Garbage is Garbage
Aftershocks: Danielle Staub plans to go out fighting (and whining) on RealHousewives of New Jersey
If this is it, you can bet that Danielle Staub makes the most of the lastepisode of season two.
Are the other Real Housewives of New Jersey going to finally get their wish andboot the disruptive force in the middle?
Get it while it lasts. That’s right: Danielle Staub is one hot commodity on limited-time offer. For weeks, she’s said in the opening credits, “You either love me or hate me, there is no in-between with me.”
Apparently, Bravo hates her as much as the Manzo clan of Franklin Lakes does.
After reports that Bravo will not be including her in the third season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, viewers are encouraged to get their full, and possibly final, dose of Danielle. Supplies of her special brand of derangement may not be limited, but apparently Bravo’s patience is.
With only one episode left, a lot was riding on her not-yet-really-but-perhaps-potentially-dramatic search for her birth mother. With the possibility of the mother and child reunion, we found ourselves hoping, just a little, that redemption might be right around the corner.
Boy, were we wrong. In fact, we were so wrong we can already imagine Caroline wagging her finger in our faces while chanting, “Trash is trash.”
Danielle does begin the episode with promise as she has a heartfelt chat with Christine and Jillian about her search for her long-lost mother. She’s quickly derailed by remembrances of wrongs past.
“Kim G stabbed me in the proverbial back,” she recalls. And what with Teresa’s country club chase, Ashley’s “terroristic threats,” and the constant fear of assault in every Panini shop and parking lot in Franklin Lakes, it’s hard not to get worked up. Christine is a little more matter of fact about the other housewives: “Yeah, they don’t really respect you.”
Later, a resolute Danielle daubs her dewy eyes long enough to descend into the drop-ceilinged basement of Jeanette and Jim O’Connor, private investigators, to finally begin the search for her mother she’s apparently been looking for “for 47 years.” All she has, she says, is her place of birth and what she calls her “ethni-ticity.”
It’s a delicate matter, really, and while Danielle prepares for the worst, she warns Jeanette and Jim of her fragility. “I just can’t take rejection,” she nearly sobs. Of course, she’s perfectly prepared to do a little rejecting herself.
Sure, finding dear old mom would provide healing, closure, and resolution. Maybe it would stop her never-ending quest for free therapy and protection from others.
“However,” Danielle qualifies, “if she’s addicted to drugs or alcohol or homeless, I can’t take her into my life.”
What, there isn’t a bed to spare in her seven-bedroom house for her long lost, perhaps drunk or stoned and possibly indigent mother? And what a relief that Danielle’s birth mother wasn’t looking for Danielle when her daughter was a pistol-whipping-coked-out-stripping-prostitution-whore (allegedly). The two might have never gotten together.
Readers, it’s true, we were tempted to the dark side. We were wowed by Danielle’s cunning and we did enjoy the way she made the often-sanctimonious Manzos squirm. But enough is enough. Danielle, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Caroline was right: You are garbage.
While we’d be the last to join a charter with the Manzo clan on a trip to Naples, we were thrilled to watch it from a safe distance. Things get too stressful on the boat from Venice, and Joe, always the endearing father, threatens to throw the girls over deck. All 20 travelers look thoroughly exhausted as they shuttle to the hotel, and Caroline has an expression on her face that says she’s glad her three kids are grown, and that she is certainly not ready yet for the title of “grandma.”
While the kids whine and fuss, she stares out the window. Teresa remarks that Mt. Vesuvius erupted hundreds of years ago. Or was it 60 years ago? She can’t quite remember as they arrive at their overpriced accommodations.
Gabriela is delighted to find a “little kid’s sink in the room,” and Teresa searches for the actual name. “They’re like, douches,” her experienced father explains.
For weeks now, we’ve been watching as Joe worries about money, and the hotel bill in Naples sends him over the edge. “We paid €850 for one f*cking night!” he shouts as they board another bus for Sala Consilia, Joe’s birthplace.
“We gotta come to Naples to let them steal our money,” his mother chimes in. Caroline describes his episode as hilarious, and it seems like she’s working too hard to get the laughter going.
Once they arrive at the tiny hillside village, the panoramic scene and the loving relatives make everyone forget how much money they’ve spent. Caroline gets a little pensive because she can’t speak Italian, blaming it all on her parents, until she and Jacqueline find an unattended pot of spaghetti, some paper plates, and a glowing fireplace. It’s like a fairy-tale, to be sure.
The Italians take them on a tour of the village, and when they visit a pig-slaughtering barn, Jacqueline threatens to go Deliverance on Joe and shove a bright yellow bottle-brush up his ass to make him squeak. Caroline suggests giving the pig a Percocet to make the ritual easier. Fortunately the scene cuts to a commercial break.
Even we fell for the visit to the church where Joe’s parents got married in 1969 and a brief view of the modest apartment where he was born at home. And then it felt just like we were back in New Jersey as guests gathered in the tiny town for a farewell dinner. Teresa, who likes to turn everything into a sort of wedding reception, makes an entrance with all four daughters dressed in matching pink-and-brown Second Empire party dresses.
Sort of like Barbie goes to Bavaria. Baby Audriana is so weighed down by ribbons that she resembles a floppy, newborn CPR dummy.
It’s toasts all around at the final dinner and Caroline, the thuggish philosopher of the show concludes, “You don’t have to be blood to be family.”
To our shock, we find ourselves agreeing. But the idyllic homecoming can’t last as a return to New Jersey means a return to drama, including previews of a final fateful showdown between Caroline and Danielle.
Does The Real Housewives of New Jersey have one more table flip left in it? And who will do the flipping this time around?
