Finale wrap-up: "The Real Housewives of New York City"
The first season of this strangely addictive Bravo show ends with even more shock and awe.
By Heather Havrilesky
Read more: TV, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Heather Havrilesky, Season Finale
Bravo Photo: Heidi Gutman
Pictured: (l-r) Bethenny Frankel, Ramona Singer
April 16, 2008 | Before I had a kid, I thought it was lamentable how many women were staying home with their children instead of pursuing careers. How could women continue to make strides in the world, when they were dropping out of the workforce in droves? How could the next generation support equality, when their daughters were watching Daddy go to his important job while Mommy dropped the kids off at school, then went out to shop and get her toenails painted?
Now that I've had a kid, though, I want to shop and get my toenails painted.
Maybe that's why I love Bravo's "The Real Housewives of New York City" so much. Unlike "The Real Housewives of Orange County," a show populated by bad women who seemed to spend most of their time bickering with their thankless teenagers, flat-ironing their hair and tossing back pitchers of margaritas at the local Chevy's, the middle-aged high-society moms of TRHONYC make the life of the leisure class look so... well, leisurely!
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These women don't mess around with spray tans and bad nachos, no sir. Even though only one of them is actually a housewife (and a Countess!), while the rest have jobs, they all definitely know how to take care of themselves. In fact, they discuss the importance of taking care of yourself almost constantly, advising each other "Take care of yourself!" and "The most important thing is to take care of you!" over and over, whether that's done by a) purchasing wildly expensive fashions, b) having a girl's night out, b) getting spa treatments, c) flying off to Miami to stay at your friend's luxury hotel after a break-up, or d) ditching a dinner party that's bringing you down. Most of the time, sadly, "taking care of yourself" seems to involve spending ungodly amounts of money.
Which brings us to last night's finale: Housewife (and businesswoman) Jill is throwing a big fancy get-together dinner, and all the other Housewives and their families are invited. It's fun to celebrate (and take care of yourself!) by blowing lots of money, after all, and Jill needs to make up for her last dinner party, when Housewife (and businesswoman) Ramona not only exited early, she made Housewife (and graphic designer) Alex and her husband, Simon, extremely uncomfortable by brashly accusing Simon of crashing their all-girl dinner.
Although Ramona was right about Simon and Alex, who are hopelessly codependent, her behavior was pretty rude, even by a regular, non-aristocratic human's standards. Jill's been friends with Ramona for a while, but she has mixed feelings about her. "Ramona's always hot and cold," Jill told the camera at the start of the finale. "I mean, you just never know which Ramona you're going to get, Ramona or Rameana."
In truth, it's tough to know which Jill and which Bethenny and which Alex you're going to get at any given moment, either. Take LuAnn, the only Housewife who's actually a housewife -- if you can possibly use that word to describe someone who seems to spend most of her time socializing. A tall, attractive brunette with a great figure, nice taste and a surprisingly good sense of humor, LuAnn married rich, but something tells us that she's never in her life been too far from big piles of money, the kind of dusty money that gets handed down from generation to generation until no living members of the family have ever sullied their manicures by, say, fixing themselves a sandwich. LuAnn regularly leaves her kids at home with the nanny while she hits the town in her Upper East Side trying-to-be-funky outfits and sips cocktails until she feels young and hip again. Even so, it's obvious that she spends a lot of time with her children. While some mothers might feel a little sadness in their hearts when they see LuAnn's young son begging her to stay home for taco night, what I think is "Get out the door before he gets his grubby fingers on your pretty coat, lady!"
Oh, except that if I called LuAnn "lady," it would definitely send a shiver down her spine. That's the puzzle of LuAnn: One minute she's describing how she spent her weekend picking lice out of her kids' hair, the next minute she's so shocked and appalled at the inappropriateness of someone's behavior, you'd think she was the Queen of England. In last week's episode, LuAnn instructed Bethenny to introduce her to the driver as "Mrs. de Lesseps" instead of simply "LuAnn," presumably because the help should always show their respect (and demonstrate their inferiority?) by referring to her like she's their fifth-grade math teacher.
But then, all of the so-called Housewives are very, very big on the rules of What's Appropriate and What's Simply Not Appropriate. "I was shocked," they say of each other's behavior repeatedly, referring to a vocal argument with a spouse or an unfinished, scrappy-looking townhouse or an impromptu intimate conversation as if it signifies, once and for all, the inferior class and poor breeding of the party in question. LuAnn is offended when Ramona implies that models are brainless and uneducated (LuAnn was once a model!), Jill is offended when Ramona doesn't invite her to a party (But LuAnn was there!), Bethenny cries, "Totally inappropriateness!" when her father's friend gives her lingerie as a gift, and on and on and on.