The Real Housewives of New York City Recap: They Snooze, We Lose

This has to be the singular most boring episode of any Real Housewives franchise ever. It is like watching paint dry on growing grass. It is like watching a tennis match between a statue of an angel and a sloppily dressed mannequin. It is like Tom D’Agostino and Harry Dubin, two big toes on one very old foot, hitting on you at the same time at the Regency while you try to finish your Sidecar while waiting for your lady friends to meet you for dinner. I mean, this is as absolutely boring as an episode can possibly be.

The worst part is that I have to ignore most of what happens on principle, since we’ve all decided that we’re absolutely sick of the backdoor pilot for Bethenny and Fredrik’s real-estate show. (Everyone should try to use the word backdoor in every sentence written about Fredrik.) I don’t really want to talk about Carole and her political escapades, mostly because it makes me depressed and because we don’t really turn to these women to take the pulse of the American electorate. I will, however, take a moment to comment on Hannah’s Women’s March lewk, which is absolutely perfect with her short bob, pink-tinted aviators, and a colored leather jacket in the Yolanda Bananas Foster vein, but with the word pussy emblazoned on the back in rhinestones.

I also really don’t want to talk about Tinsley and her real-estate troubles because, well, I don’t entirely understand them. Why does she keep saying that deciding on an apartment is so complicated? I mean, leases only last a year! Buying a new iPhone takes more commitment (and just as much money). I think the best scene of the entire episode is when Tinsley and Carole meet for coffee and Carole tries to convince Tinsley that to return to New York and reinvent herself she really needs to, you know, do something different. I think her hair is symbolic for everything that is happening to her: Tinz thinks that her hair made her famous, so if she changes it, she won’t be recognizable for the famous “It” girl she used to be. However, she also doesn’t want to be recognized for her past, so, I don’t know, maybe she should cut her hair off after all?

Still, it seems like a relatable dilemma. Tinz had a rough go of it after her divorce and a bad breakup that led to her arrest. She knows that she needs to do something different, but she also refuses to change. She’s like a pink Barbie-branded Power Wheels car that is trapped in the mud in her own backyard, just spinning its wheels and kicking up grime at anyone who tries to help her out. If I were Tinz, I would do everything differently. Move downtown! Get a haircut! Go through a lesbian phase and party with Kristen Stewart! Only eat lunch at DŌ, the cookie dough emporium, and only take notes at meetings on Hello Kitty stationery! Carry a bag that you bought at Target for the cost of one of Ramona’s vases that she doesn’t worry if they get broken because they were only $13.99!

Tinsley does see some really nice $9,000-a-month apartments, but why doesn’t she just get herself an amazing loft or something? Why does she need a four-bedroom apartment? I mean, I guess most single women in New York need a bedroom, a handbag room, a gift-wrapping room, and a room to hang all of your taxidermy sharks on the wall. But this just seems like a waste. I do love that we find out Tinz has “a job in business development with the family office and some family money.” The “family office” means a bunch of people who manage a family’s personal wealth. Working at a nebulous job like “business development” for your family is the equivalent of getting an allowance for doing the dishes once a week and taking the trash out, but the allowance is $1 million and you don’t actually have to take out the trash.

While Tinsley is looking at houses uptown with her absolutely immaculate mother, Dale, who is like Patricia on Southern Charm minus the smarm and caftans, Sonja Tremont Morgan of the Entenmann’s Danish Morgans is so far downtown that she is actually in New Jersey. Her on-again-off-again beau Rocco invited her to some bakery restaurant he owns for a night of private dining, light flirting, and revelations that she is schtupping some guy who is not Rocco.

