Custom Design

I hate to break it to my wonderful coworkers here at PurseBlog, but I think that I want to work at People’s Revolution. As long as I get paid more than Tandrew, that is. That’s an important stipulation, write that one down. Although it seems like his job is open…

This week’s episode of Kell on Earth was filled with more of the strangely fascinating fashion minutiae that everyone has come to know and love, plus an Addams Family dinner party, a Versace chair, jaunty little hats, Ava in her mom’s sparkly heels, and lots more office-wide wingman action in an attempt to get a member of the staff laid. When have Megs and Vlad ever done that for me, huh?!?! That’s what I call a job with perks.

But wait…weren’t the police supposed to be called last night? Didn’t we see a panicking Kelly and an NYPD cruiser in the previews all week? I’m suddenly feeling a bit cheated, and no explanation is forthcoming from the People’s Rev team on why the footage was cut (I asked them on Twitter and actually felt like a reporter for a second.)

Back to the task at hand: our episode started with the saga of Tandrew. Remember him? He’s…well, he’s tan. He was the one presented with a bottle of lube last week, right before Kelly and Andrew crashed his blind date. He has a lisp and Britney Spears lyrics tattooed on the insides of his wrists, and he’s bucking for the title of Gayest Gay Ever. Well, at least Gayest Gay on Kell on Earth, and since the other Andrew regularly wears skirts, that’s sort of an accomplishment.

Anyway, Tandrew is unhappy. He’s from sunny, optimistic California, where his orange color is more widely accepted and he’s allowed to give everyone blonde highlights, not just Skinner. When he was hired and promised his piddling little salary (he said $15k, right? I made more than that when I worked at Best Buy in college), they told him that he would be able to return to his golden homeland to stock up on his favorite self-tanner, which is banned in New York (or, you know, he was there to go to a wedding. Whatever).

But really, it went much further than that. Tandrew hates his job because Robyn talks to him like he’s a moron (which, in fairness, he might be) and he doesn’t get paid enough to sit and listen to it, plus now they don’t want him to go to California, even though his trip had already been approved. In response, he did what we’ve all wanted to do once or twice in our lives: he went on vacation and never came back. He just…stayed. He called the office and quit, so I guess he can think of the bottle of organic lube from last week as a parting gift.

With yet another member of the group gone and still no new hires, things were getting a little tense around the office. What better way to solve this problem than a group walk around the neighborhood, which never means just walking when Kelly Cutrone is with you. She likes to talk to random passersby and attempt to procure dates for her staff, and this time Robyn was the one that needed a good man. Instead of letting Kelly pick, as she should have, Robyn flagged down a slightly homeless-looking dude with an accent that “made books.” Or was an artist. Or something. Thankfully he went back to Seattle eventually, or else Robyn might have married him by now.

Kelly Cutrone doesn’t give up easily when it comes to finding dates and/or quasi-anonymous hookups for her employees, however, so she was back to pounding the pavement (or, rather, pounding the glasses of wine) almost immediately, hitting on a waiter while having drinks with Emily and Robyn. I must say that I’d be happy to have Kelly hit on guys for me any time – she always manages to get results. The waiter’s number was procured, text messages were sent, the rest is a secret.

I can’t decide if Kelly’s flirtatious abilities will be awesome or embarrassing by the time her daughter Ava is old enough to date, but it looks like she’s done a good job raising an awesome daughter so far. Not only did Ava delight the entire office by tottering around in a pair of her mom’s heels (a trick that we all tried when we were kids, just with far less fabulous shoes), but she lectured her grandmother about how superior Target is to Wal-Mart. It took me until I was approximately 12 to figure that out, so she’s way ahead of the game.

The real star of this show, however, was Andrew. We finally got to learn a little bit more about the goth/glam/gay assistant, including his fashion loves (Rick Owens, Givenchy, McQueen), living arrangements (ultra-fab apartment next to his parents, complete with a great view of the city and a signature-print Versace chair), and his social preferences (lots of black-clad fashion girls). He is easily my favorite person on this entire show, and his decision to throw an Addams Family-themed dinner party, complete with headless roses and superfierce zebra chairs only continued to convince me that he and I are straight girl/gay guy soul mates. Come to me, Andrew. I’ll sneak into the milliner’s workshop and steal you as many silly little hats as your heart desires.

Skinner obviously doesn’t realize how much she should appreciate his awesomeness, because she was two hours late to his dinner party, which started at nine. She blamed work, but on a Friday night that excuse seemed a little weak. Andrew shouldn’t have held dinner for her, but she should have definitely called to say she wasn’t going to make it on time.

When I worked in marketing, there were nights that I was there late, sure. I get the idea that Skinner makes it a habit, however, and I’m not sure that she’s getting a good return on her time investment. The predicament that she’s in is exactly why you should always be careful of setting high expectations about your work ethic and willingness to become married to your job – if you do it for a little while to get in good with the boss, he or she is going to expect it all the time, and pretty soon you’ve screwed yourself royally and can’t get out of work before midnight on a Friday. Low expectations are your friends, ladies, and don’t ever let a career counselor tell you otherwise.

Really, all you have to do is be awesome and find other ways to ingratiate yourself (bring lattes, tell her she has pretty hair, it really depends on the boss), and before long you’ll be getting out early to throw catered dinner parties from your city-view apartment in which everyone will sit on zebra chairs that you then gift to your favorite blogger because of all the good life advice she gave you back in the day. And also, the Versace chair. That’s just how it happens. I don’t make the rules.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Last Thursday on the new episode of Project Runway, we got something that all fans of the show are well used to: a challenge where they pretend that the hair or the makeup totally matters so that they can have the Garnier or L’Oreal people on to shill for a minute or two, and then they completely ignore the hair or makeup unless it’s an epic fail.

Luckily for us (and unluckily for one of our designers), we actually got an epic hair fail. Did it matter? Well, we’ll talk about that.

Thankfully, the challenge also had another dimension – it had to be based on one of the four…elemental thingamabobs? What do you call them? I mean, I wasn’t really a science wiz in school, but I’m fairly sure that “fire” isn’t on the Periodic Table, so it’s not an element…whatever, they all had to pick cards from the magic Deck o’ Choices and design an outfit based on Earth, Wind and Fire…err, no, it was earth, air, fire or water. There. Challenge explained.

We’re down to what, like, eight or nine designers? And none of them are terrible, thankfully, so the show is starting to get a little interesting. It’s impossible to guess before the show who is most likely to win or lose, and since there are fewer designers, it’s harder to figure it out while watching based on who gets the most face time and/or who cries during the spliced-in interviews. I have to mourn that element of the first half of the season for a moment, because trying to read the subtextual editing clues is my favorite thing to do in the episodes that are there to get rid of dead weight.

