a leather bracelet with intertwining diamond circles representing her familial relationships. Cost? A mere $4,500. Hey, I miss my brother Antnee too, but our symbolic expressions of love consist of getting together for some pancakes at the Malibu Diner and exchanging a few lottery tickets.
But Caroline and Albert are so moved by the bracelet that they decide to each get one themselves to the tune of almost $14,000. “That’s a lot of mortadella,” Albert aptly puts it. For that much money, I could buy Antnee his own private booth at the Malibu and still have enough left over to buy him Pick 6 tickets for life.
Also happening is Ashley’s birthday party at Mt. Fuji Restaurant where the Manzo and Laurita clans gather to celebrate the emotionless manequin’s special day. As they enter the dramatically decorated restaurant, leave it to the Manzo boys’ gay roommate, Greg, to label the place “Jurassic Park with Asian.” Ashley is too busy texting throughout the dinner to pay attention to the guests who have come to honor her. Even the Japanese hibachi chef wouldn’t be able to pry her away from her phone if he lobbed a grilled shrimp at her eye. But Ashley already got her car as a birthday present along with some Mardi Gras looking beads (do you detect a theme here?) that her mother gave her for protection energy so Ashley has no need to waste time on these people who didn’t even have the decency to give her a nice, knit hat.
Party Like it’s 1999
Forgetting that there’s a recession, the Gorgas throw a $50,000 holiday party. To be fair, it is also a charity event for a local children’s hospital. The excitement seems to have waned for Melissa, who says, “I want a drink and I want everyone to leave me alone.” Melissa and the guests dress like they’re attending the Oscars. Kathy’s looking so hot in her low cut metallic dress that Joe Gorga is making comments at how sexy she looks. Reminding Joe that Kathy is his own cousin, Rich tells him, “I’ll throw you on top of the f**in’ ice sculpture.” That would have been ironic if Joe landed on the ice sculpture of himself, don’t you think, Alanis Morrisette?
Melissa is posing for photos like she’s Kim Kardashian at the opening of….well, pretty much anything. Melissa has to be told to put on underwear for the party but she wonders why she should. “There’s no kids,” she reasons. Ah, but it is Jesus’ birthday, Melissa, and I’m pretty sure he would expect you to at least wear a thong.
Teresa is prodding her husband, Joe Zeppole, to get ready for the party but he’s too tired. Not wanting to be dragged away from the TV, he protests, “I don’t want to hang out with those friggin’ losers.” But T. makes him get dressed and at 9:52 p.m., they’re on their way to her brother’s party that started hours before. Kathy decides to go over to her cousin, T., to make nice because, as she puts it, “I’m a good Christian. Say a prayer for me.” But it doesn’t go over so well because after Kathy tells T. it’s nice to see her, T. says, “Now it’s nice to see me?” implying that Kathy hasn’t make an attempt to contact her since the christening of baby Gorga. (Wasn’t that a monster that battled Godzilla?)
Kathy is ticked off by Teresa’s attitude so she goes to bitch to her sister, Rose. Rose has short hair and is wearing a cap with a lid, making her look like a train conductor on the Pascack Valley line. Then Kathy goes into the bathroom with her husband and complains behind closed door how T. mistreated her. Rich calls T. an a-hole and tells Kathy, “If you want, I’ll burn this f**kin’ place down.” Don’t you think that’s a little drastic, Rich, for just a little sarcasm – especially since it isn’t even Teresa’s house? Why don’t you just throw her on the ice sculpture? It would seem more appropriate since Kathy tells T. via the camera, “You better wrap a sweater around that heart of yours – your icy heart – ‘cuz you’re gonna catch a cold.” Well, Kathy, here’s a thought: if you really were a good Christian you could always just wrap one of your cannoli shells around your cousin’s heart to keep her warm.
Of course there is to be a confrontation or two at the party. Melissa’s brother-in-law asks Joe Guidice when he’s going to pay him the $1,000 he owes him for the air conditioning repair work he did in the summer. Now who can blame Joe for getting mad? A Christmas party isn’t the time for that. Generally, the rule of thumb is, after Labor Day, you don’t wear white, and you don’t ask for payment on air conditioning repair.
And the big drama turns out to be Kim G. bringing Monica Chacon, the lawyer who is suing Teresa, as her guest. Melissa steps up for her sister-in-law and asks Chacon to leave. But Kim protests and Chacon is asked by Joe, then again by Melissa, to leave until they finally insist that she go. Talk about someone who can’t take a hint to leave the party! She’s just like Sarah Palin.
Best line of the night? Melissa and Joe discuss who would die without the other one. Joe tells Melissa he’d go to an island and be with other women. Melissa tells him she would cut his penis off. Modest Joe responds to Lorena Bobbit, er, his wife, with, “You’d need a chainsaw.” Hey Melissa, I think Sears is having a sale on Craftsman tools….
For prior recaps, see links below. For other news and features in Hudson County, New Jersey, return to hudsonreporter.com. And feel free to leave a comment below or you can contact Eileen Budd at pretty.funny@hotmail.com!