‘The Real Housewives of Orange County’ have a surprise for the Season 15 premiere
Things seem tame until the stories get heavy at the finish.
“The Real Housewives of Orange County” returned for its 15th season, and for the retrospective montage that opened the episode — drinks thrown in faces, vulgar insults launched hither and yon — all was as it should be in the Land of Housewives.
But then something strange happened. The 100 proof spirits of Housewives Past like Vicki Gunvalson and Tamra Judge vanish, leaving us with an episode in which everyone more or less behaved, and, by its conclusion, actually focused on a very a sobering topic.
OK, Housewife Kelly Dodd did reference a videogame gorilla when talking about her sex life to remind us that we aren’t watching PBS.
Kelly, as you might guess, is pleased with herself. Nearly everyone else seems to be, too.
Shannon Storms Beador, now the Senior Wife on the show, is happy with her new beau John and just laughed when one of her teenage daughters made a rude suggestion about what might be tattooed on his posterior.
Emily Simpson and husband Shane went out to dinner for their 11th anniversary and not a peep did he make when she asked for a bread basket this time.
Gina Kirschenheiter has gone classic sitcom, merging her three kids with her boyfriend’s three in a new Rancho Mission Viejo townhouse.
“It’s definitely ‘The Brady Bunch,’ except I definitely need an Alice,” she announces, though from the tidy home it looks like she’s got a housekeeper some of the time.
Only new Housewife Elizabeth Lyn Vargas and returnee Braunwyn Windham-Burke have more than a smidge of drama to share, so that’s where we’ll head now.
Elizabeth, who laughs a lot and seems happy on the surface, actually has an issue or two she’s dealing with. For one, she says her boyfriend Jimmy won’t sleep with her until her divorce is final.
“I have been (a woman with needs) for three years!” she announces to Kelly and Braunwyn moments after accidentally shooting Braunwyn in the face with a champagne bottle cork. (“It’s OK,” Braunwyn reassures her. “I just had FaceTite so my face is numb.”)
Elizabeth’s divorce, though, weighs on her much more. She says she met “billionaire businessman Bernt Bodal” when her college-era cabaret group approached his table and sang “Big Spender” to him. Through their courtship and early years of her marriage, she says it was all private jets and horseback rides, trips to the Bahamas and the occasional Scottish castle.
“I grew up garbage-can poor,” she says of her Ozarks childhood. “We were country hillbillies, pulling up in a Pinto with accents and big buck teeth.”
But eventually, she says during one of several confessionals on the show, the relationship soured.
“My marriage influenced how I walked, how I dressed, how I talked, how big my boobs were,” Vargas says. “I just became the bobble-headed wife. I was always going to be the arm-candy billionaire’s wife. I could not stand it. I’m kind of excited to reinvent myself.”
Braunwyn’s storyline tackles a similarly serious topic with enough foreshadowing to make it obvious where we’re headed.
She turns down Elizabeth’s champagne with the excuse she’s got to pick up the kids in a bit. She passes on the wine she pours Shannon when her new neighbor stops by to see the new 8,000-square-foot three-story house — complete with a meditation room, a movie theater, a nightclub, and a pirate ship playhouse in the yard — that Braunwyn and husband Sean have bought for their family of nine.
Braunwyn pours tequila shots for Kelly and Shannon — all three live in the same Newport Beach neighborhood now — to make peace after those two went at each other last season, but sticks to water herself.
Only when Emily comes over — poured a drink, none for Lady B — does she put words to what we know is going on. Braunwyn’s realized her drinking has become a problem — the show runs a lowlight reel from last season of Braunwyn drinking up, stripping down, and getting wild even for a Housewife to underscore the point.
She apologizes to Emily, who called her out last season for overdoing it. Apparently, a trip to Miami to celebrate Kelly’s engagement to Fox News reporter Rick Leventhal was her rock bottom moment.
“I didn’t stop drinking for four days; every hour, because I would start to shake, I’d take a shot,” Braunwyn tells Emily. “I’m honestly scared of who I am without it. It’s much easier for me to be the fun, crazy one.”
The episode ends with Braunwyn talking straight to the camera, saying she’s not sure whether this is divine intervention or not, but —
“– for the first time in my life I can say, ‘My name is Braunwyn and I’m an alcoholic.’”
Heavy stuff, but good for her to take the first step.
Previews of the season ahead suggest it might not be easy. They also suggest that the rest of the episodes will be more typically Housewife-y, with fights and tears and booze, sometimes all the same time.
“Don’t you dare accuse me of something I did!” Shannon shouts in one future scene, and with that, we know our Housewives are back.