Now that the weight is mostly gone, on to the real point of the show – find out which of these formerly nameless people is the best. I was bracing myself for a workroom full of super-literal red “fire” dresses and “airy” frocks of floaty nothingness. Thankfully, most of our designers didn’t take the bait and go literal. If they had, I would have had to track down every last one of them and beat them about the face and head with a copy of Paris Vogue, so their willingness to widely interpret their looks saved me a lot of airline miles.

My personal favorite was Seth Aaron, who turned his air-inspired assignment into a black leather look with a plausible explanation and an incredibly fierce, sculptural jacket of which, dare I say, Alexander McQueen might approve. I was a bit suspect of Seth Aaron’s taste level at the beginning, but between this look and what he did for the kid-and-models challenge, he’s got something great going on if he can just distill his point of view down into its very best elements. Seth Aaron didn’t win, but if it would make him feel better, I would like to contact him and order one of those fabulous leather coats.

Also among the elite this week was Maya, whose inspiration was also air and who made a structured dress with a few floaty elements that really reminded me a LOT of springtime version of this. To Maya’s credit, however, Lanvin Fall/Winter 2010 just debuted last week, while this portion of the season was shot months ago. That didn’t stop Nina Garcia from wrinkling her nose and tut-tutting to Maya that it reminded her too much of Nina Ricci, however, which was pretty accurate. Maya didn’t win either.

Finally, FINALLY Jonathan won something. His inspiration was also, you guessed it, AIR. He made a dress out of laughter and bubbles and happiness, and he somehow managed to accent it with a material that almost perfectly matched his model’s porcelain skin. During judging, he explained that his own pale existence made him particularly fond of playing up her complexion, and as someone that often finds herself buying the lightest color of foundation in any given makeup line, YAY FOR PALE PEOPLE.

His dress was beautiful and light, and guest judge Roland Mouret thought that it was brilliant in a way that only a French person could. I liked the dress and I love Jonathan whenever they show a portion of his interviews (he’s the one that’s scared of children, remember), but I would have still preferred it if they had given the win to Seth Aaron. I’m happy to accept a win for Team Pale, however.

Now, to the unpleasant task of talking about those that weren’t quite so full of win on Thursday. First, Mila. We saw the Bob Twins staring longingly into each others’ eyes, talking about how similar their souls are early in the show, which piqued my interest. Then Mila said that she’d be happy for Maya if she herself was to be eliminated in her place, and we had to know that Mila was skating on thin ice. She was – the judges finally called her out on being a one-trick colorblocking pony, since her assigned “earth” inspiration stopped her from reverting back to black and white and caused her to instead make a boring outfit with a slightly-less-boring asymmetrical vestjacket. She was safe, however, because at least the outfit’s three pieces were competent as clothing.

Not quite as competent was Amy, who made a stab at conceptualism by creating an enormous hair bowl at the top of her garment. I don’t remember what the rest of it looked like, because all I could think the entire time that it was present on my screen was that I didn’t understand how someone could make such beautiful dresses in almost every challenge and then look at a hair bowl and think, YES, OBVIOUSLY THIS IS GOING TO WIN ME THIS CHALLENGE. It’s just…I can’t even.

Amy was lucky, however, since in the great hierarchy of Project Runway sins, doing something conceptual and doing it badly is not quite so heinous as doing something basic and screwing it up. Ben. Poor, dear, gay-husband-missing Ben. His inspiration was water and he decided to make a suit inspired by sharks, which maybe would have been okay if he had any earthly idea of how to make a suit. He didn’t.

That’s why almost everyone makes a dress for every challenge – pants are hard. Jackets are even harder. Doing both in a day is nearly impossible, particularly if you’ve never done it before, which poor Ben hadn’t. Apparently, he had also never taken a gander at how pants are constructed, because the weird seaming around the crotch made his model look like she was wearing a jock strap over her pants, but probably a jock strap that came with the suit because it was made of the same material.

It was bad in a basic, head-scratching way, and for that indiscretion, he was sent packing. He seemed like a nice guy, but I was never all that excited about anything that he designed, even the look that nearly won him the Marie Claire cover challenge. It was time for him to shuffle on, out of the way of the other designers and back to his adorable husband, who probably misses him dearly.

Original post by Amanda Mull

This episode of Real Housewives of New York opened with Ramona putting ice cubes in her white wine. Ice cubes. In her. White. Wine. Funny, because I thought that only Kim Zolciak was allowed to do that, but I suppose outré drinking habits have spread among the Housewives franchises like a particularly virulent case of herpes.

Unsurpisingly, though, that small gesture set the tone for the rest of the episode. There was yelling and cursing, everyone was acting like they were in high school, and Bethenny claimed that LuAnn has grown a penis. The Countess would have said that it was all very déclassé, if she actually had any idea what that meant, in both the literal and figurative senses.

All of these broads are still out in the Hamptons, lazing about at their summer houses and visiting with the help because they don’t have any real friends left. Even their children are risking life and limb to escape at this point.

Actually, that’s just LuAnn, because the rest of the women have apparently forgotten that they have children. She’s feeling all hangdog and puny over her divorce, and Ramona just doesn’t know when to shut her mouth about anything, ever, and she’s making it worse, although that’s sort of why she’s on this show (that and the horrendous white-person dancing). Remember the last episode, when things got weird between her and LuAnn over some douchey comment her husband made about LuAnn being “count-less” instead of “countess?” Frankly, I thought it was a little more clever than he was reasonably capable of being, but the humor was somewhat lost on LuAnn. She was humorless to begin with, but now that she’s getting divorced, she has somehow become even worse.

That whole kerfuffle just wouldn’t go away, with Ramona complaining to Bethenny and later Alex and Simon, and LuAnn kvetching to Jill. The difference between the two groups was that while Alex and Simon encouraged Mario to call and apologize (Bethenny, alternately, just helped Ramona dance it out), Jill decided to call Ramona on speakerphone with LuAnne in the room and encourage her to talk smack without knowing that anyone else was listening. Because Ramona lacks common sense and the ability to control what comes out of her mouth, she quickly obliged and accused LuAnne of various terrible things.

Suddenly, it was sort of clear why Bethenny thinks that Jill needs to get a hobby. When you’re a grown woman and you’re taking your social tactics straight out of a Lindsay Lohan movie (albeit the greatest Lindsay Lohan movie of all time, Mean Girls), you probably need to step back and reevaluate every life decision thus far that has lead you to that point. Never one for introspection, however, Jill decides she’s going to pull out of Ramona’s Labor Day party and help LuAnne throw a rival party at her house. They also enlisted the help of Kelly, whose absence at the other party didn’t seem to bother anyone in the slightest.

