The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: The Parenting Trap

The Real Housewives of Orange County
Why Can’t We Be Friends
Season 20 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Jenn Pedranti is perhaps the kindest person to ever be on Bravo, and she’s certainly the kindest person to ever be on this here show. However, after this episode, I was wondering if kindness turned to blindness, at least when it comes to her kids. She and Ryan go shopping at an overstuffed wind-chime shop that would financially ruin everyone’s favorite drunk aunt, and she’s talking about her son Greyson (who may or may not be the son who committed arson). She tells Ryan that he’s really upset about his speeding ticket. Ryan tells her that’s not it at all. The reason he’s been holed up in his room and acting differently doesn’t have to do with a victimless traffic violation. No one thinks about those for more than two minutes once you’ve paid. Ryan says, “No, it’s the relationship he doesn’t have with his father.”

Uh, duh, Jenn. If even Ryan, a man with an entire section in his closet for sleeveless black tees, can figure out that it’s more than a ticket, can’t she arrive at the same conclusion? But, then again, Ryan has a whole grown daughter that we’re just finding out about, so who knows what else might be hiding in Ryan’s overly organized closet. It could be the ghost of Lindsey Graham! I don’t even know. Jenn says Ryan thinks that everything that is wrong with her kids goes back to Will, their father, whom we have never seen and last we heard was living in some unfurnished one-bedroom somewhere. She doesn’t think that is the case, and she is more wrong than every single jacket that Ryan has worn on television. What else would it be? 

When Emily goes over to rifle through Jenn’s Fashion Nova castoffs and make fun of Ryan’s sartorial choices, Jenn mentions that not only is Greyson withdrawing, but she is also having trouble with her daughter, whose name is something like Mackkayleigh, Bryleigh, Reliance, or Progressive or something. It sounds like insurance. Is it Geico? Anyway, her daughter called her to say that she wanted to leave school because she’s ugly. Okay, some of that is normal teenage-girl stuff, but I’m sure it’s all made worse by the divorce, the upheaval they’ve faced over the last few years, and the instability in their lives. 

She sits down with Greyson to check in on him and asks if he’s mad at her. Jenn, this is not about you! This is about him! And, of course, he’s upset about their divorce. “My parents aren’t together anymore,” he says. “It impacts everything I do every day. I don’t see my dad.” In her confessional, Jenn says that no one told her how hard this divorce would be on the kids. Seriously? Did someone have to tell her that? I don’t even have kids, nor am I considering divorce (sorry, Christian, you’re stuck with me!), and I know that divorce will be terrible on the children. Has she never met a demon twink? Divorce is the start of every one’s villain-origin story. Knowing divorce is hard on kids is like knowing that water is wet, cigars are stinky, and that Selena Gomez is incapable of acting. 

Then Greyson mentions that things at school aren’t great and the kids are mean to him, and Jenn gets even more upset. She says that he’s so kind, she doesn’t understand how people would not be nice to him. Have you met teenagers? They’re terrible! They’re like walking vats of acid just waiting to throw themselves on someone’s face and scar them for life. That is what our high-school classmates do to all of us: give us enough insecurities that hopefully it will make us into interesting, creative people and not debilitate us for life. Again, how does Jenn not know this? When she starts crying about his trauma at school, he gets up and hugs her. Now here is her son, who is dealing with divorce, bullies, speeding tickets, hormones, a manager at In-N-Out named Shauna that he despises, having to change every day for PE in a stinky locker room, and the rising cost of Pokémon cards, and he’s giving her hugs?

The good news is I know who is being mean to Greyson in high school, and it’s Carmella’s daughters, Aetna and State Farm. These two are pieces of work! It’s giving Lynne Curtin’s daughters. ’Member them? Well, the one who wouldn’t let a creepy old man buy her cough drops knows what is up, but State Farm is doomed. She’s only 14, and she’s skipping school like crazy because she needed to “get a tan” and “watch my show.” As they tell Carmella this, she is just putting away the dishes and not doing anything. She tells them, “Your father is going to be pissed.” Your father? Why aren’t you pissed? She’s saying they can’t skip school all the time but is also not disciplining them. My mother found out I skipped first period (which was a study hall!) to go to breakfast with my friends, and she took away my car and my debit card (to my own account with my own money!) and didn’t let me watch television for two weeks. In the ’90s! We didn’t even have phones. That is the last time I ever cut class. What does Carmella do? “Guys. Doooonnnnnn’tttttttt.” Yeah, that’s going to be about as effective as using nail clippers to mow your lawn.

Carmella’s daughters are also razzing her for ordering seven vibrators from Amazon. She says she is not a vibrator connoisseur, so she didn’t know which one would fit into the Dior clutch that she bought Emily for her birthday, so she ordered seven. Can’t you just take the bag to a sex shop and find one that will fit? Also, if you’re not really into vibrators, then why buy one for someone for their birthday, especially someone you just met? Carmella tells her daughters, “It’s a gag gift. Pun intended.” Well, pun not delivered. You don’t gag on a vibrator. In fact, if it ends up in your mouth, you’re doing it wrong. 

