The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Eat, Pray, Gag

The Real Housewives of Orange County
Friends and Fortunes
Season 20 Episode 14
Editor’s Rating ★★
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Look, there have been worse seasons of Real Housewives. The bar is lower than the basement room Luann got stashed in at Ramona’s Hamptons house. But there’s an aimlessness to the 20th season of RHOC that is particularly egregious. There’s no forward motion because there are no real plots to follow, just a group of mostly checked-out Housewives who are flailing about for something to latch onto until they reach the reunion. Even when this episode arrives at a story line in the form of Emily’s perpetually crumbling marriage, I find myself as indifferent as she is. This season is like being stuck in a van with Vicki vomiting her airplane sausage into a trash bag — at a certain point, you just have to take comfort in knowing the experience will soon be over.

Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh. The episode did start with some promise, picking up where we left off last week with Alexis fleeing Tamra’s weed seltzer party. It is fun watching Alexis try to square off against Heather — not because she’s any good at it, but because there’s something adorable about her attempts at engaging. It’s like watching a yappy little dog go after a completely unbothered Saint Bernard. (Heather is really more poodle coded, but you know what I mean.) There’s a part of Alexis that desperately wants to fight, but she can’t manage more than a few half-assed jabs at Heather. You think calling her “insecure” and “delusional” is going to get you your moment? What’s most embarrassing is that Alexis can’t even commit to storming off. You know things are bad when Teddi Jo Mellencamp is the voice of reason, delicately urging her not to keep walking out and then walking back in. It’s undignified! (I also laughed when Teddi saw Alexis coming and muttered, “Now she’s coming to us, shit.”)

Jo, who is still desperately trying to earn her orange back, and more power to her, brings Alexis over to Heather for another pointless conversation. Kudos to Heather for correctly clocking the real issue between them. Alexis is angry about what Heather told Shannon two seasons ago — John Janssen heard Shannon’s car crash and didn’t go outside to see if she was okay. Heather owns it, pointing out in a confessional that John and Alexis never told her not to repeat it, and that she would have told Shannon anyway because that shit was fucked up. (My words, not hers.) The bar is, again, on the lower level, but I’m proud of Heather for swatting Alexis away like the gnat that she is. And I’m proud of Shannon, who has been conflict averse all season but decides to whack Alexis with a “she wants a story line” as she’s walking off. I couldn’t entirely parse Alexis’s response here, but I think she was implying she was asked back to the show and chose not to do it. (Be so serious.) Shannon still gets the last word, and as far as last words go, “You should keep my name out of your mouth, Alexis,” is pretty solid. 

Sadly, the episode goes downhill from there. Jenn and Emily go to something called Aesthetic Lounge, which turns out to be a plastic surgeon’s office with more couches. They get a consultation from the most ethical doctor I’ve seen on any of these shows, if only because he encourages them to think long and hard before tinkering with their faces. The actual point of the scene, however, is for both women to talk about their relationships. Emily wants to know why Jenn still hasn’t gotten married or even set a date for her wedding, which seems to stem from Jenn’s fears of another marriage failing. I’m not really buying this as a source of conflict. Jenn and Ryan seem totally fine — maybe they’re just holding out for a wedding-themed spinoff. For her part, Emily reiterates her dissatisfaction with Shane when noting that he never says anything about her appearance beyond telling her that she looks good. “Really, he says nothing, and I think that’s just safe for him,” she concludes. As miserable as that sounds, their marriage has been varying degrees of unhappy since she joined the show in 2018. Forgive me for not feeling that invested. 

All of this is preamble for the cast trip to Tokyo, which I’ve been dreading since the Harajuku photos emerged. (I’ll leave it to ex-Housewife Katie Ginella to explain why this whole thing is a bad look.) Everyone is excited for the vacation, except for Shannon and Carmella, who both have valid reasons. Shannon is dealing with sudden health issues for Archie, the one creature in this world she can truly count on. It’s heartbreaking watching her talk about her fears that Archie won’t make it, knowing that he ended up crossing the rainbow bridge nine days after his brain cancer diagnosis. (Equally upsetting is the knowledge that Shannon had to film these confessionals after Archie had died.)