Let’s be honest here: Ramona wins the Battle of the Parties because she has a better house. Also, because her food looked way better. Neither party looked exactly hoppin’, but it doesn’t take a whole lot to beat out listening to Kelly talk about how she’s going to shoot a cover and pictorial for Playboy, and she’s going to get the big interview and everything! That last detail is particularly hilarious – her issue already came out, and she was completely overshadowed by the enormous, totally insane interview that John Mayer gave in it. Sorry, Kelly – your wonky boobs aren’t that interesting. In fact, hers wasn’t even the most interesting nudey-mag in that conversation – did you know that Countess LuAnne was on the cover of Playgirl?

Over at Ramona’s house, the food and surroundings may have been better, but the conversation was just as uninteresting. Everyone wanted to complain that Bethenny hurt Jill’s feelings, but after the stunt that Jill pulled on Ramona, I think that plot line feels a little stale. Excuse the cliché, but with a friend like Jill, who needs enemies? Suddenly, that promo clip that we keep seeing where Alex tells Jill that she’s in high school seems a lot more reasonable.

Obviously Alex doesn’t hate her yet, however, because toward the end of Ramona’s party, Alex tried to bow out gracefully, saying that she had promised Jill and LuAnne that she and Simon would make an appearance at their party. Ramona flew off the handle, obviously, because Ramona has no emotions between totally mellow and totally psychotic. She wants all of the housewives to choose sides, and if Silex goes over there, even for a few minutes, it means that she’s no longer beating Jill.

But one thing that this episode made clear is that Bethenny is the real winner. While everyone was bickering and infighting and trying to recapture their youth by recreating the worst behaviors of their teenage years, Bethenny was being asked to move in by her boyfriend and mostly not opening her mouth about anyone. She even behaved herself when the random woman at Ramona’s party told her how much she hurt Jill’s feelings.

Well, she didn’t entirely behave herself. She may or may not have called that woman a cater waiter behind her back. But for Bethenny, that’s sort of the same thing as behaving herself. You know, relatively speaking.

It’s that time again. Make like Andy Cohen and fix yourselves a Maker’s Mark & ginger ale because it’s FRIDAY! Until next week, ladies.

Original post by Amanda Mull

This episode of Real Housewives of New York opened with Ramona putting ice cubes in her white wine. Ice cubes. In her. White. Wine. Funny, because I thought that only Kim Zolciak was allowed to do that, but I suppose outré drinking habits have spread among the Housewives franchises like a particularly virulent case of herpes.

Unsurpisingly, though, that small gesture set the tone for the rest of the episode. There was yelling and cursing, everyone was acting like they were in high school, and Bethenny claimed that LuAnn has grown a penis. The Countess would have said that it was all very déclassé, if she actually had any idea what that meant, in both the literal and figurative senses.

All of these broads are still out in the Hamptons, lazing about at their summer houses and visiting with the help because they don’t have any real friends left. Even their children are risking life and limb to escape at this point.

Actually, that’s just LuAnn, because the rest of the women have apparently forgotten that they have children. She’s feeling all hangdog and puny over her divorce, and Ramona just doesn’t know when to shut her mouth about anything, ever, and she’s making it worse, although that’s sort of why she’s on this show (that and the horrendous white-person dancing). Remember the last episode, when things got weird between her and LuAnn over some douchey comment her husband made about LuAnn being “count-less” instead of “countess?” Frankly, I thought it was a little more clever than he was reasonably capable of being, but the humor was somewhat lost on LuAnn. She was humorless to begin with, but now that she’s getting divorced, she has somehow become even worse.

That whole kerfuffle just wouldn’t go away, with Ramona complaining to Bethenny and later Alex and Simon, and LuAnn kvetching to Jill. The difference between the two groups was that while Alex and Simon encouraged Mario to call and apologize (Bethenny, alternately, just helped Ramona dance it out), Jill decided to call Ramona on speakerphone with LuAnne in the room and encourage her to talk smack without knowing that anyone else was listening. Because Ramona lacks common sense and the ability to control what comes out of her mouth, she quickly obliged and accused LuAnne of various terrible things.

Suddenly, it was sort of clear why Bethenny thinks that Jill needs to get a hobby. When you’re a grown woman and you’re taking your social tactics straight out of a Lindsay Lohan movie (albeit the greatest Lindsay Lohan movie of all time, Mean Girls), you probably need to step back and reevaluate every life decision thus far that has lead you to that point. Never one for introspection, however, Jill decides she’s going to pull out of Ramona’s Labor Day party and help LuAnne throw a rival party at her house. They also enlisted the help of Kelly, whose absence at the other party didn’t seem to bother anyone in the slightest.

Let’s be honest here: Ramona wins the Battle of the Parties because she has a better house. Also, because her food looked way better. Neither party looked exactly hoppin’, but it doesn’t take a whole lot to beat out listening to Kelly talk about how she’s going to shoot a cover and pictorial for Playboy, and she’s going to get the big interview and everything! That last detail is particularly hilarious – her issue already came out, and she was completely overshadowed by the enormous, totally insane interview that John Mayer gave in it. Sorry, Kelly – your wonky boobs aren’t that interesting. In fact, hers wasn’t even the most interesting nudey-mag in that conversation – did you know that Countess LuAnne was on the cover of Playgirl?

Over at Ramona’s house, the food and surroundings may have been better, but the conversation was just as uninteresting. Everyone wanted to complain that Bethenny hurt Jill’s feelings, but after the stunt that Jill pulled on Ramona, I think that plot line feels a little stale. Excuse the cliché, but with a friend like Jill, who needs enemies? Suddenly, that promo clip that we keep seeing where Alex tells Jill that she’s in high school seems a lot more reasonable.

Obviously Alex doesn’t hate her yet, however, because toward the end of Ramona’s party, Alex tried to bow out gracefully, saying that she had promised Jill and LuAnne that she and Simon would make an appearance at their party. Ramona flew off the handle, obviously, because Ramona has no emotions between totally mellow and totally psychotic. She wants all of the housewives to choose sides, and if Silex goes over there, even for a few minutes, it means that she’s no longer beating Jill.

But one thing that this episode made clear is that Bethenny is the real winner. While everyone was bickering and infighting and trying to recapture their youth by recreating the worst behaviors of their teenage years, Bethenny was being asked to move in by her boyfriend and mostly not opening her mouth about anyone. She even behaved herself when the random woman at Ramona’s party told her how much she hurt Jill’s feelings.

Well, she didn’t entirely behave herself. She may or may not have called that woman a cater waiter behind her back. But for Bethenny, that’s sort of the same thing as behaving herself. You know, relatively speaking.

It’s that time again. Make like Andy Cohen and fix yourselves a Maker’s Mark & ginger ale because it’s FRIDAY! Until next week, ladies.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Ladies and gentleman, our beloved Gossip Girl has become nothing more than a fetid, simpering parody of its former self. I’m not mad, though. Furthest thing from it. This is what we always knew that our dear little show could be – self-referential, silly, and with a dubious connection to objective reality. If I wanted to feel feelings, I’d watch Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t, so this is my favorite show. It doesn’t require me to feel anything except smarter than Serena. And also, Nate.

