While the episode ended with LuAnn pacing the hallways, itching for a fight or a cigarette or SOMETHING just so long as Bravo turns their goddamn cameras off, it began with her on top of the world. She was in Miami! She was getting along with Carole! She even encountered some fans, leading to one of my favorite Countess moments of all time:
But sadly, the foundation that holds up Lu’s rickety castle of delusions and dreams was bound to crumble. All the other women on the trip—excluding Jules (who was too busy playing trombone to notice anything) and Dorinda (who is consistently too drunk to register much of anything)—knew about Bethenny’s secret and despite their Awws and What a shames, were eagerly awaiting the moment when it would all come out and hit LuAnn in her beautiful broad face. Heck, Ramona was so jazzed on the news that she had to go get laid to take the edge off, returning to the hotel the next morning looking like she’d been rode hard, put away wet, and loved every second of it.
While the meat of the episode was Bethenny’s emotional reveal to Luann, the best thing about New York is that there’s almost always as much going on in the B plot line as there is in the A. I don’t think I’m alone when I say I could watch a full episode of blotto Dorinda rambling with subtitles (seriously, bless these editors and producers) or saying lines like “She’s a dog that bites. I’ll pat her on the ass, I’m not touching her on the face” about Ramona.
And because the Bravo Gods are great, we get to have a taste of everything: A little bit of Dorinda slurring trash-talk, Jules wearing a centerpiece as a hat as she talks shit about her dirtbag husband, Sonja wearing a Tiara while lying in bed, and—of course—Bethenny and LuAnn bursting into tears as LuAnn refuses to hear what she already knows: Tom isn’t faithful to her.
But what are the chances that this news will bring the countess down? If you watched her Before They Were Housewives episode, you know that she is an expert con artist—with herself being her biggest mark. This is the same woman who possibly fucked Silvio Berlusconi at a Bunga Bunga party to secure a job as the co-host of an Italian variety show. The same woman who left her rich boyfriend to marry a count in the span of two weeks. Is she crazy? Yes. Do I admire her a little bit? I dunno, mind your own damn business!
Point being, LuAnn is not an idiot and I’d be shocked to hear that she didn’t know about Tom sleeping around behind her back. What upsets her, as we see in the preview for next episode, is that he was so damn sloppy about it. It makes sense that she’d be forgiving, though. After all, even the Countess occasionally makes mistakes.
Anyway, here’s a photo of me writing this post, bedridden because this episode knocked me out.
