‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ recap: Water, water everywhere

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And not a drop to ... . Yes, punsters among you, Hurricane Irene’s mighty battering of the Franklin Lakes/Wayne area, known ‘round here as Chez RHONJ, means not only that your faithful correspondent was ineluctably delayed by the loss of her literal, though, one hopes, not analytical, powers, but that you may freely joke that, as of Sunday, all those foreclosed RHONJ houses are LITERALLY underwater. Well, you can make the joke once. Now, let’s move on to all the other liquid-based events of Sunday’s episode, beginning with Joe Guidice literally going off the deep end.

We’ve known for a long time that the elder Joe G. is prone to violent eruptions, ranging from the famous Christening Clash to his ‘Bonanza’ reenactment chez Catskills to the mighty kick he delivered to his punching bag right before he and wife Tre got in the SUV to head to his brother-in-law’s for a holiday bash.

But Joe’s frequent quaffing of the vino may have raised his slow boil to a mighty, noxious geyser. (Once you tap into all these water metaphors, it’s hard to stop the flow!) In a tense conversation between Joe Gorga and wife Melissa, we learned the disturbing news that Giudice was deluging (see?) his brother-in-law with angry, abusive texts, the thrust of which was that he and his wife were fakes. (For joining Joe on a reality show? Nevah!)

Giudice’s beef? (I tire of water.) Teresa, plugging her newest book at a local signing, finally offered her brother the invite to a book-signing he had been seeking, despite her assertions that no one is invited to a book signing. (Only bound and hauled in for support.) The gracious Wakiles made an early appearance, and then Gorga and wife Melissa, as if attending a cocktail party, swanned in two hours late. Nonetheless, Gorga bought 10 books in an aggressively brotherly manner (‘Next time, I’ll buy a whole boxful!’) and asked for his own to be signed. Teresa complied, then promptly burst into tears, having written that her brother was the most important person to her in the entire world. Gorga responded by admonishing Teresa that she should tell Giudice to lay off, a request that immediately stopped the weepfest and brought Teresa back to hair-flipping defensiveness.

And this was the state in which she returned to husband Joe, whose drunken finger-pointing amidst a crowd of guests culminated in his demonstrating a round-off for the assemblage and chipping his tooth, which then drove daughter Gia to hysterical tears.

Jacqueline! Kathy! So far the New Jersey housewives, fisticuffs notwithstanding, win the award for most genuine waterworks in the franchise. On this episode, who’s to blame? Is it Teresa, who’s now set her actual preference for brother Joe over husband Joe in print? Is it Joe Giudice, whose violent antics are now scaring his actual family? Is it Joe Gorga, who keeps acting as if Teresa has any control over them? Or is it that boy at Teresa’s signing who asked her to marry him, thus confusing the whole operation?

Hard to say. Oh, also: the Manzo boys have signed on to sell something called “Blackwater,” a refresher steeped with “fulvic acid,” the powers of which must primarily overcome being associated with a faceless military contractor. I recommend Joe switch his choice of beverage immediately, and that the soggy fans of Hoboken, Wayne and Franklin Lakes don’t mistake it for the murky substance currently flooding their own backyards. That’s a bridge too far.

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-- Lizzie Skurnick
Twitter.com/lizzieskurnick