Without further delay, let’s talk about what happened in the first new episode since approximately the Clinton administration. Monday night’s episode was all about the people that we turn to when our normal sources of satisfaction are turning elsewhere. Somewhat surprisingly, no one turned to drugs – they all found other people. But that doesn’t mean drugs weren’t involved! Oh no, they were. They just weren’t taken by any of our Upper Easter Siders. Rather, they were stuffed into the embellishment of a particularly ugly jacket and willingly worn around by three different women that claim to care about fashion. See what I was saying about that dubious connection to reality?

Before we get into what happened, let’s review what went down before the show’s interminable break – Nate finally confessed his love to Serena and she somewhat accepted after a car wreck, Dan confessed his love to Vanessa and it totally did not go well, Chuck found a shadowy lady with an engraved locket at his father’s grave in the middle of the night, Jenny was well on her way to becoming an international drug mule, and Blair was still the only person that could talk any sense into any of these people. Oh, and Rufus is mad at Lily because he was given the letter that detailed her rendezvous with her ex-husband and baby daddy. I almost forgot about that. I don’t really care about the old people on this show.

The episode opened, of course, with Serena anticipating Nate’s return from the holidays at his grandfather’s estate and Blair encouraging her to stop being such a skank and sending him dirty text messages. Serena agrees and tells Nate that she wants to take it slow approximately seven minutes later, which is immediately followed by them having sex on the floor of Eleanor Waldorf’s apartment. Which, I guess, might be slow for Serena. She gave him a hug and had a bit of a conversation with him before she started removing his clothes, plus she also confirmed that they were, indeed, going to go on a date. We’ve all seen her do sluttier things.

Facilitating that date was another one of those silly events that requires the attendance of the majority of the cast so that they can all have their hijinks together. This time, it was a dinner for the French ambassador where we did not see a single person sit down and eat, or a table at which they might be supposed to do those things. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves – we have to figure out how the writers managed to get everyone there at the same time.

One person that did not show up was Dan. He was playing Mrs. Lonelyhearts in Brooklyn for most of the episode because of his spectacular failure to lure Vanessa, pausing briefly to tell Nate that constantly screwing Serena will screw up their relationship and inform Lily that his dad has not yet returned from whatever place he was supposed to be but really wasn’t. There was blessedly little Dan and no Vanessa in this episode, and it confirmed my suspicion that this whole show would be so much better without them. Can we send them on a trip to make a hipster documentary, from which they never return? Please?

Improbably, Nate decides that Dan must be right about his relationship advice and tells Serena that they can’t go to the ambassador’s dinner together, setting off the sort of skank rage that only someone as beautiful and rich as Serena can properly harness. And boy, does she – within minutes, she has made a date to the dance with the Belgian ambassador’s son, effectively neutralizing Nate and unwittingly screwing over her stepsister in the process.

You remember the Belgian ambassador’s son, right? He was the incognito drug dealer that Chuck introduced to Jenny to have her show him around the city, and as it turns out, he used to go to boarding school with S. She runs into him on the street on her way to get rejected by Nate, which is also immediately after he finished hatching a plan with Jenny to sneak a bunch of pills into a tightly-controlled state dinner in order to deliver them to the French ambassador’s daughter. Their brilliant idea was to fill a bunch of hollow paillettes on a jacket with the pills in powder form, which is not all that brilliant when you consider that it probably would have been easier and faster to sew pill packets into the coat’s lining. Security was tight, sure, but there weren’t drug-sniffing dogs. Just the requisite handbag peek.

But Jenny is just a schemer, not a genius, so we’ll cut her some slack, I suppose. Her little jacket does, however, manage to get the pills into the party. The catch is that they’re not on her back – she gets dumped at the snap of Serena’s slutty fingers. Damian passes the fugly little coat off as a gift to Serena to get her to wear it, but then she gets all flummoxed when she sees that Nate and Jenny have shown up together and refuses to check the horrid thing, making a handoff impossible. Damian later tries to get the coat off of her in a way that often works with Serena – trying to have sex with her – but visions of Nate dancing in her head surprisingly stop her from falling for that.

Don’t think that Serena doesn’t like a good schtupping in the corner at a party, however – I mean, that’s our girl. She has evolved however, and now she wants it to be with the right guy. Nate takes some advice from Jenny, seizes his woman and whisks her straight off to the…coat-check room. Which has a couch in it? It’s best not to ask questions. When there, it doesn’t take much convincing at all to remove Serena from whatever clothing she might be wearing (which, as usual, isn’t all that much). All is right from the world.

Then something brilliant happened, and it made me think that the show’s writers love us after all. Serena’s slutty, slutty behavior actually saves the whole plot! See, they weren’t just making her act that way for their own amusement, they actually made it an important plot turning-point. Genius. While Serena and Nate are making the beast with two backs in coat-check, Damian is getting ready to slither out of the party and back to Europe, tail between his legs, because he screwed up the transfer of drugs and owes lots of money. Jenny, trying to stop him, saves the day by seeing Serena’s jacket discarded on the floor and browbeating the coat-check girl into making sure that the coat is carefully delivered to the ambassador’s daughter.

Jenny is coming along quite nicely, but she’s not on Blair levels quite yet. In fact, where was Blair during all of this? Oh yeah, she was scheming to get an introduction to some French guy as part of a third-rate B-plot about her starting a secret society that I can’t really convince myself to care about. What is far more interesting, of course, is the plot surrounding Chuck’s search for a woman that might be his mother, and Blair is front-and-center to support him through it, even if it means that she doesn’t get to play her Anna Karenina sex games.

Chuck is finally able to talk to the woman that left the locket on his father’s grave face-to-face, and she’s so completely Botox’d that her forehead never moves for the entire scene. Also, she’s lying, and Blair knows it – she’s an expert in that arena, and it seems at times as though the mystery woman known as Elizabeth is doing her best Blair impression. Chuck buys it because he has to, but Blair knows better and confronts her privately, setting up the episode’s final scene where the mystery woman gazes wistfully at the missing half of the locket, which holds a picture of her with a newborn baby. It’s Chuck.

That’s where the episode ends, in a storm of supposedly dead mothers and broken jewelry, but that’s not where the story stops – the previews at the end of the episode indicate that Chuck finds out about her in the near future. The also indicate that Serena and Nate keep banging, but we all could have guessed that.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Programming note: We didn’t forget about Gossip Girl! Our recap of the show’s triumphant return to the airwaves will appear tomorrow, and every week on Wednesdays until Kell On Earth has its finale.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: Kelly Cutrone’s baby daddy is HAWT. I’m not a big fan of trendy spelling, but the normative spelling of the word doesn’t just quite have the feel that I’m going after, and this is a sentiment that needs to be communicated correctly.

