The Real Housewives of New Jersey Recap: Failure to Relaunch

What is Jenf’s strategy here, and why is she so bad at playing it?

There are so many stories, so many events, so many people that I just don’t care about on this here season of The Real Cash Payers of the Home Goods Parking Lot. I love gay love as much as the next middle-age homosexual, but why are we at Cousin Nick’s big gay wedding? Over the years, we’ve heard more about Melissa’s long-long-lost sister that doesn’t even exist than we have about Nick and his fiancé, and now we’re supposed to care what these grooms are up to just because Joe Gorga is officiating their wedding? At least they aren’t wearing matching tuxes; I hate when the gays do that. And they are cute … okay, if they DM me some photos of them in their Speedos from the honeymoon, then all will be forgiven.

This is going to come across callous and mean, but I don’t care about Joe Benigno’s cancer scare, either. It’s not like I want Joe to get cancer or anything, quite the opposite, but this medical story line is not getting me excited like playing doctor with Nick and his groom would. Joe may or may not have prostate cancer, which is like the easiest of all the cancers; if breast cancer is a marathon and ovarian cancer is a Tough Mudder, then prostate cancer is a two-block walk downhill. You can live with it for like 50 years. Of course, all the guy cancers are not that lethal; meanwhile, there are about 75 different cancers that a woman can get and they’ll all kill you dead in six months. It’s hell being a woman. But, yeah, prostate cancer is not that terrible and we don’t even know if Joe has it yet. I’m a little bit yawn! to this one until the diagnosis comes in.

I can’t manage to find one fuck to give about Danielle and her father’s reunion. Even if you downgrade it, I can’t find one freak to give. Maybe a frig. I could give a frig. No. Wait. I take that back. I would have given half a frig if Danielle’s dad actually showed up to her Boujie Kidz relaunch event — don’t worry, they won’t be relaunching proper spelling — but he was sick and bailed at the last minute, so I am taking back my half a frig and I will give half of that to this season of Real Housewives of Dubai because that is how much I care about that: one-quarter of a frig. (Sorry, Stanbury.)

The worst part about this whole season, however, is these friends-of they keep trying to make us care about. We’ve never seen Cousin Nick before, and yet we still see more of him than these two invisible friends-of that keep popping up at events. The only reason I know they’re supposed to be part of the cast is because they arrive in a full beat of makeup. Otherwise, they would just be like the other indistinguishable mothers trying to get their kids not to eat other kids’ boogers off of the balls in the ball pit at the Boujie Kidz relaunch party.

Now, that shit is a party. Not only is there a hair-tinsel station, a make-your-own-sweatshirt bar, a slide into a ball pit, and a mirrored photo station, there’s also DJ Sabes. Do you know DJ Sabes, the pint-size Skrillex? He’s a 10-year-old DJ who spins professionally. Yes, he’s a reality show waiting to happen. Who does his marketing? Who hires him? Do you think that his polo shirts always smell like bubble-gum-flavored Bonne Belle Lip Smacker from all the girls who are macking on him while he’s behind the ones and twos? He is the coolest kid in the tristate area, and I need to meet this mini-Diplo ASAP.

Okay, so DJ Sabes was cool, but everything else this episode I didn’t care about. What I care about is relitigating the Danielle and Jen Aydin brawl from last episode, but everyone is avoiding this like a squid that Nonno has been boiling in a pot for the better part of three days. We get a little bit of chat about it when Jen Fessler and Teresa go over to Jen Aydin’s house. Jen A. is mad that Teresa and Fessler are going to go to Danielle’s event even though she smashed a cup on Jen Aydin’s face. Teresa gets in her favorite all-time excuse, “Danielle didn’t do anything to me.” Teresa Giudice wouldn’t know loyalty if it hatched from an egg nestled in her eaves, got feathers all over her furniture trying to get out of the house, and then took a big shit right on her extensions.

I have no clue what Jen Fessler is doing in all of this. I want to like Jen, I really do, but she’s trying to be Dolores and play both sides, but she doesn’t have the tough-talking gravitas that Dolo musters, so it just ends up seeming mealy-mouthed and obsequious. She is trying to justify Jen Aydin’s behavior in the brawl when there is no clear justification. She also wants Danielle to take some accountability for what happened even though Jen Aydin’s retelling of events is so ungenerous toward Danielle and her motives I can’t believe that Danielle ever considered that woman a friend.

Just as Jenf is throwing Danielle under the bus so that she can stay friends with Jen Aydin and Teresa, she’s also putting her friendship with them in jeopardy by defending Rachel and John Fuda. Gia shows up to the party with her mother and is upset that John Fuda used her in some kind of analogy just like Jackie did seasons ago. (But we’ve gotten over that and are friends with Jackie now, I guess? The logic on this show makes about as much sense as trying to learn trigonometry in Russian.) Then we see the offending comment that John made at the Gorgas’ housewarming party. He says that the drug arrest that Teresa brought up happened when he was “younger than Gia.” He’s just using Gia, who is 22, as a yardstick for youth with no harm or malice intended. It’s like if someone said, “When I’m old, I’m going to start smoking again. How old? When I’m older than Billy Joel.” You don’t want to offend the Piano Man even though you are using him as a barometer for oldness.

Also, we need to tell Gia to knock it off with not wanting people on the show to talk about her. I assume that she’s getting at least some kind of stipend for being on RHONJ and she’s officially a Bravo employee now that she’s been cast in Making It in Manhattan along with Brooks Marks and some other Bravo spawn. Once you start taking Bravo’s money, you are fair game. If Gia doesn’t want them talking about her, then she shouldn’t be showing up onscreen, and she certainly shouldn’t be taking Andy Cohen’s crypto to sell her personal life for our entertainment. Yes, kids are off-limits, but fellow employees are well within bounds.

Melissa disagrees. When Jenf tries to explain to Teresa why John said it, Melissa says, “She’s a child. Why are you talking to a child about adult conversations?” See paragraph above please, Melissa. But Rachel is mad at Jenf for another reason: for always getting in the middle of her and Teresa’s bullshit. She doesn’t want anyone talking to the Giudice-Ruelases about her, even if it’s for Jenf to justify why what John did wasn’t so bad. I am almost on Jenf’s side here, because she is staying loyal to Rachel, but if she thinks that one word of what she says is going to get through even Teresa’s thinnest wig to find its way to the crushed garbanzo bean she calls a brain, then she is wildly mistaken.

Meanwhile, as they’re talking about Gia, John Fuda, Boujie Kidz, Cousin Nick, DJ Sabes, and all the rest that is going on, the Tandy computer that powers Teresa’s brain lurches to a stall and says, “But how is this about Margaret? She’s the real devil here. This is all about Margaret, right? Right? Right?!”