A season in hell, or just another day in New Jersey?

At first all seems well on a sunny morning in pristine Franklin Lakes as newcomer Melissa Gorga prepares for her baby boy’s christening. She just can’t wait to “welcome her son into God’s kingdom,” as she says with eager anticipation. But she has no idea that soon the whole family, in-laws and grandparents included, will be headed, hand-baskets in hand, into a fiery abyss of drunken rage.

The Season Three opener of The Real Housewives of New Jersey is a shocker, and it’s long overdue. Lately we’ve been wondering if Bravo had lost its touch. We’ve been yawning at Orange County and snoring at New York during endless successions of drunken shenanigans in stretch limos and at vicious cocktail parties. We couldn’t even muster the strength to care about Kelly Bensimon’s slow but steady descent into psychosis. New Jersey may be hell on earth, but so far we love every minute.

Bravo went nearly “art cinema,” introducing traumatic flashbacks, ironic cuts, overwrought soundtracks, and some gritty reality filming worthy of Dogme 95. For a moment we thought we had even lost one of Bravo’s truly seasoned cameramen.

Such extraordinary hell on earth was unleashed that neither Caroline Manzo nor Jacqueline Laurita seemed remotely consequential. We won’t dwell on the fact that formerly fierce Ashley bursts into crying jags around her mother because she can’t bear commuting from New Jersey to Manhattan every day (an unheard-of feat!) for her unpaid internship in PR. We can’t linger on the Manzos awkward efforts to cook “Southern food” as they wonder if people in Arkansas (sometimes called “Mountain people”) can cook pasta.

No more talk of such trivialities. Danielle “Garbage” Staub’s antics seem increasingly petty in retrospect and her stripper-pole-sex-tape-sensibility is just a faded memory. Clearly, the Manzos are irrelevant. And who knew Teresa Giudice even had a brother, Joe Gorga, who points out the conflict that will no doubt define this season. “My blood has done me wrong,” he growls at one point. It’s all about the Gorgas and Giudices--like the Montagues and the Capulets only no one’s ever going to be in love.

But how did this mayhem begin?

Anyone who’s bothered to pick up a cash-register magazine at Kroger’s knows by now that Teresa and her husband Joe went through bankruptcy proceedings since last season. Teresa says the news hit her over the head. Certainly all those shopping trips for pediatric couture and umpteenth mortgages never gave her a clue, right? Charging everything is normal, isn’t it?

Now her husband Joe has been reduced to a pizza boy at the new family restaurant, Giuseppe’s Home-Style Pizzeria. When we first see him, Joe is wearing the most unfortunate gingham-and-denim hybrid shirt with epaulets. Teresa commends him for going from construction to the food business, but she figuratively chops off his balls later by explaining that “Momma’s bringing home the bacon now” since it’s her book that supports their four girls. She looks a little bit like her title, Skinny Italian. Maybe, a bit too skinny. The financial problems have clearly taken their physical toll. And she feels that she hasn’t gotten the support from her family, at least as far as her quite successful brother Joe Gorga is concerned.

Enter Melissa Gorga and Kathy Wakile, the newest real housewives on the New Jersey block.

Though she’ll be right in the thick of things, it’s at first much less gothic for newbie Kathy Wakile. Her own life seems downright pastoral. In some pale imitation of Douglas Sirk, Kathy wheels to the local Italian delicatessen on a bright autumnal afternoon to buy fresh foods for supper. She struggles a little to cycle home with the rustic bounty for her kids, Victoria and yet another Joseph, who seem normal enough until Kathy walks in on Joseph in his room. “On the bed with knives?! This isn’t even a hard surface,” she exclaims. “Why can’t he collect stamps?” she wonders in a video diary. Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.

Melissa says that she tends to be very spoiled, and she wants her husband Joe to put lotion on her. In their first private scene together, he smells her feet and then suggests putting lotion on her butt cheeks. “He’s one of the best developers in New Jersey,” she explains later. Teresa was a bridesmaid at their wedding, but the relationship is strained, to say the least. Melissa and Joe have three children, Antonia, Gino and Joey, and Joe expects his wife to make a home-cooked meal every night. She has trouble discerning between “work ethic” and “work ethnic,” but who cares? It’s Neanderthal-central chez Gorga, and Melissa plays the naughty cave-wife.

Melissa and Joe begin preparations on the “big day” by drinking champagne with friends at the house. But over at Teresa and Joe Giudice’s, everything is chaos. Joe is puttering around the garage and tells Teresa that he might have diarrhea as he moves a cement-covered wheelbarrow. Teresa thinks that she might be getting the runs as well, and wonders if she shouldn’t linger a bit longer before heading for the church. We couldn’t agree more, since there is nothing worse at a christening than loose, watery stools.

Baby Joey looks adorable in his white christening outfit, and Melissa asks him if he’s ready to go to Jesus’ kingdom as they drive to the church. It sounds more like an execution or a theme park, but once the cameras pan the reception hall, it’s evident that Melissa has gone all out for baby’s big day. There is a lovely airbrushed portrait as well as a photo with him dressed as a football. The blue-and-white sheet cake is in the shape of a cross, as are the ice sculptures. Melissa notes that Teresa shows up late to the christening and only with Joe at the reception, but explains, “That bitch will never miss a party, especially when someone else is paying for it!”

Joe Gorga is evidently drunk as Teresa comes over to congratulate them again. And then her brother tells her to “walk the fuck away.” Even little Gia comes up to stop her mother from making a scene as Joe says to his sister “You’re garbage!” It seems Teresa is the new Danielle this season, at least in the eyes of Joe and Melissa Gorga.

When, “I’ll fucking kill every one of yous!” was the teaser for the next scene, we were on the edge of our microfiber sofa. The camera cuts to a plastic cross ornament hanging off a simple branch sprayed white, as little Gia’s sobs are heard in the background. Almost inexplicably, a series of increasingly vulgar fights breaks out. Joe Giudice charges Joe Gorga. Then some random guests begin trampling each other, provoking yet another brawl. Soon, Teresa’s atherosclerotic father starts a fight. Then Joe Gorga shrieks a painful aria of family loyalty at his parents (who shriek back), as Joe Giudice, outside, screams about “kicking ass” in front of his terrified children.

“War has lots of casualties,” Kathy says later of this shattered family, and we suspect this season’s going to be Pagliacci, Il Trovatore, Tosca, Romeo and Juliet, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship all wrapped into one.