Beyond hot foreigners, however, this episode of Kell on Earth had a lot to offer us: a Flintstones fashion show, a trip to an “adult” toy store to buy supplies for her employees (and for her doctor’s receptionist, for some reason), the most awkward gay blind date in the history of humanity, a nearly apocalyptic tequila shortage, and Kelly Cutrone wearing makeup. The last one is obviously the most shocking, and that’s why this show is great.

Dumb Stephanie got fired and half of the team went to London Fashion Week the day after I had my tonsils out, and then Bravo sadly gave us a week without the People’s Rev crew last week, so it’s been a while since we last spoke. Fret not, however – Dumb Stephanie is still fired and the team is still in London. The more things change, they more they stay the same.

Before they can come back Stateside, Kell had to produce Jeremy Scott’s oddly brilliant Flintstones-on-crack runway show, but of course, the real money shots were watching her beat the lighting dude into submission and watching Emily and Robyn snatch gift bags out of the hands of would-be bagsnatchers. I could watch an hour of that every week – it does not get old.

Speaking of money shots (how often do I get to say that? Let’s wallow in it for a moment), when Kelly and the crew got back to New York City, we got to take a brief detour to a sex shop. Kelly’s doctor’s receptionist asked her to go buy her a vibrator because she was too embarrassed to do it herself and Kelly “looked like the sort of person that would have a vibrator.” Which, I guess, is true. Come to think of it.

Because Kelly is awesome, she went and picked one up for her post-haste (it was a nice one, too), and also asked her office minions if they needed anything from the the toy store before she went. Indeed, Tandrew (brilliant. nickname.) needed – rather, hoped that he would need – some lube because he was going to go on a blind date, and cross your fingers for him, was really hoping to get laid.

We don’t know if he did or not, but I’m going to say that it’s doubtful at best. Not only did he proposed a game of dirty word association (not on the first date, Tandrew. All the boys are going to think you’re a slut), but before they could even get properly drunk to have sex with strangers, Kelly and Glam Goth Gay Andrew showed up to party crash. Tandrew seemed upset, but it appeared as though fresh faces were the only thing that was going to save that trainwreck. Those two were not meant to be.

Tandrew wasn’t the only gay People’s Rev employee named Andrew to have romantic problems, however. In a brilliant little cut-in, Kelly and non-tan Andrew hit on a random dude on the street, assuming he was gay. And really, it didn’t seem like that bad of an assumption, since he looked like a skinnier version of Anderson Cooper’s ultra gay boyfriend (don’t believe me? Google it. Ben Maisani.) Kelly was wing-manning her hardest, but even she can’t turn a guy gay on Andrew’s whim, and he biked off into the sunset. Probably on a fixed-gear. Hipster.

While Kelly was shopping for sex toys and hitting on gays for her assistant, some infighting was going on back at the office. Smart Stephanie (who shall now be referred to simply by her proper name, since The Stephanie That Shall Not Be Named is now gone) is getting bogged down in all the stuff that’s expected at her, and Emily appears to be a yeller.

I had a hard time figuring out who was at fault here, and I’ve finally decided that they were both a little wrong. Stephanie seems like she might focus more on how busy she is than on eliminating tasks from her to-do list, which is a problem that a lot of the young women I’ve worked with have had, and Emily flew off the handle at her really quickly. It’s a rare work situation where yelling actually helps anything get done, and it’s definitely not helpful when someone is already panicking.

That’s probably what you get when you staff your entire company with people under 30, however – efficiency and professionalism kind of go down the tubes. It seems like People’s Rev could do with a couple more Mother Hen figures to settle everyone when the natives start getting restless over nothing – Kelly can’t always be there to tell everyone to chill the eff out. But hey, people under 30 with limited experience are cheaper to higher, and fashion is as high-paying of an industry as a lot of people would have you think. Something has to give, and I think we all just saw what it was.

The whole thing kind of reminded me of Office Space – when you have eight bosses checking on you and telling you they need things and that they want their needs to be your priority, it’s overwhelming. Stephanie probably shouldn’t have run outside to flip out on the phone with Kelly, but Emily also seemed completely uninterested in actually managing her employee. But isn’t that a situation that we’ve all seen in our own offices?

Which just brings me back to what I always think while watching this show – this isn’t The Bachelor, these are real lives, and that’s why the show is ultimately compelling. Kelly cares enough about her employees to buy them organic lube and listen to them crying on the phone, even when none of that is a boss’s traditional job.

She obviously wants the best for her employees and hopes that she can help them advance in their careers. When you consider that alongside her interaction with her daughter during the photo shoot for her book cover, the whole show had an unexpectedly girl-power bent to it. On the night following the first time a woman has ever won the Oscar for Best Director, it seemed oddly appropriate and it warmed the cockles of my little feminist heart. How often does reality TV manage to do that?

Original post by Amanda Mull

This week, dear readers, Project Runway had one of those oh-so-sublime “alternative materials” challenges. Our top ten (really, they were celebrating that? Top ten is not even making it halfway…) designers were sent to a hardware store by Princess Michael Kors and told to gather enough random objects to somehow make clothing, but then when judging came around, the judges couldn’t decide if they really wanted the designers to turn something hard into something soft or not. Some designers got chastised for it, others were applauded.

Huge, annoying judging inconsistencies aside (but not too far aside – we’ll get to them later), it was nice to see a non-fabric challenge, since those appear to be a fairly accurate bellwether of who will survive and who will eventually be auf’d. In the world of Project Runway, if you can’t make a dress out of sheet metal, you shan’t be long for this world. Likewise, it’s the Tin Man catastrophes that we all enjoy the most, and it’s not as fun when the designers are merely screwing up regular fabric. This episode was great because it separated the real contenders from the straight guys, and it was about time that that happened.

The challenge was as straightforward as it sounds: make an outfit, any outfit, out of materials from a hardware store. Designers were also supposed to make an accessory, but it didn’t seem like the judges really cared about what they made as long as one was present. With those kinds of parameters, it baffles me that so many of these fools decided it would be a good idea to make a metal dress, despite the fact that none of them have ever worked with metal. Hardware stores have lots of non-metal options: drop cloths, rope, tarp, garbage bags, electrical tape, you get the idea. Even if the designers had been set on metal, there are pliable metal options: screen and mesh, anyone?

Indeed, the top three dresses were all from designers that had forgone sheet metal for materials that weren’t quite so obvious. The judges praised Mila for her use of plastic paint tray liners in white and black, cut into small pieces to make a plastic dress that improbably had a lot of movement. I have a problem with Mila’s design sense, however, and it’s not as a result of the mod colorblocking that she uses in every outfit. On the contrary, the thing that always sticks with me is that her outfits tend to not be particularly flattering. Her model looked completely square through the waist, which I probably would have attributed to the difficult materials if the exact same thing hadn’t happened with the nude/peach jersey dress that Mila made a few weeks back.

