Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Sloth Fights and Sleepovers

Aaaaaand we’re back! I’ve returned to those 5 ladies who have captivated my heart and mind since I first laid eyes on them. Or, you know, at least filled my schadenfreude quota for the year. Bottom line, it's good to be back.

Anyway, this week’s episode was one of the weirder of the season, chock full of Lynne fights (the rarest of all housewife fights!) and old lady sleepovers. Fun!

We begin with Lynne and Gretchen, who meet at the park to walk their dogs and say passive aggressively bitchy things to each other. You see, Lynne wasn’t too happy about Gretchen’s meddling in her daughter’s sadtimes, regardless of how warranted it was. Gretchen brays that she only wanted to help give Alexa a cool friend to talk about her real kid problems with. Lynne says Gretchen isn’t a mom so she has no idea. Once Gretchen is a mom, she’ll realize that Lynne’s laissez-faire, pilled up, dead-eyed form of parenting is indeed the best medicine.

Later, Gretchen relates the “fight” with Lynne to her bearded man-baby beau, Slade. She whines about how hurt she was since she was only trying to help, and blaah blaah waa waa. Slade makes a non-sequitor, kind of mean comment about Lynne’s face being pulled to tight.

(Aside: Isn’t a fight between Lynne and Gretchen kind of exciting? It’s just such a rare and unrepresented pairing that’s never happened before! I feel like I just opened up a pack of Magic cards and got Sliver Queen!)

While Gretch-n-Slade are busy getting their persecution complex on Carrie Prejean-stylie, Tamra heads over to her deadbeat son's house to have a little chat. She hopes that she can get him to apologize to Simon by bringing him Chinese food, since he is probably starving, having been living exclusively on Natty-Light and Corn Nuts for the past several months.

Her plan fails, and he refuses to apologize. However, he does tell her he has an interview for a brand manager position at some mysterious company called “Psylabs,” which to me sounds like some sort of evil rage virus-producing mega corporation. But hey, a job’s a job, so Tamra is happy.

However, later Ryan learns that he got the job, which makes his momma even more proud of him, and while high on accomplishment, Ryan and Simon make up. Awwww.

Back at the Battle of Dana Point, Lynne rehashes her “fight” with Gretchen to her husband. She maintains that she did nothing wrong, and adds that Gretchen isn’t exactly the best role model, since not too long ago there were pics of her doing sexytimes all over the interwebs. Point, Lynne. Her bitching sesh is interrupted by a call from her be-buck toothed adversary, who bizarrely invites Lynne and her nameless husk of a husband to dinner to “clear the air.” Dude, is it just me, or are these ladies constantly "clearing the air?" Like, every episode someone needs to clear someone’s air. They should just call this show "Febreze." Anyway, Lynne agrees. It’s a date!

While Lynne-n-Hubs make their way to the lion's den, Gretchen busies herself preparing dinner, which appears to just mean mixing margaritas and emptying several gigantic tubs of salsa into a salad bowl. Seriously, did anyone else notice that? Who eats that much salsa?! Who?! Slade comes in, and starts ranting about how pissed he is, at this point seeming way more upset about the situation than Gretchen. Say what you will, homeboy is good at getting face time.

After not too long, they hear a quiet scraping of claws on the front door, which turns out to be the Curtins, who have arrived for the much ballyhooed dinner fight. After swapping a few pleasantries, the ladies get down to business. At first the conversation goes pretty well, with both parties seemingly making their way towards an understanding. That is, until Slade goes on an unnecessarily aggressive attack towards Lynne, implying she doesn’t know anything about what is going on in her daughter’s life. Lynne interviews that she thinks it’s funny Slade said that, since he's a notorious deadbeat dad who famously skipped out on child support for his terminally ill son. Zing! That’s point 2 for Lynne! Also, I still can’t get over Lynne in a fight! It’s so entertaining. Like watching a sloth all of a sudden start lazily clawing at a trespassing tapir in the Amazon. The fight ends largely unresolved, with Lynne-n-Hubs looking pretty good and Gretch-n-Slade looking like triflin’ haters.

