The Real Housewives of New Jersey Recaps

If rumors are to be believed, Danielle Staub appeared in her final, non-reunion Real Housewives of New Jersey episode last night.

Fortunately, the mentally unbalanced nut job gave our reality show correspondent plenty to write about, as she wraps up her hilarious reviews below. Enjoy...

Saying goodbye to this show felt a lot like when I was a summer camp counselor and I had to say goodbye to the most annoying girl in my cabin.  It’s sort of like, oh, 'I’m going to miss her so much even though she’s mostly a gigantic pain in my ass.'

You know that once in awhile (and I mean ONCE in a LONG, LONG while) she could be funny or entertaining and you start thinking that the times where she was funny and entertaining were much more numerous than they actually were.  And you get all nostalgic and think you selfishly pissed away your good times together, that you were a bitchy counselor who just focused on all the stupid shit she did.

And you throw yourself onto your metal bunk bed with the 30-year-old, plastic-encased, stained, thin-as-hell mattress and allow your eyes to fill with tears because you know you’ll never see each other again and you wish, despite all you experienced with her that summer, that you could catch one last glimpse of her and give her one final hug goodbye.

Well, sort of like that.

I’m not going to lie, I am happy to unlock from my ankle the ball and chain that is this show.  I toss it gleefully in the river.  But it did have its good moments.  Sometimes it was kooky and silly and gleeful in its trashiness.  But, nevertheless, I say goodbye for now, Franklin Lakes!  Goodbye, batshit crazy Housewives!  Let’s hope you manage to survive until next summer when we meet again.

The penultimate episode started out with the whole House clan heading over to Teresa’s house to feast upon bowls of olive oil with hunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano drowning in it.  They discuss, of course, the Prostitution Whore and the case against Ashley, the moron daughter.  Caroline is getting all hot and bothered about this stuff. 

“She just is so driven to try and hurt every single one of us.  The bottom line is, she just won’t go away.”  Caroline has the brilliant plan that she should go set things straight with our beloved Danielle.  (Hmmm..I wonder who came up with this idea?  Maybe…THE PRODUCERS?)  Caroline doesn’t seem to remember that every other Housewife has tried this only to have their various encounters with Danielle go spectacularly awry.  Caroline says she’ll don a bikini and dive into the mud pit with the Prostitution Whore as long as her homies have her back.  

Back at her moldering cave, Danielle gets Caroline’s text.  Caroline has written, “I’d like to put an end to all the nonsense,” and the Prostitution Whore doesn’t like that.  But Danielle is a strong, independent lady now and she’s going to this little get-together, come hell or high water.  She reminds her daughters to trust her because they’ve been praying about it.

What does this prayer sound like, you ask?  Danielle:  “Dear Gawd, please flip Dina’s Mercedes into a ditch.  And give Caroline the flesh-eating virus.  And have Jacqueline get run over by a freak escape bullet train.  And let Teresa’s daughters cannibalize her.  Oh, and let me find my biological mom and please make her an heiress.  Amen.”  Daughters:  “Dear Gawd, please send Child Protective Services to our house right now.  Mommy scares us.” 

In Danielle’s own words, “I’m not in fear no more.”  Her daughters roll their eyes as Mommy Dearest declares she will be heading into battle. 

“I will get the dignity and the respect that I deserve,” she declares.  Of course you will, honey!  Just like you did at the table-flipping dinner.  I mean, just like you did when you met with Dina at the restaurant.  No, I mean just like you did at the baby cancer dinner thing!  No, wait!, I mean just like you did at the fashion show!!  NO, HOLD ON, just like you did when you took Ashley to court!!!  Oh, screw it. 

You’ll never get the dignity and respect you deserve, Danielle, because you deserve no dignity and respect.  You deserve to be thrown face-first down into a sewer in a very heavily populated urban neighborhood.

Poor, poor Discount Danny shows up at Danielle’s fortress of solitude.  He hasn’t been fed or watered in a few days and is just looking for Danielle to throw some scraps his way.  Unfortunately for him, he gets the 4-1-1 on Danielle’s text from Caroline while he squats on the stairs in his stocking feet, stomach growling. 

Discount’s theory is that Caroline is the ruler of the clan.  He’s sort of listening to the Prostitution Whore but you can see in his eyes that he’s over it too.  He wants a hot meal and a spin-off show or he’s giving up this charade of being friends with Danielle.  Even trashy ex-con bodyguards with Supercuts haircuts and Wal-Mart jeans can take only so much.

