The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: London Brawling

Remember back in 2016 when, every day, someone would write an op-ed about how “this is the day Donald Trump became president”? I was reminded of this when watching the end of this episode, because it seems as though this is the day that Jenn Pedranti finally became a Housewife. She has been sweet and charming since she arrived but as close as you get to a welcome mat that everyone — especially Tamra — walks all over. Well, not anymore. Welcome to the club, Jenn. If you can keep this up (unlike Mr. Trump), I might want to keep you around after this (also unlike Mr. Trump).

While Jenn shouting down Tamra and Heather while they get glammed in their hotel room is the climax of the hour (and, boy, did I climax after watching that scene), the episode is really about three old-school Housewives and how they all play the game differently and how the new ladies (yes, on a cast this OG, even Gina and Emily are newbies) are caught up in all of it. Last episode, Shannon Storms Beador said the lawsuit from JJ Squared was “a reality show leaking into my real life,” and everyone else around the table said the show is their real life. I don’t know if it’s because they’re from a different era or because they’ve just honed their craft after so long, but they are playing Game of Thrones and the rest of the ladies are getting slaughtered. Tell Cersei. Shannon, Tamra, and Heather want her to know it was them.

We see this first while the women are divided into smaller groups and situated around the May[space]Fair hotel in London’s posh May[no space]fair neighborhood. Tamra tells Katie that Shannon spends beyond her means and always has money troubles. She says that Shannon’s superpower is making people feel sorry for her. She says that Shannon is an exhausting friend. Everything Tamra and Heather accuse Shannon of doing, I believe, is absolutely factual. The evidence is all around us: She buys everyone too-expensive gifts, she is constantly playing the victim, and she is calling her castmates at all hours (probably drunk) to only talk about herself. The problem is that because Johnny J. and Jesus Jugs are treating her so shabbily, she really is the victim at this time. She’s also our victim, and we will fiercely defend Shannon even though we all know she is so full of shit that even a colostomy bag thinks she smells.

What is upsetting Tamra and Heather is how Shannon plays Housewives. Heather says she felt set up in Sonoma, where Shannon showed her the bloody picture and then talked about John maybe hearing the accident. She’s mad at Heather for telling people about that, but she had already told Tamra, and she had already told other people. Shannon clearly planted that conversation to get it on-camera, as surely as she planted Jeff Lewis (say his name three times and he’ll take a turd in your driveway) asking her about John on the radio. That is what she does: She plans these things, and when accused of them, she defaults to playing the victim. If that doesn’t work, she goes, “I’m done,” and storms off in whatever dress with three-quarter-length sleeves she’s wearing that day. Classic Shannon behavior. I’m not saying it’s right, but I’m saying that, this season, she is getting away with it owing to extenuating circumstances.

It’s also the way the two of them are playing it. Tamra is instead trying to make Shannon into a villain, and Heather, who never really liked Shannon, is damning her with her silence as Alexis runs roughshod all over her. As for Tamra, she can be right about Shannon and her terrible behavior, but she is still overplaying her hand. Emily says it perfectly: “You can be disappointed in her DUI; you can be of the opinion that she shouldn’t drink and should be sober. All valid. But why not help her be a better person, not continuously berate her and humiliate her?” Yes! Tamra seems like she’s kicking her when she’s down and not really behaving like a friend. We all know that Tamra has no loyalty at all, but maybe now that we see that she doesn’t view these women as friends but as pawns to stay on television, the charm has finally worn off.

While she has a right to be pissed at Tamra, Shannon can’t get mad at Heather for repeating a story that Shannon herself already told several times. That’s as fake as the tiara she makes everyone wear on the double-decker bus. Shannon has plenty of receipts this season, including the “papers” that she brought with her on vacation. It’s a stack of old Filofax pages she scribbled in pencil, which are all the costs that she says she incurred for her and John in the first six months of their relationship. By her tally, it was around $70,000, which was just what she had borrowed from John.

There are a couple of problems here, the first being that this is by no means admissible in either the court of law or the court of public opinion. I could scrawl that John Janssen owes me $17 million in Ferragamo shoes on a bunch of paper, and that doesn’t mean that I spent the money, that John took it, or that John asked me to spend that money on him. If I were to guess, Shannon was spending that money either wooing John or enjoying their new partnership, which is totally fine. But if Shannon volunteers to take him on a $10,000 vacation and he agrees, should he be on the hook for that several years later? I would venture no.

