‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ recap: Are they still talking about the christening brawl?
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When you start a season with a raging brawl in the middle of a baby christening, there’s nowhere to go but up. Or is that down?
The calm after the Jersey Housewife storm is filled with fall-out: As Teresa tells her friends, the fight between her husband (Joe Guidice) and her brother (Joe Gorga) at her nephew’s christening party was like ‘a bad bad dream.’ A bad bad dream in which her brother pounds his fists on the banquet table until a mob erupts into violence so chaotic and widespread that even Bravo’s multiple cameras can’t show us what exactly is going on.
Which is just as well — if we knew exactly what had happened, it wouldn’t be as much fun to hear the different parties trotting out their own versions of how things unraveled last week.
Joe Giudice — the instigator of the violence, according to some — says understatedly: ‘I got a little upset because [Joe Gorga] banged the table.’ Caroline, seemingly playing the voice of reason this season, doesn’t care who started it. She tells Teresa that she and her sister-in-law, Melissa Gorga, better make up fast: The two are scheduled to walk in the Posh Fashion Show together a few days later.
Teresa brushes her off. ‘I know how to handle my family. I’m the matriarch of my family,’ she announces.
Cut to the Gorga household members, who are seething over all the times that Teresa slighted them in the past and rehashing the christening throwdown.
‘I looked at her with my eyes,’ says Joe Gorga. ‘[Teresa] knows me.’ Chimes in Melissa’s cousin Kathy (she of the enormous pop-eyes): ‘He gave her the warning. She should have known. He’s a Gorga.”
At this point, Gorga starts banging the table again. Is table-banging going to be his version of a catchphrase?
Even though it’s Halloween, there’s little time spent on trick or treating. Instead, the episode careens toward the Posh Fashion Show, signaling that fur will fly there.
Caroline’s husband, owner of the club hosting the event, offers her a seat in the middle of the room. ‘That’s not the best seat,” Caroline says with a laugh, showing the only shred of humor in the episode. “I want to be by the door for a quick escape.’
At the event, dueling conversations ratchet up the tension. While getting her hair done, Melissa tells Kathy, “I want the acknowledgement of what happened and you [Teresa] caused it and Joe charging my husband caused a ruckus.’
On the other side of the wall, Teresa tells Jacqueline, “The fashion show is not the place for a family thing to be spoken about.”
And then the two angry posses collide in makeup room. Fake air kiss ensues before they retreat to their corners.
‘She acted exactly how I expected,’ Melissa simpers.
“Melissa doesn’t faze me,” Teresa snarls. “Do I look fazed? Nuh-unh.”
The fashion show itself barely registers — Melissa flounces down the runway wearing something that looks like an exploded pigeon, and Teresa follows suit in a black, wet-look minidress. (Caroline notes sadly that Teresa’s heart isn’t in it: ‘She’s got a lot on her mind.... I felt bad for her.’)
But how can we even mock the tacky couture when Teresa’s voiceover is promising some kind of vicious resolution?
‘Tick tick tick,’ she mutters.
The suspense is suspended 30 seconds later as Kathy pulls Teresa aside and tries to defuse (or is it ignite?) the situation. ‘I see the lights on but — knock knock knock — is anyone home?’ Kathy taunts.
It’s back to contrasting she said/she said accounts of the fight until Kathy makes the mistake of mentioning that Teresa wasn’t looking after her baby daughter during the christening melee.
“Do. Not. Go. There!” Teresa bellows. Caroline takes the ongoing bickering as a cue to send Teresa’s mother and mother-in-law out of the room for a drink. ‘As a mother, I don’t want to see family made a mockery.’
Until next week, that is.
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— Joy Press