Carmella, meanwhile, has severe anxiety about traveling with diabetes, and the worry itself is exacerbating the problem by making her blood sugar spike. Generally speaking, I think most people don’t realize how hard it can be to manage diabetes, even in 2026, and I have a lot of sympathy for Carmella, who ends up bailing at the last minute. At the same time, I don’t think she ever wanted to go, and complications like her inability to get her Adderall approved and her hole-punched birth certificate (huh?) are just convenient excuses for a person terrified of flying. Carmella, sister, I am right there with you. Unfortunately, cast trips are kind of a requirement on these shows. That’s one of many reasons I could never be a Real Housewife. It’s a bummer that Carmella has joined the show for an instantly forgettable season, and that she’s now severely limiting her screen time. When Vicki says, “I think Carmella made a great decision by not coming to Tokyo; she doesn’t know us,” she’s being an asshole, but she’s not wrong either! 

Without Carmella there as a potential wild card, the ladies arrive in Tokyo and are forced to retreat to their familiar shticks. Heather immediately shows off her Japanese with the hotel manager. Emily and Gina share a room. Shannon manages to cover herself with powder while putting her makeup on. (She is morphing into Amelia Bedelia before our eyes.) At the first dinner, Heather continues to complain about Alexis — why do her the favor of bringing her up again on-camera? And while we’re at it, can we have a moratorium on scenes of Bravolebs looking words up on their phones while filming confessionals? Let me suspend disbelief that an actual lawyer like Emily Simpson knows the meaning of feckless, the word Alexis applied to Heather.

Speaking of Emily, the conversation soon turns to her marriage. Tamra notes how hard the situation with Luke must be on their relationship. “Don’t let that wreck you guys,” she says, which I found truly repulsive. Luke is probably going to watch this show one day. If Emily and Shane do get divorced, how will he feel seeing his behavioral issues cited as the cause of their split? (Hopefully, he’ll check out the earlier seasons so he can see how nasty they’ve been to each other from the jump.) Emily admits that she’s brought up divorce, and while I still can’t tell how much of this is being played up for the show, I agree with her when she says, “Maybe this constant cycle of being defensive and not getting along … needs to end.” 

Sometimes divorce is the answer, no matter how much that gives Vicki hives. Naturally, Victoria takes this opportunity to once again lament that she ended her marriage with Donn, a decision she credits to letting distance grow between them. Has she seriously repressed that said distance was in the shape of Brooks Ayers’s penis? That aside, I’m over this repetitive conversation about the Simpsons, and the archaic idea that you should fight for your marriage at all costs. Unless these women want to save Emily and Shane’s relationship at the reunion à la Married to Medicine, I’m tuning out.

After dinner, Heather suggests they go out for fresh air and nightlife, but Vicki declines, explaining, “I’ll be sick the whole rest of the week if I do it.” Okay, Grandma, let’s get you to bed. Honestly, I think Vicki could have handled it — the other women’s idea of a wild night out is Tamra treating them to 7-Eleven egg-salad sandwiches. (I’d almost certainly do the same in Tokyo. Who am I to judge?) Otherwise, the most exciting thing they do is take shots of viper venom sake after kindly explaining to Shannon that the snake is already dead. Perhaps I’m expecting too much, but nothing that’s happened on this trip so far is as riveting as the flashback to Vicki being carried out of a hotel in Iceland covered in a blanket like Michael Jackson. Take me back.

The next day, Gina is excited to bring the ladies to a Japanese temple, based on how transformative her prior experience at a temple in Bali was. People who have done the whole Eat, Pray, Love thing sure love talking about it, but who knows, maybe it will be healing for Emily after yet another unpleasant call with Shane. (And no, there’s never any specificity to what kind of temple this is, or even an acknowledgment that Bali and Tokyo are very different places.) Once there, the women make wishes and then retrieve fortunes. Gina explains that there are good fortunes and bad fortunes, but it feels pretty low stakes, because if you get a bad one, you’re allowed to just burn it. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?

Regardless, those are the rules. Naturally, Vicki decides to burn hers when it reads, “Your mind doesn’t stay still, and will lose right away,” which Gina says means she’s going senile. (A little nasty, given Vicki’s recent brain-damage concerns.) Tamra’s fortune is about someone coming back to her family, so she cries and talks about Sidney, her estranged daughter whose big request is that Tamra not cry and talk about her on-camera. Emily’s fortune, meanwhile, suggests good things for her marriage, and for whatever reason she decides that’s a positive sign from the universe. I’d probably trust the seething resentment she and her husband have for each other over a randomly assigned fortune, but what do I know? 

As for my fortune, it revealed the daunting number of episodes still left in season 20. Don’t worry, I threw that one straight into the fire.