Has Danielle Staub really been fired from The Real Housewives of New Jersey?

As viewers consider this strong possibility, they were treated to a new episode of the hilarious/nauseating Bravo series last night. Our THG correspondent has every detail covered. Follow along now...

It struck me tonight:  Watching this show serves the same purpose as visiting a Roman vomitorium.  I feel queasy just changing the channel to Bravo now.  The nausea intensifies as I hear that fakey Godfather-like music start up.  My thoughts begin to race:  Can I handle it one more time or will this be the night that I bash myself over the head with the flat screen? 

Obviously I survived because here I am to share my random musings with you.  Here is the thought that compels me:  One more episode left! Yes, my dearies, we’ve come this far - we can make it to the bitter and horrifying finale.  Let’s all hold hands, say a little prayer, and take a deep breath as we dive in.  It’ll be over soon.

The Housewives, Househusbands, Houseinlaws, Houseelders, and Housebrats dock in Naples. Everyone seems to be excited to get off the ship, especially Teresa’s whiny daughters.  Shirtless Joe bitches as he throws and kicks their 10 million bags down hallways and out of elevators.  He’s grouchier than ever. 

He’s cursing and stomping around having a tantrum.  Teresa tells us that he is pissy because he’s away from his businesses.  I believe that, if by “businesses” she means “half-empty bottles of booze in the basement at home.”

Once aboard the first of several ginormous buses, the nasty touristy kind, Teresa’s girls predictably break down.  Caroline shoots Teresa the snake eye but it is unfortunately ineffective.  “I don’t feel responsible at all if people are in a crappy mood.  That’s on them,” says Teresa.  Later, while exploring their hotel room, the Giudice bambinas discover a bidet, which Teresa refers to as a “beh-deh.” Joe, reminding us that he is a savvy world traveler with infinite knowledge about European culture, adds helpfully, “They’re like douches.”

I never thought I’d be so happy to see the Prostitution Whore and the decrepit lair she haunts but these annoying scenes of Italian tomfoolery are making me crazy.  Danielle reminds her defenseless daughters about her fight with Kim G. and then has a few moments of verbal diarrhea about finding her birth mom. 

At one point Christine uses the word “ass” and Danielle gets all bent out of shape.  “You’re too beautiful and too spiritual to speak like that,” says the woman who runs around town screaming profanities at other women across parking lots.

Discount Danny comes to visit the Prostitution Whore.  They go to have some panini.  Poor Shirtless just wants to enjoy his hot n’ crusty, cheesy n’ olive oily panini but Prostitution insists on yammering away about the other Housewives.  Discount listens as Danielle explains that Ashley “has terroristic tendencies.” 

Danielle is positive she will be attacked by Ashley in the parking lot when she is just trying to get her precious panini.  Discount does a good job pretending to be interested.

Danielle has a private investigator come over so he can begin sleuthing around the backyard turning over rocks and studying the moss carefully with his magnifying glass while he smokes a pipe and twirls his moustache.  Sherlock Holmes doesn’t give her very much hope of finding her teenage birth mom and Danielle lets us know that she wants no drug addicted or homeless biological mommies. She just wants a rich one that will let her inherit a ton of unearned money.

Later Sherlock calls the Prostitution Whore to let her know that finding the records of the birth mom might take up to ten years.  None of us cares one tiny bit, even when Danielle fake cries and tries to act all sensitive and damaged and tells us she’s leaving it in God’s hands.  We don’t care whose hands she’s leaving what in, as long as we don’t have to hear about it anymore.

Back in Italy everyone boards yet another big ass bus to go somewhere, I think to terrorize a small country village.  Shirtless is cursing up a storm while his daughters beat each other senseless.  “Joe on the bus, he was tired, he was cranky, and he was just lashing out at everybody,” Caroline explains.

Everyone is rolling their eyes and making their fingers look like guns ready to blow their brains out as Shirtless slurs and hollers from his seat.  I keep waiting for Albert to yell, “Shuddup already!”  Now a conflict between the dudes would have actually been an entertaining moment in this backed-up sewer of a show.

MAKE IT STOP!  Someone please put a bullet in the head of this show!
- THG intern forced to cover The Real Housewives of New Jersey, following last night's episode.