I don’t think her model is square, so the issue appears to be with Mila herself. Even her challenge-winning track suit didn’t have a defined shape, and as much of a point of view as Mila might have, no one really wants to look like any geometric shape except an hourglass. If she can’t find a waistline eventually, I think that she might make herself vulnerable to eventual elimination. Her plastic outfit was cool on its own, but her schtick may be wearing thing, despite Nina Garcia’s apparent decision that she shall be the eventual winner.

It was a good week for people with Serious Fashion Hair, however, because Mini Mila…err, Maya…was also in the top three. She made a wire-frame jacket out of (if I remember correctly) the cording for miniblinds, and it was utterly brilliant. Put that jacket in an editorial in V Magazine, and I’m all over it. That jacket? That jacket was The Truth. Her dress, made out of metal screen, wasn’t bad either – you wouldn’t have guessed that it was metal, and the key necklace that she made as her accessory was something that I’d buy in a heartbeat. It was modern, pretty, and still a little hard – it may have been my favorite look of the challenge.

Maya didn’t win, however, because Jay managed to somehow make leather pants out of layer upon layer of bias-cut garbage bags, and really, that’s a freakin’ miracle of sewing machine ingenuity if I’ve ever seen one. Not only did he make leather pants, but he made a corset with ruffles (also made out of garbage bags, but this time with blue masking tape accents) and a woven belt that no one would have ever guessed wasn’t leather. Jay probably did the best job of utterly transforming his materials from something mundane to something spectacular, and for that, he was awarded the richly deserved win.

But that last sentence? That’s where things went a wee bit off the rails in the judging peanut gallery. Jay was rewarded for turning his garbage bags into something that did not at all resemble their original state, but for doing the same thing, Anthony was put in the bottom three. He made a soft, flowered cocktail dress out of metal mesh and some sort of pink lining, and his expertly curved metal belt was easily the best use of the solid material on this week’s runway.

The judges didn’t like it, though. It didn’t look enough like it came from a hardware store. Um, excuse me, but was that the point of the challenge? If it was, I totally missed it. Jay missed it too, but instead of nearly losing, he won. The dress wasn’t particularly innovative, but are leather leggings innovative? No. If they want innovation to be the primary judging metric, they should use it for everyone, not just people that make something pretty out of ugly materials.

In challenges where regular fabric is used, innovation is important. In a situation like this, where the innovation should be inherent in the materials used, I don’t think there’s anything to be celebrated in taking a crazy material and making something crazy out of it (Emilio, I’m looking at you). Anthony made a dress that a lot of women would love to wear, and he did it out of the same stuff that covers my screen door, and he shouldn’t have been in the bottom. I wouldn’t have necessarily put him in the top, but he should have been safe.

I can’t say the same for the two others that joined him in the bottom three. Anthony was ultimately safe (and he skittered off the runway like he was afraid that the judges would change their minds if he stood there too long), and it was only Jesse and Emilio standing there with their sad little outfits. Well, calling Emilio’s string (literally) bikini an “outfit” might be just a tad charitable.

You see, it started out as a dress and went off the rails from there, because he didn’t have enough string or washers (the string was woven with washers, I’m not making that up) to cover his model’s butt. Ironically, after he ditched all the material between her chest and pelvis, he STILL didn’t bother to give her enough of a garment to obscure her rear end from popular view. He lied on the runway and said that he had purposefully made a bikini to stand out from all the dresses, which may have been the line that saved his (partially covered) behind.

That’s right, it was Jesse’s night to leave, and not a moment too soon. He’s never come across as particularly talented or particularly interesting, and we’ve seen enough of him. He made a dress that looked like a Hershey Kiss in both shape and material, and although it may have been less terrible than Emilio’s string bikini, I think that we all know that Emilio is a more talented designer. Since we’ve seen a half dozen looks from each designer, I’m ok with the judges auf’ing people with their body of work considered – it’s only fair.

I would entertain the argument, however, that the bikini was bad enough to mitigate any pretty dress Emilio had ever made in his entire life – luckily for him, he had the presence of mind to lie. He’ll do well in the fashion industry.

Original post by Amanda Mull

As my fellow recapper Richard Lawson of Gawker said on Twitter last night, two new episodes of Real Housewives in one night is basically my D-Day. Luckily for me, nothing happened on Real Housewives of Orange County except Lynne’s kids acting like the two most stereotypical underage drunks in the history of forever, so that simplifies my job a bit.

The Real Housewives of New York City, however, brought it like the camera-hungry famewhores they are. For that, I love them. Sadly, however, it’s been so long since I’ve seen the show that I can’t remember who hates who, and it seems like the housewives themselves are a little confused about it. To make up for that, they’re now just all fighting with each other, and fighting with Bethenny in particular. I guess they’ve all figured out by now that she’s the favorite…can someone remind these women that jealousy isn’t a good look?

But before we get into that, we have to send our Orange County housewives tottering off into the sunset with their drunk children and awful husbands and various plastic and/or silicone body parts. Let’s say both hello and goodbye, after the jump.

It was the end of a season (an era?) in Orange County, and not a minute too soon. Exactly two moderately interesting things happened at the party that took up the entire episode: first, Tamra had a screaming match with Simon in a limo before the end-of-the-season get together and told him that he wanted a divorce. Not exactly a surprise, since we already knew that Simon had filed for divorce. Stupid TV lead times, they ruin all the surprises! Second, Lynne’s aforementioned hot mess daughters showed up hammered.

Let’s talk about the drunk teenagers first. They weren’t drunk when they left the house, they got that way in the limo with their parents present, although Lynne says that they were doing it all sneaky-like at the other end of the seat. Right. That just means that Lynne was high on whatever it is that she’s always on, and her slack-jawed husband was probably distracted by a shiny object or trying to remember how to spell his own name or something.

They got to the party and the girls proceeded to bust into the place like it was an underage club and pout when their mom wouldn’t let them continue to drink. Raquel got irritated and blew that popsicle stand, probably in search of a cheeseburger (I know that’s what I always want to do after a few cocktails), and then Alexa was That Girl. You know the one – she’s already drunk, sitting out on the curb, blubbering into her handbag about god knows what when you’re just pulling up to the club at 11:00. And then something magical happens, either real or imagined, and she’s ready to party again. There’s no explaining it, but one thing is for sure: you DO. NOT. WANT. to be that girl. Alexa is going to be That Girl for the rest of her life. Blame Lynne. Lynne didn’t appear to be overly concerned about any of this, but then again, it’s hard to tell after the facelift.