The other problem, pointed out by a howling Heather and Emily, is that Shannon couldn’t put these in a spreadsheet? She couldn’t have at least typed them up in the Notes app like a bad celebrity apology? Shannon looks fantastic for her age, but this makes her look like Mrs. Magoo. (Congratulations! If you got both that and the Filofax references, you are officially as old as Shannon’s accounting system.)

When the ladies do get on the double-decker bus to experience one of the 17 rain-free afternoons that London gets each year, Gina brings up Heather’s thing with the mammogram, and I’m not even sure what this fight is about. Heather feels bad, but she was done with it and Gina brought it back. For what? To make what point? I don’t quite get it. I find this fight annoying, and I think that I’m somehow on Fancy Pants’s side.

What I don’t like about Heather’s style of play, however, is what she did to Jenn about this dress. She says that she was in Neimans and saw the floral dress Jenn wore to Shannon’s tea party. She calls Tamra and says the dress was $2,000, and because they know she’s getting only $6,000 a month from the ex, she doesn’t think she should spend a third of her monthly allowance on one dress. When Jenn confronts Heather about this at dinner, Heather does what she always does when caught out, which is to try to make herself seem like a saint. She says she was worried about Jenn, so she called Tamra to talk about it. She called Tamra because she was worried? If you’re worried about someone, you don’t call Tamra; she’s going to do nothing with this information but weaponize it. It’s like slicing off a finger and calling Poison Control.

Heather, of course, can’t be made to look bad or petty because she is, as Gina tells us, a control freak who will always tell you exactly how you should feel about her. Heather says she didn’t want Jenn to feel as if she needed fancy things to hang out with the ladies. Well, wasn’t it Tamra herself who made fun of her dupes last season? Tamra created that problem. But even if she didn’t, they’re all on the same show. Jenn doesn’t feel the pressure to look fashionable and expensive from the other ladies on the show; she feels it because of the fans. She feels it because of the institution. If Heather were concerned, she should have called Jenn, talked to her, and hooked her up with a stylist, some freebies, or some hand-me-downs that she didn’t wear on the show. The last thing she should do is call Tamra.

She learned this information from Katie, who heard it from Tamra, who is just leaking more damaging things about Jenn. What is her problem with this woman? For someone she once considered a friend, why is she always after her? Gina totally gets it: “How many times does she have to get walloped on the side of the head [by Tamra] before she starts to wear a helmet?”

It seems like this many times, because there is one more wallop she won’t take. Shannon tells Jenn that she was going through her old texts — I told you Shannon brought receipts — and finds out that Tamra did a background check on Ryan when the two of them first started on the show. Shannon finally said, “You want to keep coming for me and how I play? Let’s illustrate the way you play.” And sweet Princess Kate Middleton, did she show us.

Jenn immediately takes off and goes to Tamra’s room to confront her. Tamra denies that she did it, saying, “I have never paid for a background check in my life.” It’s giving two things. The tone and timbre are giving “I have never been with multiple partners in my life.” The content is giving Lisa Vanderpump’s “I have never sold a story in my life.” Just like Lisa hadn’t “sold” a story but gave them away for free, Tamra has never “paid” for a background check. She later tells us that since Jenn said Ryan was a licensed mortgage broker, she asked a friend if he was licensed, and that friend said “no.”

I do believe there is a valley between a “background check” and asking a friend to look up someone’s certification. I think Shannon oversold her tea. However, it’s kind of a shitty thing for Tamra to do: dredging up info about people to then air it out on the show. But that’s the way Tamra plays — the way Tamra has always played — and Shannon is only calling it out now because Tamra is using those tricks against her.

Jenn, however, does something that few Housewives have tried and pulled off: She goes toe-to-toe with Tamra and somehow comes up on top. Tamra looks desperate, caught, dismissive, and cruel. Jenn looks like she is finally taking the initiative, finally growing a backbone, and finally sticking up for that shitty little man of hers in his patches and paint-splatter jackets. She even hits a little below the belt, telling Tamra, “Leave my family alone. My kids are with me and happy and good.” Oof, that “with me” hit Tammy Sue where she lives and in her Big Bear second home.

With that, Jenn turned on her heels and exited the suite, unaware she was victorious. But she stood a little bit taller, her heels a little bit higher. She felt like she could afford a $2,000 dress; she felt like she could afford a penthouse in Mayfair. Jenn straightened herself up like Verbal Kint at the end of The Usual Suspects, and you could almost see the ethereal flame fluttering in licks behind her as a new champion emerged.