It's hard to ask for a better tease than that, isn't it?!? Try not to purchase any firearms today, Real Housewives Girl, and entertain us with another detailed review of the most nauseating show on television...

I just have to be honest.  I am getting so sick of this used barf bag of a show.  I want to scream every time I look in the channel guide and I see YET AGAIN that next week’s episode is not the season finale.  I then scream, “Nooooooooooo!” at the television until the dude next door pounds on the wall to get me to shut up.  And I’m sorry if I use a lot of my CAPS LOCK key this week because that is the closest I can get to screaming through a review.

Well, the first big whoop covered this time was Shirtless Joe’s stupid drunk driving accident.  He rolled his truck somewhere in the great Jersey wilderness.  But dry those eyes and turn that frown upside down! 

Shirtless is safe and sound and he has a very eloquent explanation for this idiotic mistake:  “I was commin’ down the street and I yawned for a second.  And as I yawned I floored it a little bit.”  Then he hit trees and a pole but, don’t you worry your pretty little heads for a moment because an angel was looking over him.  Then he called the cops and drank more scotch while he waited, like all highly intelligent people. 

“God forbid anything happen to Joe,” says Teresa.  “I don’t know what I would have done.”  I know what you would have done - moved in with relatives ASAP as your house was immediately repossessed.

If you think Danielle Staub is unaware of this whole Shirtless Joe debacle, you’re wrong.  Our favorite skeletal ex-exotic-dancer-turned-nightmarish-housewife meets with Discount Danny, Ex-Bodyguard Extraordinaire to discuss how Shirtless was arrested for a “DWI."  Though it has absolutely nothing to do with her, Danielle is ticked off at Shirtless Joe’s behavior. 

She wonders why he was out at 2:00 in the morning.  “I know strip clubs are open at that hour,” says Danielle, suggesting, I guess, that perhaps Shirtless strayed from Teresa.  She knows all this top-secret strip club information because she frequents these clubs to fling her praying mantis-like body around metal poles and to spread her legs for all the randoms assembled. 

Danielle Staub and Teresa Giudice hate each other. But they love their daughters, with whom they bonded last night on The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Unfortunately in the case of Teresa and husband Joe, their lavish displays of affection are driving them into bankruptcy. Yet the materialism continues. Hard.

Danielle, meanwhile, wants to make sure 16-year-old Christine is a good girl. Sexually. This from a woman who stars in the sex tape Danielle Staub Raw.

Later, Staub gets into an obligatory, unrelated brawl at a restaurant. Standard.

Below, THG's Real Housewives expert tackles all of last night's absurd antics:

At the beginning of Monday’s episode, Teresa and Shirtless Joe visit the Brownstone to scope out the site for baby Audriana’s christening. Shirtless is looking mighty nervous as Teresa rattles off her list of demands. He almost looks like me might puke.

“I could tell Joe was a little nervous. I used to be able to spend what I wanted when I wanted. Now he’s like, ‘Don’t spend a lot of money!’” laments Teresa.

What does she want exactly?

A cocktail hour, a full bar, a sit-down dinner… basically a wedding… for a baby. “Just make it nice, but not too nice. You know whud I mean,” Joe mumbles to Christopher, visions of the poor house dancing in Joe’s little head.

Elsewhere in Jerseyland, Danielle takes Christine to the doctor’s office for yet another reality show television moment that really shouldn’t exist.

“Now that she’s 16, I’m taking Christine to her first OB-GYN appointment. Growing up, I never had a mom to relate to,” Danielle reflects, clearly oblivious to the fact that her daughters are also growing up without a mom to relate to. 

There was no hair-pulling or police called to the scene this week on The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

So, what did go down? That's a question for our Real Housewives correspondent. She dishes on last night's episode below...

Tonight’s episode began with a sweet and wholesome family night at the Giudices’ Macaroni Mansion.  The girls are playing Monopoly with Teresa and Shirtless Joe.  The irony of any member of the Giudice family playing a game that involves managing money does not go unnoticed.  Evidently the Lord and Lady of the manor will soon celebrate their 10th anniversary. 

We realize it’s taken this unfortunate pair just ten short years to blow through millions and millions of dollars... dollars they didn’t have in the first place.

