Joe Giudice recently saw his wife and four children in Italy, where the ex-convict is currently living as he awaits a decision on his final deportation appeal.
But The Real Housewives of New Jersey flashed back many months last night, taking viewers to the time during which Joe was stuck in ICE custody.
Remember, this was after he got released from prison, but before he opted to await his fate with immigration officials from Italy, not an ICE detention center.
Which, it’s clear, was awful for him.
"What’s going on?" Teresa asked Joe after picking up the phone on the latest episode, to which Joe replied:
"Same ol’ shit here."
"Did you put in the visiting forms for us? Because the girls wanna come and see you," Teresa inquired, setting off her estranged husband in a way she likely didn’t see coming.
"I don’t know how it works over here," Joe replied.
"This isn’t a normal prison, alright?"
"Nobody knows anything in here."
In his joint interview with Teresa on Bravo late last month, Joe detailed how being detained by ICE was actually worse than prison.
That same sentiment came across on this installment of the popular Bravo show.
"Am I okay?" Joe fired back after being asked for his status by Teresa, adding in anger:
"I mean, what am I doing? ‘I’m okay.’ I’m going on 38 months in this crap."
"They wanna separate us now?" Joe vented.
"We’re married 20 years. We got four kids, alright? They wanna destroy four kids. I’m here now, and I’m getting deported, and that’s all there is to it. I mean, it’s over."
We mean, yes… it probably is over.
Teresa tried to comfort Joe, but such an effort did not go well. At all.
"I’m gonna say it! I’m over it," Joe yelled.
"I’d rather be out and see you when I can than be sitting in this friggin junk hole. At this point, I don’t care where the hell I go. I’m gonna fight it out a little while longer, and then I’m done."
"That’s it. Lemme call you back. Stupid phone."
In her confessional, a downtrodden Teresa said the phone calls from Joe were "getting very draining," but there’s no one to blame but him.
"We don’t want him to suffer," she added, "but he’s put us through all this, so he needs to sit there now as long as it takes and fight."
"Especially for his daughters."
If Teresa was looking for emotional support from her father, however, she didn’t exactly receive it from her own father, who was (rightfully) mad at Juicy Joe for never becoming a U.S. citizen.
"I slap your husband," Nonno said angrily, adding of Joe:
"He never did nothing right. He did everything wrong. Six times I told him go make a citizen. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll go.’ He never did. He gotta blame himself."
Later on the episode, Tony the Pool Guy stopped by Teresa’s house – as did her brother Joe Gorga, who took note of the interactions between Teresa and this employee.
"Look at you! Mamma mia! You want him, huh?" Joe quipped to Teresa, who hemmed and hawed at her sibling and eventually responded:
"I didn’t even do anything!"
But she wanted to, that was our main takeaway here. She’s been on her own for more than three years after all.
Hard to blame her for being conflicted, at the very least, between her loyalty to Joe and her present circumstances.
Let’s face it, this marriage is clearly over. Only time will tell how long this drags out or how amicably it’s resolved.
