The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Debbie Does Downers

The Real Housewives of Orange County
Designers and Dildos
Season 20 Episode 5
Editor’s Rating ★★
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Last episode Emily Simpson called Victoria Denise Gunvalson Jr. a “Debbie Downer,” and she will never get over it. Of all the indignities we’ve seen Vicki experience on this here reality-television program — being sent a tiny family van, getting divorced shortly after a vow renewal, not being sent a casserole, falling ass over teakettle more times than Nicole Kidman has worn a wig — this is the one thing that has injured her. And how do you convince the rest of the cast that she is not the president of the System of a Downer fan club? It’s to say, repeatedly, that she is not a Debbie Downer, which is, honestly, exactly what a Debbie Downer would do. 

Yes, Vicki is known as the queen of Whooping It Up (patent pending), but I think what hurts about this label is it kind of fits. In the very first episode, she tells Briana that she can’t drink or have sex at her prom. Prom is made for three things: drinking, having sex, and slow dancing to Phil Collins’s “Groovy Kind of Love.” What about when Vicki famously asked, “You know what’s going to be sad? One day when one of us dies,” and also said, “If I died right now, let everyone know she died sad.” Both of those clips were brought to you by Sad Trombone. (Sad Trombone, for when regular sound effects just won’t do.) How many times have we seen Vicki tell the ladies she can’t go to a party or has to leave lunch early because she has to work? I’m sorry, but Vicki might have just eaten 20 Oatmeal Creme Pies because she is a Little Debbie Downer.

Heather Dubrow is correct that when Vicki wants to have fun, then she is a lot of fun, but when she doesn’t, she’s grumpier than a 5-year-old who was denied the iPad. However, that does not mean that Vicki is wrong about everything, and I must report that she is absolutely correct about Carmella Garcia, our newest Housewife. This marks the fifth episode of the season, so by the power vested in me by the Eileen Davidson Accords, I officially judge Carmella as being promising but woefully misguided. 

In last week’s recap, my archnemesis Louis Peitzman made an excellent point (by accident, probably; I’m not out here giving my archnemesis credit) that Carmella seems like a cast member on Selling Sunset. It’s something about the fake boobs, the Sharpied-on eyebrows, the devotion to designer labels, and, duh, a job at “the O Group,” which, despite its title, has never given a person an orgasm in its life. Carmella would be perfect for that show, one where the story lines seem preplanned, everyone can be as fake as they desire, and laughs are as frequent as orgasms delivered by the O Group.

Vicki is right that there’s something about her that doesn’t “sniff the sniff test.” I’ve been doing lots of sniffing, and all I’m getting is the smell of something fishy with a hint of poppers. (The poppers are probably from my mustache, which I douse in poppers every morning.) It seems like she lives in Rancho Santa Fe, which my personal assistant, Claude, tells me is about 70 miles from Newport Beach in Orange County. It’s basically San Diego. So her family is in SD, where her kids go to school, but she’s living in a rental in Corona del Mar (named after Ashley Darby’s drink of choice). Why? Oh, because it’s close to her office, she says. Ehhh. Wrong answer. It’s so she can be on the show. Or at least it seems that way. Also, she says she’s not a Realtor; she’s a “developer.” I don’t know. That sounds like a stretch. She says that if she’s doing “cosmetic remodels, ground-up construction, or building new spec homes,” that is all development. The way I understand real-estate developers is the same way that Vicki does: that it’s someone who buys the land, then builds a new skyscraper, neighborhood, or shopping mall. It doesn’t sound like what Carmella is doing is on that scale. I’m with Vicki on this one; it sounds like she’s a house flipper. However, that is a “schematic” difference, as Vicki would say when she meant a semantic difference, but the malapropism of “schematic” while talking about property development is just too rich. 

I’m also with Gina on the fight about the gift that she got Emily for her birthday. Gina shouts, “You didn’t even have her phone number, and you bought her a Dior bag and a dildo.” Not to be too schematic about it, but a dildo is a penis-shaped toy with no motor, and a vibrator doesn’t have to look like a dick and moves, but Gina’s point stands. It was a weird thing to do and was totally for the cameras so that she would look like she spends extravagantly and doesn’t care about the price, but is also fun and sexy. But then she admits that she doesn’t know anything about vibrators. Then why buy your friend one? You don’t even know if it’s a good one. It’s like if I showed up at a dinner party with a tiramisu, which is objectively the worst dessert, and I had one coffee-flavored snotty bite of it once and then spit it out. Stick to what you know and you’ll make an impression every time. That is why I show up to dinner parties with the dessert I eat most often: ass. 

Carmella arrives with a plan, with a way to make herself pop on Housewives. The crazy thing is I don’t think she needs one. What about at the dinner when she threatened to pop her boob out to stop all the fighting? That was solid work! Even better is her telling Emily about the time that she got arrested for violating a restraining order, which means she had to get a restraining order placed on her to violate it. She tells the story, and basically, Carmella was working a stripper pole at a club; her man’s ex’s friend threw a drink on her, she attacked the friend and the ex, and got a restraining order placed on her. It even ended up in the paper under the amazing headline “Jeff’s juke-joint judo queen dodges jail.” (And check out young Carmella in the photo. Stunning!) Also, if there is any story that involves someone’s boyfriend’s ex’s friend, you know that it is going to be both trashy and juicy.

This is the Carmella we want to know. These are the kind of stories that she would probably rather bury but make us love her. You don’t need to come on the show with a plan; you need to come on the show with a personality and let the rest fall into place. Carmella is overplaying an objectively bad hand and ignoring the great cards she’s been dealt. 

All the ladies need to thank Carmella though because she’s really the only one giving us anything to talk about. Tamra went to visit her daughter’s new apartment. Shannon took her 97-year-old father, Gene the Machine, out for a birthday lunch. Gina went on a walk and talked about her stepdaughter’s midnight appendectomy. Everyone had lunches and dinners in different configurations and talked about, I’m not sure what exactly. 

That’s the problem with this season so far: it seems to have no thrust, no organizing principle. Shannon and Tamra have a superficial détente. Jenn and Tamra do as well, so there’s no story pushing things forward. The most consistent theme is that it seems to be some kind of Heather Paige Kent takedown season, and that tactic is just about as old as her former stage name. Or wait, is it the other way around? Is Heather being too sensitive and getting mad at everyone, and they’re just reacting? She’s upset with Tamra for saying she’s only a social friend, and she’s mad at Emily for saying that they’re besties but that she talks too much. Do I care about any of this? I don’t know. I don’t think so. Should I? Do I have to? Is this going to be on the final exam? 

When Heather and Emily yell at each other across the table at Vicki’s Down with Debbie Downer Wine Tasting and Whoop It Up Emporium (established 2026), Emily is right. Just because she got snippy with Heather doesn’t mean they’re not close. It just means that she was annoyed with her friend that night. I get it. I have spent many nights deep in the annoyance of my friends, and they have spent nights deep in the annoyance of me. But that’s how life works; that is how friendship works. You apologize for being a jerk, you say you had a bad day and probably skipped your medication, and you go back to the things that you love about each other. But, like everything on this show, it’s about being real, it’s about being authentic, it’s about showing your whole self when you show up to the office, not just the bag-buying snazzy parts of yourself, but the shitty ones too where you talk too much, ask too many questions, make shitty assumptions about people’s jobs, talk shit about them behind their back because you think they’re never going to hear it. That’s why we love all of these ladies; they can’t help but be themselves, and if there’s one thing that 20 years of Vicki’s oeuvre can teach Carmella, it’s exactly that.