Across town at Danielle’s crumbling lair she is hatching a plan…it is a plan to gain total world dominance using her radioactive breast implants.  No, actually it’s a plan to celebrate her daughter Christine’s Sweet 16 without actually using any of her own money.  “Amazingly I’ve never had a birthday party thrown for me until I turned 47 years old,” she tells us.  Perhaps this is because no one likes you and you have no friends?

Christine wants to donate any money she “earns” at the party to charity.  Danielle is smugly proud of this fact as if she herself is donating money to charity.  “My children are living by my example,” she proudly states.  What example is that, exactly?  Usually you create mayhem at charity events.  Is this what you hope your daughters learn from you?  Yowsers.

Cute freckled little sis Jillian, already a singer-songwriter at age eleven, is planning her debut performance at the soiree.  Mommy Dearest is intent that Jillian sing in front of hundreds of guests (most are being paid to show up, I assume) despite the fact that the child breaks down in a rehearsal and says she doesn’t want to do it.

Later, Jacqueline and her husband, Silent Bob, go to visit the Giudice pile o’ bricks.  Much discussion about Teresa’s possible anniversary gift ensues.  No one mentions a gift for Shirtless Joe.  “I want him to surprise me.  I want him to really, like, make it big,” Teresa says.  Shirtless Joe slurs, “She wants this friggin’ diamond…(unintelligible muttering)… I don’t know.  We’ll see.” 

Teresa doesn’t need “a crown jewel”, though, because she’s “not an Arabic.”  Unfortunately, buying a nice chunk of cubic zirconium might be more feasible because Shirtless admits that money “is just trickling” in right now.  How sad for them.

Inspiringly, Crown Prince Albie has decided to join the Police Academy “while my law school career is on hold.”  He goes on to explain, “You learn how to, you know, arrest someone and what happens after they’re arrested.”  We are so lucky to have this Albie around answering all of life’s tough questions. 

I always wondered what police trainees were taught in police school.  He thinks this will really help him when he becomes a lawyer because, “I’ll know what a cop’s thinking.”

As usual, Caroline is just barely keeping herself from giggling girlishly and swooning at her son’s feet. She’s all hot and bothered about the prospect of her son dressed up like a real Man of the Law, complete with a night stick with which to knock her around a bit.  “He’s cute as it is.  Can you imagine him in a uniform?  Good God!”  She’s blushing and sweating and it’s so profoundly odd I don’t even really know what else to say.

Hey, New Jersey residents, have you thanked Danielle Staub yet for putting your state on the map?

Hurry up and do so - and then read our Real Housewives correspondents' latest take on the antics of Danielle and company, courtesy of last night's episode...

Let me start out by saying that watching this show in HD is a scary experience.  My cable company finally upgraded Bravo to HD and while I was initially excited about this change, now I don’t know if this is a good thing, especially when Danielle is on the screen. 

You can see every smear of her pancake makeup, the shine reflecting off her artificially protruding cheekbones, and all the divots and pockmarks in her extremely freckled chest.  If I squint, I can almost see the puncture marks from the Botox injections she has had.  It’s the stuff of nightmares.

At the beginning of the episode, Shirtless Joe takes the girls to a karate center.  (Side note:  Is it just me or does that middle daughter, Gabriella, look NOTHING like the other ones or her parents?  As the “Sesame Street” song says, one of these things is not like the others.  Just saying.) 

The girls are padded up for protection and then Shirtless Joe puts them in a circle and tries to get them to fight.  It’s sort of gross watching Shirtless watch his girls pound each other, knowing what guys think about girls fighting other girls.  “If you beat each other up I’m going to buy you a nice hot dog,” he tells them.  Let me remind everyone that one of these children is three years old. 

The girls proceed to fight using no karate principles or skills whatsoever.  “Don’t mess with my girls.  They’re tough cookies,” Teresa says. But aren’t they divas, too?  Can one be both a diva and a karate master?  This is a question for the ages.

Elsewhere, Danielle takes her tortured daughters to a self-defense lesson and, thrillingly, Discount Danny is there!  Let’s be honest:  He probably has no home so he just goes from one Danielle-focused activity to the next so he can be inside where it’s warm. 

Danny seems to think that he is going to be teaching the ladies how to effectively beat down a ho, particularly the kind of ho who will pull your weave out of your skull.  By “teaching” I mean that Danny stands in the corner in his Wal-Mart jeans watching the women with a creepy smile while professionals do the teaching.

To give Danielle something to visualize as she punches, it is decided that the instructor’s fists will be named “Teresa” and “Jacqueline."  Danielle punches with vigor and glee while her daughters look on.

