How was the Real Housewives of New York last night?”
Last night’s Housewives was all about the settling of scores, of clearing accounts, making payments. Last night we saw no cases closed, but many new ones opened. What is that sound? It’s like all the honeybees dying, like a choir of children in a terrible Sweet Hereafter-style bus accident. It’s the sound of all the joy leaving the world, a crisp and leathery timbre, a piercing whine laid atop it. Why it’s the sound of Kelly Killoren Bensimon, North America’s entry in the World’s Worst Person contest. Yes, Kelly Bensimon was big in this episode, hooting at us in her low throat-moan, constantly parting her hair with two fingers like a small child. A small child with helio-burnt skin, with menacing gem stones for eyes, with teeth the white of oblivion.
Last night’s episode was all about making amends, about being nice to people, about the warmth that these strange Housewives can sometimes give off from their otherwise cold, metallic bodies. Well, it wasn’t all niceness. The show can never be entirely about niceness. But there were several scenes of the women trying to be good mothers or sisters or daughters or friends. Some succeeded! Some sadly failed. Let’s take a look at how it all shook out. We began our tale with Bethenny and Alex. Bethenny had gone to visit Alex in her Brooklyn Bordello, that strange place of creaking noises and dim-glowing red lights. Bethenny, of course, had big news to share. She’s engaged! Yes, somehow the Bravo cameras missed this lovely moment, so we had to hear about it in a story, faraway and Chekhovian. Of course Bethenny is also pregnant, but she chose to kept that detail a secret for now. Alex was genuinely happy for Bethenny, which was very nice to see. I’m not sure exactly what’s happened to Alex,
I’m tasked with the strange duty of describing a woman’s serious unraveling. At a certain point last night, right around the times the women themselves realized that whoa, hold up, hold up, something really is wrong here, and not just reality TV wrong, I got tremendously sad. Kelly is not just mean, or off, or a little Aspergers-y. I think it was after she called Alex a vampire, and cried that Bethenny had tried to kill her multiple times, and ran down the hall in search of lollipops and gum bearies that my stomach knotted up and I wanted the crazy lady to just GO TO BED! GO TO BED PLEASE! because you are really scaring me.