The next day we follow Alexis the Titty Queen of Orange County while she and her friend (whom I think was named Today? I didn’t quite catch it) get a spa day. You see, managing her staff of nannies is terribly tiring, so every so often she just needs to relax at the spa and get her back rubbed. While there she talks to her friend about how crazy the ladies are and how fun Tamra’s Wigged-Out Bunko Boozefest ™ was, and how she could really let herself go and not worry about being pretty for her husband. She also said she was glad she didn’t win as much, so she wouldn’t have gotten too drunk and gotten “grounded” by her husband. Literally, that’s what she said. I used to really hate Alexis (and don’t get me wrong, still do), but the more I learn about her life and her family dynamic, the more I just feel super depressed. Downerrrrr…

As if sensing how depressed I was getting with the Alexis plotline, the editors mercifully move on to the best part of last night's episode: Vicki's Old Lady Slumber Party!!!!! In order to diffuse the tension from the whole Florida incident, Vicki thought of the bizarre idea to have all the ladies over for a slumber party at her place. You can tell that the other ladies think this is a really weird idea, but they all come anyway cuz of you know, contracts and all.

The ladies trickle in one by one, suitcases in tow, and immediately commence drinking. The last to arrive is Lynne, who got lost on the way and then walked into the screen door of Vicki's house, which, of course she did. Once all the ladies are there, Alexis pulls out a tray of jello shots that she made to presumably compliment her equally jiggly clowntits, and they all start getting buck wild. But not like Buck Wild from Flavor of Love. That would be great.

Once the ladies are well lubricated, Vicki announces that she has a surprise in store for all of them. All their minds go wild wondering what it could be, but it turns out that it's just a boring old (in the coloquial sense, he's actually young) gay psychic by the name'a Dougall. Vickles McPigglesworth assembles all the ladies in the living room to have their fortunes told by Dougall the Gay Wizard. Gretchen and Lynne are skeptical and kind of bitchy to him, though to be fair, Dougall's "reading" basically amounts to him telling them they are superficial and insecure, which, while true, isn't the best way to get on their good side. Alexis isn't very comfortable, what with God hating psychics and gargayles and Dougall is tamperin' in dark sided stuff and he's not a ChristiaAANAAAH! So she kind of blows him off.

Tamra, however, is all over that shit. In fact, she gets so into it that she asks Dougall for a private reading, where she breaks down in tears and says she's worried that her son will die young. Doogster assures her he won't. He better not, or else you'll be exposed, Dougall!

Anyway, after Dougall the Sassy Psychic makes his exit, it's time for the real fun to start. Vicki tells everyone that they are going to TP JEANA'S HOUSE OMG LOL! Get it! Because it's a sleepover! The ladies put on creepy plastic masks and sneak over to Jeana's, but not before running upstairs and barging in on Vicki's son mid coitus masturbatus. They all giggle and then quickly make their exit.

Anyway, they lug a big costco pallet of toilet paper next door and have a giggly girlish good time vandalizing Jeana's house, which Vicki says the gardner will just clean up anyway.

Once they are safe back at Vicki's, Alexis announces that she'll be heading home, because her husband is a monster who will not do any housework, not even change a diaper. This causes an domino effect, and all the ladies wind up fleeing for the safety of their respective beds, hopping into their SUVs and drunk-driving all the way home. Vicki interviews that this was the right decision, since she didn't really want to sleep downstairs in a sleeping back anyway, but I suspect once the cameras were off and she was upstairs, she burst into tears while wailing "But I bought donuuuuuuuuuuts and Eggoooooos!" Poor Vicki, nobody ever wants to come to her party...

Can't wait for next week's episode! I think it might be the one where Vicki and Alexis have their "fight" that Bravo has been hyping up all season.

(Oh! One last thing! How great was the little interlude of Brianna going bowling and doing sake bombs with her gays? Love that girl! How did such a normal and seemingly nice girl come out of an unpleasant and overbearing womb like Vicki's? One of life's mysteries I suppose...)