Don’t you wonder what that older daughter is thinking?  The little one is probably still in the “I love my mommy” phase but the older one, Christine, has to realize her mom is bat-shit.  “God, you’re into this,” says Christine as she sees the hellfire in her mom’s eyes.  “It only takes one good smack to the head to make a person never walk again,” Danielle explains to us.  “I need to watch my back.”

Advice for Christine:  Choose an out-of-state college or, even better, an out-of-country college.  You can escape from your mom!

Fortunately for us, the boxing field trip is not the end of Discount Danny’s presence in the episode. We are treated to one more look at him when he meets Danielle at a coffee shop to talk about Ashley and The Night of the Pulled Weave.  Also in attendance is Danny’s nameless/voiceless sidekick.  Who exactly is that guy?  He’s shown up with Danny in a few episodes now and all he ever does is raise his eyebrows and nod his head.  He appears to know even less English than Shirtless Joe. 

Why on earth do these grown men care so much about Danielle and her endless fights?

It was totally on last night between Danielle Staub and Teresa Giudice.

Complete country club chaos broke out on the Bravo hit, highlighted by these self-centered stars going at it. Let's see what our Real Housewives correspondent had to say about the exciting episode...

Seriously?  How much more screwed up can this show and these women get?  To top tonight’s country club mayhem the Housewives will have to get rocket launchers and reduce each other’s homes into rubble.  I don’t think any of us would be surprised if that happened.

The episode begins where we left off last week:   Teresa and Danielle engaging in momentary fake-nice small talk before everything turns into a major kerfuffle.  There is immediately a lot of shrieking and screaming, women forcing each other down into chairs, women rushing down darkened hallways, bodyguards pushing woman off to the side, dishes smashing, weaves swinging, heels breaking.

Thank goodness there are subtitles because nothing is comprehensible except for the random shouting of “bitch!”  The rest of it sounds like, “Aaaaaahhhhheeeerrrrraaaaanooooo!”  The jerkiness of the camerawork as it chases the Housewives is reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project and is, in many ways, equally as scary.

At one point early in the brawl, Teresa says to Danielle, “So what, bitch?  I live in a $5 million home now.”  “And it’s in foreclosure!” screams Danielle.  This statement pisses Teresa off more than anything else.  “Danielle said my house is going into foreclosure.  It’s none of her business what’s going on in my life.  I was trying to be nice and Danielle started it,” she tells us. 

Pause for a moment:  I do hate Danielle and was secretly glad to see her getting hunted down like a gazelle on the Serengeti but Teresa really did start everything, at least on that night at the country club. Had she not insisted on approaching Danielle and “saying hi” nothing would have happened.  Or maybe the producers asked Teresa to approach Danielle?  I know huge fights like this can’t hurt the number of viewers the show attracts.  Thoughts?

As things escalate and women are running amok on broken heels, Danielle enlists the help of Kim G, of her bodyguard (no, not Discount Danny but don’t fret—he shows up later in the episode), and Kim G’s driver.  “Get me out of here!  I’m gonna pass out!  GET ME OUTTA HERE!” screams Danielle as she hides in a corner outside. 

Evidently she can’t move because her heels are broken.  “I can’t walk!” She is a sobbing and crying mess.  It’s not pretty but, man, is it ever funny.

Then occurs the moment that will be re-lived by Danielle non-stop for years to come:  Jacqueline’s wayward daughter Ashley comes up and yanks on Danielle’s weave.  Supposedly she did this because she thought Danielle had punched her mom but, secretly, I think she did it just because she wanted to.  If I saw Danielle in real life I’d probably want to do the same thing. 

The next thing we know, the bodyguard is carrying Danielle to Kim G’s Bentley.  In the car Kim G is screaming in Danielle’s ear. “Listen to me!  Stop!  Calm down, please!!”  Sorry, Kim G, Danielle probably won’t calm down for a few more years.

Though we are all worn out just watching this crap, Teresa is still rearing to go.  “I wanna talk to the bitch,” Teresa explains to Jacqueline as she approaches the Bentley where Danielle is hiding and having hysterics.  Jacqueline is perplexed.  “Why?!  What is the point?!  Let her live her miserable life. She’s miserable.  Let her live it.  Who gives a shit?  Who cares?”  Silly Jacqui!  You’re talking to Teresa like she understands you and has a grasp on reality! 

