It was a week of accidents on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. And when the chips are down in Franklin Lakes, you do what anyone else would.

Blame children, or nature, and leave the country.

“Those trees shouldn’t have even been there,” Joe exclaims after a late-night car crash that sent TMZ scurrying. In a brilliant display of cross-cutting and perspective-switching to rival Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Joe and Teresa Giudice relate to Chris and Jacqueline Laurita their version of the incident as Danielle Staub and ex-con bodyguard Danny dish about it at a favorite diner.

This is how it unfolds Chez Teresa. Just imagine you’re driving along a dark country road at, say, 2 a.m., and you yawn, accidentally flooring it in your excitement at all that oxygen, and flip your truck. No doubt, like anyone really, you’d walk to your father’s house to knock back three or four Johnny Walker Greens before the police arrive. Happens to us all the time.

Chris was worried that Joe could have “caught on fire,” but it seems heavenly forces kept the trees from executing their diabolical plot. As Joe sees it, “An angel was watching over me.”

Meanwhile, Danielle and Danny have a different take. As she slurps a Superfood smoothie, she sighs for the children. “What’s a grown man doing out at 2 a.m. with four children at home?” she asks.

Besides, there are worse things than trees on those roads. “I know the strip clubs are open then,” she admonishes, “so let’s call it like it is.” Good call. If anyone knows about the strip clubs nestled on dark highways in New Jersey, Danielle, it’s you.

But while Joe seems to imagine heavenly lights surrounding him in his time need, Danielle gets positively Old Testament: “I’m just going to continue living in the love and light they make fun of while their darkness rains upon them.”

Of course, higher moral ground is all Danielle gets this week since she isn’t included in the great Italian escape that occupies much of the episode.

Over a sedate, post-car-crash luncheon, Caroline suggests to Teresa and Jacqueline that they all go on vacation to relieve stress. Franklin Lakes is a small town and people do talk. Teresa suggests Italy, so Jacqueline’s in. Before we know it, they’ve planned a family outing to Venice and Naples. The women toast with the iced-tea they’ve been drinking out of rustic mason jars, but soon it’ll be mojitos and hangovers on the high seas of the Mediterranean.

Indeed, the biggest accident unfolding this week was the near-international incident caused by the departure of the combined Manzo-Laurita-Giudice clan for Venice. When 20 people assembled at Teresa’s house to wait for a neon-decked party wagon to take them to the airport, Jacqueline’s mother ended up breaking one of a pair of no-doubt-hugely-expensive, if utterly-tasteless, vases.

We admit we were almost sure one of the children was responsible. It may even be true that one of us blurted out: the bad seeds strike again! Forgive us, Gia, Milania, Gabrielle, and/or Audriana. We only wish you had the good taste to break the vase yourselves.

Instead, score one for the Laurita family home decorators. Next, we’d recommend knocking off the bronzed “wings of the angel Gabriel” Teresa seems to have nailed to the massive doors to her home.

Teresa probably wouldn’t care. “What happens in Italy stays in Italy!” she exclaims. Her enthusiasm even has us wondering which came first, the Venetian Hotel in Vegas or the Piazza San Marco in Venice.

Cue a hokey Italian musical theme as the family arrives in Venice. The group appears exhausted, but Teresa’s on a mission for a gondola ride and a shop at Chanel before boarding their cruise. As they make their way down a canal, Milania models for them at the tip of the gondola, and she isn’t wearing a life-jacket.

Again, we’re reminded of Mervyn LeRoy's 1956 camp classic The Bad Seed, as murderous little Rhoda Penmark lingers on the wharf, searching for her trophy in the water.

Caroline looks back at her parents riding the next gondola and says her "heart wanted to explode," and we can't tell if she’s sentimental or nauseous. We’re sure the Italian people can relate. As “the family” boards water-taxis to the cruise ship, an exhilarated Teresa implores Joe to spank her.

Our accidental tourists climb to the top of the Costa Deliziosa to say goodbye to Venice, but in spite of having survived centuries of ugly tourists, Venice might have been even happier to say good-bye to them.

The housewives try to leave the accident behind, but strangely enough the specter of over-indulgence clings like a bad hangover. We can’t blame all the nausea on the sea as Jacqueline and Teresa seize the opportunity to make it a “girls gone wild” kind of trip.

Chris and Joe take a serious tone in the cigar lounge, however, when Chris warns that if Teresa were riding in the truck that night, she would have been hurt. A drink or so later they decide that the real problem is everyone’s favorite scapegoat Danielle, who manages to cast a dark spell on everyone thousands of miles away from that diner in Franklin Lakes.

Meanwhile, ever-innocent Teresa and Jacqueline cruise the cruise ship, stopping off at a bar to eat some chocolates that “look like two balls and a little pee-pee.” Teresa exclaims, “oh, look there are nuts in the balls.” Oh, they are so funny! And as they scale the ship in a glass elevator, Jacqueline rubs her ass against the window.

Then the big night arrives: Milania’s fourth birthday. Even though Jacqueline is too hung over to attend, the rest of the family agrees that it’s great to have her back from the clutches of that evil Danielle. Milania falls asleep, then cries, then shrieks when the handsome Italian waiters bring an enormous birthday cake that looks like it’s decorated around the edge with Melba toasts. We’d cry too if we got that cake.

Caroline has a disgusted look on her face as Milania continues her Rhoda Penmark routine, but then she reminds her loved ones that the point of the trip was “to leave all the negatives behind us.”

But wait! Is that a gleam of envy in young Gabrielle’s eye?

Don’t worry, dear readers. If even more shocking things happen next week as the Italian Family Vacation continues, we won’t blame the children. We’ll blame the trees.