When That Girl grows up, she becomes Tamra, who also spent most of the party crying, but for a totally legitimate reason. Her life is screwed up, her husband sucks, and she’s finally unable to keep both of those facts below the surface anymore. Simon supervised her while she got dressed, berated her over every dress she chose, and then threw some bowling trip with her kids in her face on the way to the party.

But Tamra surprised me. Instead of being a nonsensical mess when she finally sat in the corner to talk about her problems with Vicki (while her husband was telling everyone else at the other side of the room how great they were doing), she was everything that housewives are contractually obligated not to be – self-aware, contrite, realistic. She understood that Simon used her kids against her and that his hatred for Vicki was just misplaced rage at her desire for independence, and she was able to articulate it effectively while sobbing in public. Is Tamra a smart person in disguise? Can we give her her own show to find out?

In the end, however, that was all that happened. No one else did anything interesting. Gretchen and Slade aren’t engaged, Vicki and Donn are still improbably the sanest couple on the show, and Alexis and Alpha Douche Jim are still the worst advertisement ever for Christianity. Possibly for all of organized religion. I hope that they take up some sort of missionary cause in a third world country and we never, ever have to see them again.

On to something fresh – well, maybe not fresh, but different than Orange County. The New York housewives wasted absolutely no time getting down to business – they were brawling from the jump off last night, and they continued to argue for an hour straight about who was fake, who was real, and who was going to pick up the check. Seriously – the check. It matters a lot to these women. Bethenny and LuAnne got in a fight at a Hamptons bar over whether or not Bethenny should have paid for LuAnne’s surfing lesson a year ago (she shouldn’t have, LuAnne is a moron), and then they got in a fight over Bethenny’s snarky comments, which was followed almost immediately by her calling LuAnne a “dumb drag queen” in the private interviews, which was so brilliant that it made my entire life. I am going to be calling everyone I know a dumb drag queen for at least a week. Maybe longer.

There were also some issues with Ramona on a boat, which she apparently just rented to create a captive audience to hawk her jewelry business. People seemed miffed and Ramona cried, but then they took tequila shots out of wine glasses and moved on to talking smack about Bethenny, who wasn’t present because she and Jill now hate each other.

Jill says that Bethenny was rude and nasty to her in a phone message, which is probably true. Bethenny said that Jill is a meddling, fight-picking mean girl, which is also probably true. There was a lot of Bethenny-bashing in this show, however, and the more that it went on, the more the real reason became clear – these women are practically choking on their jealousy over her.

Bethenny has had two books on the New York Times bestseller list, she has a nationally distributed liquor brand, people actually like her. She’s winning the series thus far – she’s the most effective of the famewhores. LuAnne made fun of her for pulling up to the bar in a SkinnyGirl branded car, but Bethenny made a very prescient point that seemed to go over LuAnne’s head – Bethenny is making BANK because of it.

It’ll be interesting to see if Bethenny holds out for the full season or quits the show for her new spinoff halfway through, but seeing all these adults so absolutely green with envy will probably get a little old. Or maybe it won’t – maybe they’ll spend every episode duking it out, and I’ll love Real Housewives all over again. One thing is clear, however – our New Yorkers definitely beat out the OC tonight.

One question though – where was Alex? I’ve always liked her. More Alex and Bethenny, please! They’re the only ones that I don’t want to punch in the throat.

Original post by Amanda Mull

I’m not sure where to begin because I’m not entirely sure that anything happened. I had a nearly impossible time paying attention to this week’s episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, and I’m not even on my post-surgery Vicodin anymore (well, every now and then, but that’s just between us).

Well, Tamra licked Simon’s face. That happened. God help us all.

Lynn continued to get kicked out of her house, Gretchen pretended to be a business woman, Alexis escorted her mom into her first plastic surgery procedure, Vicki was a hypocrite and Tamra drank a lot. It was par for the nauseating course in the OC last night, and I just don’t think it’s enough to keep me coming back for much longer.

As has become customary, Vicki’s involvement in the show was brief and toward the beginning. After last week’s San Fran Smackdown, she sought the alcohol-lubricated support of old friend and ex-housewife Jeanna, which was mostly hilarious since Vicki kicked her to the curb a few weeks back because she was poor and then had everyone else over to teepee her yard. But since all of our housewives are only slightly more self aware than your average Golden Retriever (and they also have the same hair color), it didn’t occur to Vicki that seeking out Jeanna as someone that wouldn’t be a “fair-weather friend” was more than a little ironic. These people do not understand irony.

Her daughter doesn’t have cancer, though, so good for her. And for Brianna. As Ramona from the New York housewives would say, kuh-dooz. They all had shots of Patron to commemorate the results, and to tell you the truth, I think that’s a pretty decent way to celebrate it.

Next in Real Housewives stereotypes, we have Alexis. Her mom was in town from Colorado or Missouri or wherever to have her forehead lifted and filled with industrial sealant, and I’d take this opportunity to make fun of her except that she was nice to the waiter at dinner, so I won’t say anything too terrible. I will say, however, that Alexis apparently looks like her dad, and that based on the pictures of her as a teenager in whatever flyover state that she came from, she has had substantially less work done on her face than I would have guessed. Color me surprised.

Even though I find Alexis terrible an objectionable in almost every way (talking to herself about her last, tiny bite of bread? What?), I did have one small moment where I completely and totally identified with her – apparently she didn’t want to walk to school as a child because it would make her hair smell like air. I HATED the way walking around campus would make my hair smell in college – like nature and dirt and the outdoors. I don’t like the outdoors. I like air conditioning and driving to places in my car. So, homegirl, I feel you on that one.

On to Lynn, who is still being evicted, still contemplating divorce, and whose daughters are still nearly too stupid to breath. Really no updates there, so…moving on.

Gretchen tried to launch her beauty line at some sort of women’s convention with lots of pink carpet and very few visitors, and I actually felt kind of bad. Objectively, a makeup line is a terrible idea since she’s not particularly famous and she always looks like she put on her face with a trowel and spackle gun, but Gretchen seems kind of sweet in a dumb way, and her booth actually looked great, and I felt bad. It was awkward, but also kind of predictable, but I have a hard time being joyful about poor, dim Gretchen’s completely foreseeable failure. I’m kind of a mensch that way.

And then Tamra. Ineffectual, frustrated Tamra. It was her birthday, she’s 42, and I actually would have pegged her more for 38 or 39, so I guess that’s nice for her. What’s not so nice for her is that her supposed good friend Vicki didn’t show up for her boozy birthday lunch, which looked like a lot of fun, but how did all of those drunk middle-aged people get home? Are there taxis in Orange County?

Anyway, I digress. Tamra and Vicki had previously gone on a little hike to talk about the Bayside Brawl, and things didn’t go so well, mostly because Tamra wouldn’t just shut up and go along with everything Vicki said, and Vicki gets all panicky and huffy when people disagree with her. As dicussed previously, Vicki may not understand irony but she does understand spite, so instead of taking an hour off to go to her friend’s birthday lunch, she used work as an excuse to skip it and sent her assistant with a gift that appeared to be still in the original shopping bag, plus some tissue paper. In the annals of passive-aggressiveness, Vicki is bucking for a spot on the Hall of Fame.