Ha, ha.  So funny.

Meanwhile Danielle is still screaming and crying in the Bentley.  “I really feel very violated by Ashley. And I’m gonna feel violated by Jacqueline,” she says.  Then Danielle demands that the cops be called and charges be pressed while Teresa dances around the parking lot and Jacqueline stands there petting her baby seal coat, just waiting for some more crazy shit to go down. 

“Look at all this hair she pulled out of my head!  That’s not even my extension!  That’s my hair!”  I love it that Danielle isn’t even embarrassed to admit she has a weave.  Not in this time of great personal misery and stress!

Every Tuesday morning, I get an email from one of our interns at THG that briefly runs down the previous night's episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey and then goes into a longer review, the latter of which I post on the site.

But this correspondent only had two words to describe this week's installment of the Bravo series: Holy crap!

What caused such a reaction? Read her detailed take on the hour below and see if you agree:

This season of RHONJ has had so many bitch fights, cat fights, quarrels, duels, breakdowns, meltdowns, and spars I don’t know how the show can ever keep up in the future. Do they show these Housewives violent movies and give them hallucinogenic drugs before releasing them into the wilderness of strip malls, plastic surgery centers, and country clubs that is Franklin Lakes, hoping they will run into each other and start kicking, biting, screaming profanities, and slinging their purses at each other while the cameras catch every cringe-worthy moment? 

It sure seems like it.

Tonight’s episode was full of such drama.  Of course, most of it centered around Danielle Staub, but she alone cannot create this level of chaos.  There had to be other women involved and a charity event because Danielle seems to particularly enjoy letting loose and going insane at functions aimed at helping those less fortunate. 

By now I think she deserves her own charity event or at least an intervention that ends up with Danielle inside a windowless white van being driven off to a secured location where she can calm down under the watchful eyes of mental health professionals for a few years.  Her daughters can fend for themselves. 

Lord knows they’d probably be better off without her calling them every ten seconds and screaming, “Mommy’s got a little situation here!” as she gets ready to beat a bitch’s ass over accidentally cutting her in line at Target or something.

Most of this episode centered around the shit storm that was Kim D.’s fashion show event for her boutique, Posche.  (Side note:  Is she trying to spell her store’s name like “Porsche” is spelled so it seems classy?  Just wondering.)  The shit began to hit the fan when Danielle felt mistreated by a Posche employee. 

For Danielle, the fact that this employee failed to leap up from behind her desk (she was on the phone) and fall at her feet the minute Danielle walked in the door was grounds for an immediate execution.  Danielle threw a big fat stink about this and stormed in and out of the store multiple times, all while dressed in head-to-toe black like your goth cousin.

My God, this woman craves and creates drama wherever she goes.  If I got pissed every time a salesperson was rude to me, I would have spent all of my high school years in a rage over mistreatment at the hands of my local mall’s Abercrombie employees.  Kim D. has no sympathy for Danielle over this particular issue and says, “Nobody did anything on purpose to you.  Oh my god, here she goes again.  No matter what anyone does you can’t please her.” 

Danielle tells us that she is done shopping at Posche and adds smugly, “And believe me, she will miss my money.”  Don’t you mean your ex-husband’s money?  You have no job other than being the resident lunatic of Franklin Lakes and I don’t think that’s a paid position, at least not yet. 

After asking Jacqueline’s daughter Ashley to walk in her fashion show, Kim D. calls Danielle to make amends.  She tells Danielle that she needs to come to the fashion show.  Nooooo!  Run for the hills!

Yawn. The sight of Danielle Staub topless is common place for anyone that has purchase this reality star's sex tape.

But, fortunately, that excerpt on last night's episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey was one of the only boring clips from an otherwise entertaining hour of ridiculous television. As usual, our Real Housewives correspondent is on the case, recapping the insanity below...

Did anyone miss Dina?  I didn’t!  I completely forgot about her absence and found this week’s installment to be one of the most enjoyable of the season. It seemed to have three main components:

1. Danielle’s wonky boobs and how they were made beautiful... she hopes. 
2. Prince Albie flunking out of law school and Caroline going all civil right-sy about it.
3. Teresa throwing a housewarming party for herself that we know full well she can’t afford.

Let’s go through them one at a time, shall we?

