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On The Real Housewives of New Jersey Season 7 Episode 14, the big day finally arrived … for Joe Giudice to head to the big house.

If you watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey online, it was hard not to get a little choked up, regardless of the Giudices’ misdeeds.

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Watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey Season 7 Episode 14 Online

Does he deserve this punishment? Oh yes.

Does it make his family less human? No.

After weeks of heated arguments over relatively trivial things with Bravo’s Garden State ladies, the nastiness was set aside this week.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey Season 7 Episode 14 featured the run-up to Joe Giudice going to prison for the next 41 months.

That’s almost three and a half years.

Watching Teresa and her children say goodbye to Juicy Joe? Much more of an emotional experience than we expected, to be honest.

Teresa and Joe Giudice Reunite
(Bravo)

Each of the girls giving him a birthday cupcake to make up for the ones they won’t get to spend with him? If that doesn’t make you tear up …

Melissa and Joe Gorga’s youngest son Joey clinging to his uncle at his going away party will. Or Milania’s reaction to the whole thing.

Little Audriana told her older sister that if she cries, she’ll make the rest of the girls too, so she’d better keep it together for their sake.

It was almost too much to take.

New cast member Siggy Flicker probably summed it best: "You would have to be an empty shell of a person for this not to affect you." 

So very well put.

Joe Giudice on RHONJ
(Bravo)

Joe’s actual goodbyes with his daughters were private, and rightfully so, before we saw him get into a car and drive to prison with Tre.

At that moment, words failed us.

"It’s crazy what this family’s been through and what we’re gonna go through," Joe Gorga told Melissa, perhaps not choosing the best phrase:

"It’s like a storybook."

One with a 41-month prison sentence for mortgage fraud. But we know what he means: You could not make up something this bizarre.

We can only hope the girls are holding up well through this – and that Joe is sexting Teresa Giudice from behind bars, like we reported. 

That would be awesome.

Meanwhile, Siggy took her family to the Holocaust Memorial Park, where her father Mordecai told his grandkids about how he escaped.

Dolores Catania decided to have a housewarming party now that her remodeling is finished, which was just the kind of filler it sounds like.

As for Melissa?

Melissa Gorga lectured her store manager about his confusion over social media, as she tried harder to get her business off the ground. 

Finally, Jacqueline Laurita made Dolores and Siggy hold dirty-diapered baby dolls even though pregnant daughter Ashley wasn’t there.

Good times in N.J.