You all know that Sonja is my favorite floozy and I will always and forever love her, especially for scenes like this one with Rocco. But I really have no idea what she is doing. I’m totally #TeamFrenchie because he’s young, attractive, seemingly successful, and accepts Sonja for the good-time gal that she really is. Rocco, on the other hand, I don’t know. Rocco seems like a nap: He’s comforting and wonderful, but leaves you a little bit drowsy afterward. Sonja says he has “stamina,” which means that she wants to keep dating him even though, you know, a French guy is living under her roof and walking in on her taking craps in her bathroom with the door open. (That’s probably to air out her laundry bidet that smells like week-old panty-washing water.) But isn’t she only going to know if he has stamina once they sleep together? ZING!

This Rocco thing is confusing because she’s not doing anything more than pecking him on the lips, and then she’s suddenly confessing to him that she slept with this random French dude that she met at a party. She tells Rocco that the guy is back in France and wants to see her again when really he’s still in New York and kind of living in her house. If she’s going to be this devastatingly honest, then be totally devastatingly honest. It’s like telling the guy you’re dating you just got married while trying to hiding your baby bump behind a grocery bag. Rocco tells her that he doesn’t mind because “sex is easy,” which is exactly what you would expect a guy who has been dating a floozy for months and still can’t get in her pants would say when she confesses that she’s knocking boots with some random baguette eater that she met at a party.

Speaking of parties, Ramona Singer had a party and she did her hair. She was giving us Madonna Blonde Ambition Tour ponytail realness and it made me want to pull out each of my metatarsals one by one with a rusty pair of tweezers and throw them at the TV screen. That ponytail is like Maureen Dowd’s column about marijuana, both way too high and way too tight at the same time. The other amazing thing at that party are the guys working it. There is Hank, Ramona’s friend slash caterer, who is like the essence of a gay lisp distilled into a liquid and put in one of those air fresheners with the sticks in them that your mother-in-law gave you for a Christmas present. Then there is a nameless gentleman who holds the rosemary-infused vodka near the front door. Did you see how gorgeous he is? His arms are like two bulging chicken-parm sandwiches that I want to take huge meaty bites out of and then smother all over my body until all of my underthings smell like tomato sauce and mozzarella for three years.

Ramona really biffs on the guest list for this party, though. First of all, she invited Harry Dubin to a Real Housewives party, which is like inviting Donkey Kong to Mario and Princess Peach’s vow renewal ceremony. As several people remind us, Harry dated both Luann and Sonja and also hung around in Miami with Kelly Killoren Bensimon. However, no one mentions that he is the ex-husband of Aviva Drescher. What sin did that unijambiste commit that she has been all but erased from the annals of Real Housewives herstory?

The other big mistake Ramona makes — aside from FaceTiming Avery about her new kitchen and not switching the camera so that Avery could actually see the new kitchen — is that she invited her friend Missy, who has also dated Luann’s new husband, Tom. The whole thing with Tom telling her that wearing a wedding ring is like a dog wearing a collar and Harry trying to get in on Missy by talking about how Tom was making out with Luann in front of her while they were still dating is so gross. It is like watching two jellyfish try to gum their way through an entire gazelle that waded into the surf. That whole party is just a whole horrible mess of middle-aged hormones, smelly hair tonics, and Herve Leger dresses that should have been given to the nanny a long time ago.

I felt the worst for Missy, who’s stuck between Tom and Harry (all they’re missing is a Dick), which is sort of like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, but it’s more like being stuck between Grimace’s belly and an unerect penis. Missy collected her purse and her coat and walked down Ramona’s hallway to the elevator like she was rushing to the toilet in an emergency. As soon as she got in and the doors closed, she started ripping at her neck like she had a case of the hives inside of her esophagus. Slowly, she peeled her face off and started gasping for air, each new breath of the stale oxygen in the elevator like a little stab of comfort.

This woman shook out her real, red hair, which had been matted beneath the mask for the entire night. She folded up the mask, which smelled like a latex glove that had been set on fire, and placed it in her bag, hoping no one would see the strands of blonde hair poking out or smell that nasty chemical odor. She shook out her hair once again and plastered a smile on her face. She clomped across the lobby and nodded at the doorman as he opened the gilded door letting in a rush of the cold night air. For the first time that night, Jill Zarin finally felt like she could breathe.