Let us begin this recap the same way as the episode: with Shannon’s new trainer Steven. I would like to marry Steven. If that is not possible for one reason or another, I would at least like to give Steven a shirtless hug and then feed him a delicious Moroccan couscous I cooked him for dinner. We will eat that couscous nude as custom dictates (at least in my house).
What I mean is Steven is very attractive. He looks sort of like a cheap GI Joe toy or maybe someone that would dress as Wolverine for a promotional event at Comic-Con, except that he’s about six inches too tall to really pass for the Marvel hero. Whatever, he is so much better than Shannon’s last trainer, who was also stupid David’s trainer. You know, the guy who said, “Wow,” about 20 different times and humiliated Shannon when she took her shirt off last season. That guy deserved to be fired.
Now she has Steven, who is not only a muscle-bound dream, but also comes to her house. She’s so excited to see him that she wears Spanx under her workout clothes so that he thinks she’s skinnier than she really is. It doesn’t appear that Shannon is really great at working out yet, but she is great at lusting after Steven, or maybe I’m just projecting. That could be the case.
Tamra is mad that Shannon didn’t get one of her trainers to come to an exercise house call, but none of Tamra’s trainers look like Steven, do they? I didn’t think so. Shannon says that she wants to start doing this every day, and I don’t blame her, but that is an easy way to burn out on exercise. We know Shannon hates working out, so why not just get Steven over there three or four days a week? It’s all about finding a nice balance with Steven. You know, the kind of balance where he could conceivably sit on your face without smothering you. What? Did I say that out loud? Sorry Steven. (Call me.)
There was a long segment where Kelly Dodd takes her daughter Jolie to the soup kitchen to show her what life is like for the other half, and so that she grows up with some compassion and empathy for those who aren’t as fortunate as she is. It was a very nice, cute excursion. The only thing marring it is that Kelly shows up in a faux-distressed sweatshirt and a winter hat that, well, it looked a little like the fashion version of what a homeless person might wear. “Give me soup kitchen, but make it fashion,” is never a good look, but I’m sure Kelly wasn’t thinking that way.
The less we say about the trip to the golf course the better. I grew up in the great state of Connecticut and I took golf lessons as a young man. It was not by choice. It is in the Connecticut state constitution that everyone must take golf lessons until the age of 12 and that one member of each household be named Chip. What I can tell you is that inviting six novices to play in the middle of a busy day is suicide for a course. They’re just going to be slow, loud, and inconsiderate, and cause a backup that will last for the rest of the day. It was bad enough that Kelly was treating the hot dude golfing in front of her like I treat Shannon’s trainer Steven, but the women marauding on the course making fools of themselves didn’t make me comfortable at all.
What’s even crazier is that Troy, the pro at the course, and another one of the pros, accompanied each threesome to make sure that they didn’t wreck the course too much and they still managed to treat the place a way that a baby treats a fresh pair of Pampers. Vicki finally manages to hit the ball a considerable distance and she does it by swinging like she’s in the batting cages. Troy just stands there and let it happen. Couldn’t he have intervened? Couldn’t he have at least offered them a lesson before letting them create divots the size of Kelly Dodd’s original breast implants? This could have been easily avoided.
Nothing really exciting happened when Tamra and Eddie went out to dinner with Emily and Ring Toe. We did learn that Eddie isn’t taking his heart medication because it saps him of his energy and that really makes me worry. We also learned what we already surmised: that Ring Toe is the worst. When Tamra asks about whether or not he kicked Gina out of the house he said, “I welcomed her to stop being loud and obnoxious,” which is about the smarmiest, grossest, hair gel-iest way that you could phrase that.
Emily says that the problem is that Ring Toe has a really weird sense of humor and that people don’t get it. She describes him as “sarcastic” but I don’t think she understands the meaning of the word. He says, “She thinks I’m being sarcastic but I mean a lot of what I say to her.” Emily says, “See, that’s sarcastic.” No it’s not, Emily. That is the truth. He believes 100 percent of the things he says to you, he just says it in a tone so that you will think it sounds like a joke, so he doesn’t come across like the hectoring nag that he really is.
This whole Gina and Ring Toe fiasco incited what is perhaps the stupidest fight in Real Housewives history, and I do not say that lightly. By the time they’re at the golf course, Emily has told Tamra about Gina getting thrown out. Tamra brought it up at dinner last episode with Gina, who kind of dismissed it, but then Shannon said the behavior reminded her of David’s behavior. Then Gina told Emily that Shannon said that. Now, at golf, Emily asks Shannon if she said that her husband was “abusive.” That’s what kicks this all off. Then at lunch, Shannon asks who said that she said that Ring Toe was “abusive.”
As Tamra correctly surmised, this was just a whole game of telephone. They were just all upset about the word “abusive” but that didn’t come up until Emily invented it. So what are they arguing about? What did Emily and Gina have to get up from the table to clear up? Everything was clear. No one was trying to lie or obfuscate and no one used the word “abusive.” We should be in the clear. But, as Erika Jayne told us, the more you talk about shit, the worse it gets.
No one told that to Tamra and Shannon, who start a concurrent fight of their own. If I didn’t understand the first fight, I really don’t understand this one. All I can say is that Kelly Dodd seemed reasonable when they were all sitting around the table. If Kelly Dodd sounds reasonable then your shit is busted and you need to reassess the life choices that got you to that position in the first place.
It seems that Shannon is mad at Tamra because Tamra is the one who brought up Gina getting thrown out at the initial dinner but now Shannon is getting blamed for it. Yeah, that’s true. Because there’s nothing wrong about asking about it, but there is something wrong with comparing Ring Toe to your awful husband who is currently verbally and emotionally abusing you. If Shannon has anyone to be mad at, it’s herself. I’m totally Team Tamra on this one. Yes, Shannon is going through a hard time, but Tamra deserves none of the blame here.
The real winner of this whole fight, however, is Victoria Denise Gunvalson Jr. She says, “Let’s talk about something that matters. You probably don’t have a retirement plan and I can fix that. Let’s talk about your 401K.” First of all, Vicki is the queen of fighting about stupid shit, so her saying this is as ironic as rain on the Night of 1000 Alanis-es. Second of all, of course she somehow turned this into a pitch for the services of Coto Insurance. Third of all, none of these women think about the future. They’re still trying to work through the golf and wine buzz of the present; to them a 401K is as distant as a blue whale calf leaving its mother’s breast for the first time under the deep blue ocean just a few short kilometers from where they scream.
