The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Icky Vicki Feelings

The Real Housewives of Orange County
A Tale of Two Trips
Season 20 Episode 11
Editor’s Rating ★★
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With our gals split up between two cast trips (presumably because people can only spend so much time with Vicki until they qualify for hazard pay), Gina, Tamra, Carmella, and Heather ponder what the other group of women are up to. Well, Vicki’s crew isn’t lounging around a gorgeous bonfire the way they are. Instead, she’s in the middle of throwing them out of her home in the dead of night. But as Emily and Jenn start to call an Uber in their matching pajamas, Vicki returns confused, seemingly having forgotten that she just threw them out. No, she clarifies, she didn’t mean them; she meant the crew — and if the women do in fact leave, she’d be offended. There’s no winning; they just have to accept that Michael’s arrival — which was so spooky that he might as well have been Michael Myers — has made Vicki spiral out into further insanity.

Over in Los Olivos, Gina says she’s surprised that she puts up with him and walks on eggshells the way she does, because Vicki is so strong, but Tamra and Heather have seen what she’s like with a man before, so this is no surprise. For the love of God, we’ve seen her buy a man teeth; what did we expect? But the thing about Michael that everybody really seems to be hung up on, and rightfully so, is the story about him buying Vicki an engagement ring and then withholding it based on her behavior. Of course, if there’s any truth to this, he should be shot out of a cannon at BravoCon — but Carmella doubts that a ring was even bought in the first place. 

Ultimately, despite Vicki reneging and demanding that Emily and Jenn stay, they already called their $450 Uber home, so they hit the road — leaving Shannon to pick up the pieces. She tries to talk Vicki down and explain the other girls’ perspective, but it’s delicate since Vicki doesn’t want to hear it and since Shannon is wary about getting on her bad side. Being the Vicki whisperer is no easy feat, but kudos to Shannon for at least trying to break through to her. Maybe she would have had better luck if she put it in an email to Coto Insurance. 

Soon enough, they’re all back home, and speaking of homes, we get to hear more about Heather expanding her apartment. Heather has really gamed the system. Instead of bringing personal turmoil to the table as her yearly story line, she just keeps buying and renovating new houses and apartments every year so that can be her story instead. To her, The Real Housewives of Orange County is a real-estate show. Her eyes look at the title, and all she sees is “House.” I go back and forth about whether or not this is entertaining to watch. On one hand, it’s historically been fun to hear about her batshit-crazy renovations, like her various Champagne fridges or etched glass representing her frozen embryos, but on the other hand, has this bit not run stale? What’s left to build? And, more important, at what point will they finally stop? If we critique Vicki for her schtick of working endlessly, something’s gotta give with Heather too.

While we’re on the topic of things I don’t really care about, I’m done with hearing about Emily’s son and everything that’s going on there. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t care about that — despite having said exactly that just one sentence ago — it’s that I don’t like it as a television story line. This kid didn’t sign a contract to be on a reality show, and the concept of his medical and behavioral history being aired out for millions to see just feels icky to me. And the thing is, Emily doesn’t even need to rely on that saga for a story line; her story line could easily be her crumbling marriage. The scene of her and Shane sitting in the kitchen with him waiting until the cameras were up to berate her about replacing a garbage bag felt Beadorian, a term I’m coining in reference to that bone-chillingly tense scene between David Beador and Shannon when he got that glass of water. It still keeps me up at night. 

Who knows where that marriage will actually go, but if you ever find yourself complaining about your husband in a Real Housewives confessional, I just think you might as well cut to the chase and draft the divorce papers. It just feels too far gone to save. And just as unpromising is Carmella and her boyfriend, Danny, who we see get dinner, the majority of which is spent talking about their struggle to rebuild trust after his infidelity. He doesn’t understand why she has such a hard time trusting him, and I really sat down and spent some time trying to crack this mystery. What could it be … what could it be? And after much toiling away and investigating like a detective, I think it might just be because he cheated on her. But who knows! I know I’m really going out on a limb there. Again, if this is the starting point of you putting your relationship on TV, it’s all a lost cause.

Vicki seems to know this, that’s why she spirals out anytime her boyfriend, Michael, gets within 100 feet of the camera crew. And while getting Vicki back on the show hasn’t made for particularly fun television, her Debbie Downer season (apologies to Victoria, but Emily’s assessment is sticking) is at least authentic. It helps that we’re finally digging deeper into the reasoning behind why Vicki seems so in a funk and making it everybody else’s problem. She sits down with Tamra at the end of the episode, and they talk not just about the trip but more broadly about how her season is going so far. Her main gripe is that everybody keeps deriding her for working, which she famously loves more than anything in the world. Attacking Vicki for working is the Vicki equivalent of going after another Housewife’s kids. Unforgivable. 

But there’s more to all of this, and we know it. We’ve known this woman for 20 years. She’s broken. She’s haunted by her divorce from Donn, and her greatest fear is being alone, which is becoming more and more of a real possibility, especially since her family has largely moved away. Michael is all she has, and she is terrified that the show is going to scare him off or lead to the dissolution of that relationship the same way it did with Brooks and Steve. Because of that, she’s willing to debase herself and put up with a lot that she shouldn’t, and as the audience, that’s not fun to watch — especially because we know how strong she otherwise is. She’s in this depressive rut, and in theory, her getting back on the show should have been a good thing — bringing her attention and community at a time when she’s terrified of isolation. But because of her dependency on this relationship, it becomes this double-edged sword that leaves her almost in contention with the cameras in a bizarre way. But at least she’s being real.