Not even the copious amounts of booze at her drunken lunch could distract Tamra from her relationships problem, and she spent dinner with him, alternately fawning, arguing, and encouraging him to get drunk. It seemed like every time they sort of had a sweet moment, Simon just had to have SOMETHING to say about what a saint he is for putting up with her, and even if she is sort of vile, he doesn’t get any extra credit since, you know, he was the one that picked her. If he didn’t want her, he shouldn’t have picked her. There are probably scads of dumb women out there who could have been convinced to marry him. That kind of says a lot about America, doesn’t it?

They eventually got on a gondola, even though I have no idea where one finds a gondola outside of Venice. The only thing that could have saved this episode would have been an impromptu capsize, but the boat stayed afloat and I stayed bored. Not even Tamra repeatedly licking Simon’s face brought me as much schadenfreude as it once would have.

Next week is the season finale, and it makes me wonder how the very first housewives will come back next season, or if they will at all. The bloom is off the rose a bit on this one, and without a brand new crew of crazy Californians, I’m not exactly sure where things go from here. Now that we have housewives that are far more ridiculous in other cities, I need more than Botox and an eviction to make me want to set the DVR.

Speaking of the other Housewives, we also have the NYC premiere next Thursday. Anyone excited? I’ll be recapping it, naturally.

Original post by Amanda Mull

I’m not sure where to begin because I’m not entirely sure that anything happened. I had a nearly impossible time paying attention to this week’s episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, and I’m not even on my post-surgery Vicodin anymore (well, every now and then, but that’s just between us).

Well, Tamra licked Simon’s face. That happened. God help us all.

Lynn continued to get kicked out of her house, Gretchen pretended to be a business woman, Alexis escorted her mom into her first plastic surgery procedure, Vicki was a hypocrite and Tamra drank a lot. It was par for the nauseating course in the OC last night, and I just don’t think it’s enough to keep me coming back for much longer.

As has become customary, Vicki’s involvement in the show was brief and toward the beginning. After last week’s San Fran Smackdown, she sought the alcohol-lubricated support of old friend and ex-housewife Jeanna, which was mostly hilarious since Vicki kicked her to the curb a few weeks back because she was poor and then had everyone else over to teepee her yard. But since all of our housewives are only slightly more self aware than your average Golden Retriever (and they also have the same hair color), it didn’t occur to Vicki that seeking out Jeanna as someone that wouldn’t be a “fair-weather friend” was more than a little ironic. These people do not understand irony.

Her daughter doesn’t have cancer, though, so good for her. And for Brianna. As Ramona from the New York housewives would say, kuh-dooz. They all had shots of Patron to commemorate the results, and to tell you the truth, I think that’s a pretty decent way to celebrate it.

Next in Real Housewives stereotypes, we have Alexis. Her mom was in town from Colorado or Missouri or wherever to have her forehead lifted and filled with industrial sealant, and I’d take this opportunity to make fun of her except that she was nice to the waiter at dinner, so I won’t say anything too terrible. I will say, however, that Alexis apparently looks like her dad, and that based on the pictures of her as a teenager in whatever flyover state that she came from, she has had substantially less work done on her face than I would have guessed. Color me surprised.

Even though I find Alexis terrible an objectionable in almost every way (talking to herself about her last, tiny bite of bread? What?), I did have one small moment where I completely and totally identified with her – apparently she didn’t want to walk to school as a child because it would make her hair smell like air. I HATED the way walking around campus would make my hair smell in college – like nature and dirt and the outdoors. I don’t like the outdoors. I like air conditioning and driving to places in my car. So, homegirl, I feel you on that one.

On to Lynn, who is still being evicted, still contemplating divorce, and whose daughters are still nearly too stupid to breath. Really no updates there, so…moving on.

Gretchen tried to launch her beauty line at some sort of women’s convention with lots of pink carpet and very few visitors, and I actually felt kind of bad. Objectively, a makeup line is a terrible idea since she’s not particularly famous and she always looks like she put on her face with a trowel and spackle gun, but Gretchen seems kind of sweet in a dumb way, and her booth actually looked great, and I felt bad. It was awkward, but also kind of predictable, but I have a hard time being joyful about poor, dim Gretchen’s completely foreseeable failure. I’m kind of a mensch that way.

And then Tamra. Ineffectual, frustrated Tamra. It was her birthday, she’s 42, and I actually would have pegged her more for 38 or 39, so I guess that’s nice for her. What’s not so nice for her is that her supposed good friend Vicki didn’t show up for her boozy birthday lunch, which looked like a lot of fun, but how did all of those drunk middle-aged people get home? Are there taxis in Orange County?

Anyway, I digress. Tamra and Vicki had previously gone on a little hike to talk about the Bayside Brawl, and things didn’t go so well, mostly because Tamra wouldn’t just shut up and go along with everything Vicki said, and Vicki gets all panicky and huffy when people disagree with her. As dicussed previously, Vicki may not understand irony but she does understand spite, so instead of taking an hour off to go to her friend’s birthday lunch, she used work as an excuse to skip it and sent her assistant with a gift that appeared to be still in the original shopping bag, plus some tissue paper. In the annals of passive-aggressiveness, Vicki is bucking for a spot on the Hall of Fame.

Not even the copious amounts of booze at her drunken lunch could distract Tamra from her relationships problem, and she spent dinner with him, alternately fawning, arguing, and encouraging him to get drunk. It seemed like every time they sort of had a sweet moment, Simon just had to have SOMETHING to say about what a saint he is for putting up with her, and even if she is sort of vile, he doesn’t get any extra credit since, you know, he was the one that picked her. If he didn’t want her, he shouldn’t have picked her. There are probably scads of dumb women out there who could have been convinced to marry him. That kind of says a lot about America, doesn’t it?

They eventually got on a gondola, even though I have no idea where one finds a gondola outside of Venice. The only thing that could have saved this episode would have been an impromptu capsize, but the boat stayed afloat and I stayed bored. Not even Tamra repeatedly licking Simon’s face brought me as much schadenfreude as it once would have.

Next week is the season finale, and it makes me wonder how the very first housewives will come back next season, or if they will at all. The bloom is off the rose a bit on this one, and without a brand new crew of crazy Californians, I’m not exactly sure where things go from here. Now that we have housewives that are far more ridiculous in other cities, I need more than Botox and an eviction to make me want to set the DVR.

Speaking of the other Housewives, we also have the NYC premiere next Thursday. Anyone excited? I’ll be recapping it, naturally.

Original post by Amanda Mull