Okay, let’s start with Danielle and her jankety boobs.  She’s had three previous “augmentations” (I hate that word), none of which turned out well.  Evidently she also got a staph infection in one of her boobs and now it’s all lopsided and hard.  If you’re feeling the chunks beginning to rise, you might want to pause and grab your barf bucket now because it only gets worse from here.

Danielle meets with a plastic surgeon in his office in a strip mall.  Evidently Franklin Lakes is one never ending strip mall.  Of the freak boob she explains, “It’s hard, it’s cold, it doesn’t get the body temperature like my body.”  She goes on, “I do suffer because of the breast implants.  It causes a lot of pain for me.  Every day, every minute of every hour of every day.” 

Tears pool in our eyes - what this woman has had to endure!

Upon first sight of Danielle’s rack the doc exclaims, “I do obviously think that you need an operation, without a doubt.  I am going to have to have one of the leading revision breast surgeons in the country take a look at you.”  We imagine Danielle must be saying to herself, “Hey, fourth one’s the charm, right?” 

If I were her I’d just hack them off and wear a padded bra with some chicken cutlets from here on out, but not our girl!

Later, Danielle heads in to get her breast surgery.  We are treated to another look of Danielle’s blurred-out boobs and we gag and cover our eyes.  She wants us to know that she is a natural girl at heart who normally shuns such vain cosmetic procedures.  We look upon her freakishly high eyebrows, protruding cheekbones, and overly plumped lips and we totally believe her.  

“Nature’s been very good to me so far,” says Danielle.  “Getting my breasts done is really out of necessity.  It wasn’t for aesthetic reasons.  Umm, I want to be very clear about that.”  I think we’re clear about what’s going on, Danielle, but are you? 

Once in the operating room, we get to enjoy even more blurred-out boob action.  Her doctor tells those assembled around Danielle’s naked torso, “She has one of the biggest deformities ever.  It’s depressed.”  This last bit is in reference to the misshapen bubbie but he really could be talking about how all of us feel while watching this show, couldn’t he? 

The doctors squeeze and smush her boob around as they ridicule it.  As the camera pulls away from the “Surgical Center” we see it has a partially burned-out sign and is in, you guessed it, a strip mall.

Now on to Prince Albie and his poor wittle problem with law school.  Albie tells mommy that he isn’t doing so hot in law school. 

Will she or won't she?!?

A nation held its breath going into last night's edition of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, wondering if Dina Manzo was truly exiting the show for good. We won't leave you in suspense over the development. Let's get right to a recap, Real Housewives correspondent!

Note to readers:  I am currently visiting my sister and had to write this review from the couch in her apartment.  She sat with me as I worked and shouted random comments in my general direction.  She has never seen this show before and knows nothing about the women or the plotlines but, despite this complete and total lack of RHONJ knowledge, I found many of her insights quite relevant.  I have included some of the better ones.

Dry your tears, everyone!  Miss Dina is done with being a Housewife in Crazy Town!  I think I will miss her because she is sort of the voice of reason, while she also delivers pretty funny one-liners.  But we found this devastating, life-changing information out at the end of the show, so I am getting a bit ahead of myself.

The episode started with the conclusion of the Dina-Danielle strip mall restaurant “conversation” from last week, otherwise known as a "catfight."  In case you forgot, when we last left this little bru-ha-ha there was serious shushing going on and all the shushing was leading Dina and Danielle down a dark path of no return.

“You know more than anybody else, I was on your team,” Dina says to Danielle.  Both women are talking, but neither is listening.  When one opens her mouth, the other only hears, “Blah, blah, blah, you bitch!”  Their voices are steadily rising until they are shouting. People in the restaurant are staring at the hot messes over in the banquette booth.  “It was embarrassing.  I mean, people are trying to eat,” Dina reflects later.

Dina then repeats for the ten millionth time that she wants to cut Danielle out of her life.  We at home scratch our heads in confusion because isn’t Dina the one who initiated this meeting?  Danielle yells, “It’s not about me.  It’s not about cutting me out of your life.  It’s about not being able to face what you’ve done.”  Dina rolls her eyes, shouts a few more insults, and speeds off in her Mercedes.

My sister then pipes up, “Are they always this mean to each other?  Jesus.  This is not nice.”

Honestly, the rest of the episode was pretty much fluff and filler between the big Dina-Danielle fight and the anticlimactic Dina exit.  Here’s what happened, in a nutshell: