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Keep Your Mouth Shut

Alex talks expensive parties, OB GYN appointments, mommy searches, and screaming matches.

By Alex McCord

 

How to Watch

Watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey Season 14 premiere May 5th at 8/9c on Bravo and stream next day on Peacock.

There were no surprises tonight. Drama? Oh yes, there was a lot of drama. But everyone behaved pretty much exactly as I’d expect given the circumstances.

Teresa threw a christening and Joe was cranky – rewinding to autumn of 2009 when this would have been filmed it’s no wonder he wasn’t thrilled about the expense of the party. I do understand wanting your baby to be a star for a day, but ice sculptures? Maybe I’m being cranky too, but I just don’t like ice sculptures. Or long christening dresses. Or baby buggys with gauze. Or huge parties that look expensive when the financial wolves must have been howling at the door. Joe clearly wasn’t happy. OK, here’s what I did like about the party. Liked everyone crying over the first dance – that was the best part of it for me and when Joe softened up too. I loved seeing Dina, and seeing everyone fussing over the baby, including her big sisters. Also enjoyed seeing Christopher handle his first big event.

Taking your daughter to the OB GYN is a great thing to do, though probably that wasn’t really the first time she’d been to the doc – isn’t 13 or 14 about right? The one thing I’d say is that telling a kid to abstain when there is no cultural or religious precedent is a hard sell. Hope there was more to the conversation than that.

Can we discuss for a moment why Kim G. has sweeping camera shots of her house? I thought only housewives had those….hmm…. After the sweeping shot, we are treated to her asking Christopher to broker a lunch date with Caroline. Why? How shortsighted is that? Sure, it’s a great idea for a mother to interrupt her son’s pool match and ask his long time friend about why his mother won’t have lunch with you. What’s more important, letting the son have his friendship or her need to be in the middle? Or is it just her need for camera time? Why do people pleasers always need to be liked? When you realize you can’t please everyone, the feeling of relief is very pleasant.

Onto the birth mother search. I don’t think any adoptee searching for their biological mom should assume it’s going to be happy and heartwarming, or a breakthrough. I sincerely hope Danielle doesn’t attach too much feeling to that and get her heart broken.

 

 

Danielle often drives me crazy with the melodramatic, funny voices she does in her interviews. However, if anyone, not just Danielle, discovered that a friend she’d thought was helping her turned around and spread her secret all over a salon, where it got back to people she doesn’t like, who then told someone who told someone else who told her daughter…she’d be angry. Telling stories in a neighborhood nail salon where everyone goes is about as off the record as blogging for Bravo. Even without posting it on the internet or taking out a full page ad in the Times, if you repeat the gossip, someone who heard who knows your mother/daughter/dog walker will call her friend in Texas who will call and tell you. And by the time it gets back to you the story will have changed five times. Either get your threading done somewhere people are discreet, or keep your mouth shut, unless you need to scream when they rip the wax off your bikini line.

Good on Danielle for walking away from her daughters so they didn’t hear her talking about Kim running her mouth about the birth mother search. Why’d she call Danny? I don’t know, but if calling him helped her blow off steam, then fine.

 

Back to Kim G. – she blasted into Jacqueline’s house and swore at the baby. Jacqueline was so flustered she put Nicholas in the silverware drawer. Well, not really, but I was glad when we saw a wide shot later and could see the exersaucer; prior to that I kept thinking, "Where did she put the baby?"

And onto the big confrontation, which devolved into a shouting match pretty quickly. I didn’t understand most of it. It’s not enough for women to call each other bi***hes; I’d like to know why rather than hear the swearing over and over again. Was Kim paying for the birth mother search? It’s supposedly her Bentley that Danielle rode in to various events. Kim went with Danielle to the courthouse to press charges against Ashley. Seems like she showed up for Danielle on more than one occasion – she also talked about picking up tabs, or maybe it was keeping tabs? We all learned in NYC what senses of entitlement and keeping score do amongst friends, but it really does seem that Kim did a lot for Danielle. Kim also HAD to see this coming. Come ON. In Danielle’s eyes, Kim looked like a traitor. Guess we’ll have to wait until next week…

I’ll have big news later this week; follow me on Facebook and Twitter to hear it first! Also if you’re in Long Island or the Hamptons, Simon and I will be at the East Hampton Library Writer’s Night signing our book, Little Kids, Big City on August 14th.

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