When Caroline Manzo goes to the doctor on Sunday night’s Season 4 premiere of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” for headache help, she tilts her head coquettishly, flashes a camera-ready smile, and bats her eyelashes like a woman who thinks she’s incredibly charming.
Clearly, she’s expecting the doctor to be taken in by the cameras, the flashiness and her charisma. Instead he says, “Caroline, you’re getting old.” Bang!
But the New Jersey doctor is wrong. It’s not Manzo that’s getting old — it’s the show that’s creaking.
In fact, by the end of Sunday night’s episode it feels as tired, fake and weary as an old “prostitution who-ah” with nothing left in her bag but a lot of used-up tricks.
Teresa hit her high point in Season 1 when she turned over the table screaming that Danielle was a “prostitution who-ah” and has been trying to re-create that moment of, er, glory ever since.
Then, there’s Caroline, who was always a bore and now is a coquettish bore. How many times can you hear her say that “for Italians, it’s all about loyalty,” and then proceed to fake shock when someone gets disrespectful in this fake setup?
Worse, the whole show was filmed last summer, which means it’s already a year old and much has been out in the tabloids.
This season partially takes place, yes, on the Jersey Shore, because after all, that’s where all spray-tanned, tacky Italian Americans go to embarrass themselves — right?
Especially embarrassing is Teresa, who has agreed to take the requisite role of “the bitch” this season. Everyone is furious about the cookbook she wrote in which she has dissed “the family,” many of whom aren’t even in her family.
Even so, not one person confronted her before filming started. Do they even exist without the cameras rolling anymore?
Among the disses is the one in Teresa’s book about Melissa Gorga, her brother’s wife. She accuses Gorga of copying her style.
Now that’s something to really be angry about. There can simply be nothing more insulting than being accused of, er, aping Teresa’s retro-Rococo cafone style.
Meantime, another “Housewife” who joined the cast last season, Kathy, Theresa’s cousin, adds nothing to the proceedings but is so desperate to be interesting — or maybe she’s just dumb — that she tells her husband to hide the genital “enhancement” gel in the suitcase, because, “I don’t want anyone to see it.” She says it on camera, mind you. Right.
Finally for the question you’ve all been dying to know, according to Bravo: Why didn’t Jacqueline come to last season’s reunion show? It’s because, Caroline says, “She’s in a very bad place emotionally,” apparently caused by the book and her daughter Ashley, who is acting out.
Jacqueline is so upset, in fact, that she tells her, (yes) life coach, “Ashley calls us, stranded in the city, because she’s too drunk to get home! How often is she going to inconvenience us?” As opposed to what? Taking a ride home from a stranger or driving drunk?
Fed up, her husband decides Ashley must be shipped off to relatives until she stops her partying ways. Where do the relatives live? Las Vegas. That should cure her for sure.
These people have nothing to do but gossip and argue. Time to get a new routine, or get lost.