Emily tells Heather that Carmella kept asking her at her birthday party if she was going to open her gifts. Emily never did, and when she found out that Carmella bought her a Dior bag (I couldn’t find the exact one online, but it appears to be in the $3,000–$5,000 range), she was trying to have a moment. Emily thinks that she was trying to impress the women (and by extension the audience) with her money and generosity. It was definitely that. When we find out about the vibrator, I thought maybe she wanted a moment of being funny too. But at the end of the night, if Emily hadn’t opened her presents and Carmella knew what was inside, she should have said, “Maybe open your gift when you’re alone. Wink. Wink.” I love to give an adult an adult gift for their birthday (if you’re a gay dude who has invited me to your birthday party, you have definitely gotten one of these NSFW bowls), and that is a warning I would give. You don’t need to be pulling out a Rabbit in front of your kids like Emily did.

Everyone’s kids are all up in this episode. Tamra’s daughter Sophia moves out of Tamra’s house and into her own apartment. While Tamra is helping her decorate, Sophia hangs a Victorian-looking portrait on the wall and says her name was Helen and that she was a jewelry-maker’s daughter. Tamra asks her how she knows, and Sophia says, “She told me.” I love her. She can stay. However, the show goes over Tamra’s 40 years as a parent and shows images of her kids throughout the years, including a brief glimpse of her daughter Sydney as a youngster. That’s the daughter Tamra is estranged from and who doesn’t want to be on the show. Was that a good idea? It made me uneasy. 

Tamra’s story line with Vicki and Shannon is the only one that doesn’t have to do with children, though a few of them are behaving like children. Vicki makes her other Tres Amigas conspirators get together for lunch at the Quiet Woman, where they recently got into a fight that you’ll see in the premiere episode of Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th (spoiler alert!). Is Vicki a serial killer? Why revisit the scene of the crime? Was Javier’s booked? At least we got to see the ghost of Shannon past throwing her plate when they sat in the exact same booth as when she feuded with Kelly Dodd.

This isn’t much of a story line; it’s the Tres Amigas apologizing and getting back together again. It’s like watching the most boring episode of Judge Judy on a loop, but the sound is turned off, and Judy and her ponytail are taking a break. Even the bailiff is checked out. The one thing that comes up is that after Tamra and Emily made up at Emily’s birthday party last episode, Tamra said to Emily that she can tell their podcast network, iHeart, to invite Emily to events again. She laughed and said it was a joke, but it upset Emily. Now Shannon is at their lunch bringing up this thing that hurt Emily. Shannon, this has nothing to do with you! In Shannon’s own immortal words: This isn’t even her plate, you fucking bitch. Tamra is right; Shannon and some of the other cast are looking for things to get mad about, taking tiny things and blowing them up. I’m not saying that Tamra is a saint, but she’s clearly joking. Shannon says she knows how Tamra operates; then she should know that the first thing Tamra does after making up with someone is turn their most recent fight into a gag. It’s her way of defanging it. It’s a way for her to bring them both together with humor instead of letting it keep them apart. Was it a good joke? No. But it’s better than Tamra cussing people out more.

The one person Tamra didn’t cuss out is our old friend Teddi Mellencamp, who is at home recuperating from brain cancer and sporting the best haircut we’ve ever seen on her. The way she gets it is terrible, but you have to take small victories wherever you can. Teddi says that she’s doing better, she’s off the medication that makes her shake, and she’s on the way to recovery. She says her doctor told her that many people who went through what she did can’t walk anymore, or they suffer much more, and that she should be grateful. “But I don’t feel grateful,” Teddi confesses tearfully. Sister, I wouldn’t be either. Let me be the first to say that what happened fucking sucks. Why be grateful that it wasn’t worse? Why be grateful you didn’t die? Why be grateful when there are plenty of other people out there who never have to suffer these indignities? Life is horrible and sometimes feels like you’re a single shoe stuck in the universe’s dryer just thumping around there in the heat and humidity and the never-ending cycle of destruction, and it’s never going to end. It’s awful. 

But then a friend comes to see you, and you get to lie in a bed with her and talk about everyone you hate. You get to have a great haircut and gossip and film a TV show. Your friend brought some wine or some gummies or the cookies from that place that you like, and you cut everyone to ribbons just to feel a little bit better about yourself. And then you talk about the people you love, the ones you worry about, the ones you wish would get their shit together and tell their kids to go to school, and the ones with the horrible ex who won’t spend enough time with their kids. And then, for a second, hopefully for more, you can be grateful because it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than the dryer stopping for good, and you’re just one lone shoe with nowhere to go and no one to match with it.