The Real Housewives of Orange County Recap: Videos Killed the Reality Star

While most of this episode was about Shannon Storms Beador quaking in fear about what could possibly be on John Janssen’s Ring camera, I would like to first discuss Heather Paige Kent Dubrow. I think that Heather is a great mom and an excellent Housewife. I also think she’s fuller of shit than the porta-potties at a burrito festival. I always feel two ways about Heather. I love that she’s on camera supporting Family Equality (formerly known as Straightless Not Dateless), a very worthy organization for LGBTQIA+ kids and their families. They do the hard work to let us say gay in Florida again, which, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the back room at Twist in Miami, but, honey, they be saying gay like someone’s about to take out their tongues.

Then she gives a whole speech about how she doesn’t want to tell her children’s stories for them; she doesn’t want to hide them from the camera, but she doesn’t want to exploit them either. Wait. Is this the very same Heather Dubrow whose lesbian daughter came out to her on camera while doing gardening work and wearing branded aprons which Heather surely got a kickback from? Yes, I love the visibility, I love that she supports her children that come in all the shades of the rainbow flag, but let’s not pretend that she’s above using any of that to get herself some freebies.

Since we’re already talking about Heather, what about the scene where she teaches the new assistant how to pack for her? Heather tells the assistant she loves it when she buys something at the store, and they wrap it in tissue paper, so it’s still perfect when she gets home. Usually, at the store, they take one sheet, wrap it around your garment, slap a logo sticker on it, and send you on your way. Heather must have used 14 different sheets of tissue on this one sweater. There was one inside. There was one when she folded the arms in. There was another when she folded it in half. There was another after that. It was like she was doing some kind of origami project, and after those 18 sheets of tissue, we were going to get a lifelike sculpture of Tammy Knickerbocker or some shit. No wonder Housewives bring so much luggage on a trip; half of it is just tissue paper.

On the topic of terrible things, let’s shift our focus to Alexis Jesus Juggs Bellino. When everyone piles into the private plane to head to Sonoma for Heather’s Straightless Not Dateless event, the girls start talking about how Alexis and Johnny Crappleseed were at a red-carpet event the night before. (I love Gina’s dig about their “red carpet debut” as if they’re going on tour like the Gallagher Brothers.) She says it’s ironic that John says Shannon ruined his life by making it so public, and now he’s out here answering questions from The Shade Closet, an Instagram gossip account with so few followers that it can’t even afford the whole room. Then she makes a comment about how the Ferragamo shoes John was wearing are a pair that she bought for him — a mere $350, which Heather Dubrow finds in the cushion of her sofa in just one of her many palatial abodes.

This is what really galled me, though. In confessional, Alexis — wearing a dress experiencing an identity crisis — says, “Are we in high school? Find a different thing to focus on, Shannon.” Okay. Okay. Back it up sister. She’s telling Shannon to focus on something else when she started dating this dude just to get on this show so that she could only talk about her man and how terrible Shannon is when she has never met Shannon before? The only reason Shannon is still focusing on this man is because Alexis is on the show and John won’t go gently into that good night and is torturing Shannon for sport. This isn’t the pot calling the kettle black; this is the kettle jumping off the stove, walking to the blacksmith’s shed, and asking to be turned right into that damn pot.

When everyone gets to Sonoma, there needs to be separate lunches and separate events because the pot and the kettle can’t be on the same stove without clanking into each other and causing some kind of eruption. Heather goes to lunch and wine tasting with Tamra and Alexis, where they taste all four of the sparkling wines she “invented” that are representations of each of her children. Every bottle comes with two free ice cubes to represent the embryos that she and Terry still have frozen. Jenn arrives late because she had a date in divorce court and tells them that she’s only getting $6,000 a month in support from her ex-husband, which is not enough to support her and her kids. I don’t know when Jenn’s divorce got so acrimonious or why, but I would like to hear a lot more, please and thank you.

The big news is happening over at the spa where Emily, Gina, and Katie, are holding Shannon’s shattered psyche together with Scotch Tape, a single vodka soda with cranberry, and some “Chill” aromatherapy oil. Shannon had her attorney offer Johnny Janssen half of what he was looking for, but he rejected it and now she either has to pay the full $75,000 or go to court. Emily tells her to write a check and be done with it. Gina says she agrees but acknowledges that it is a mighty big check for peace of mind. But it also doesn’t include attorney’s fees and all the other money Shannon has to lay out to get her ex-boyfreind to go away forever.

Here’s the thing I don’t understand about John Janssen. Shannon says that he just wants to seem like a good guy. Alexis says she told him that he should settle so that they could move on, but he’s refusing to until Shannon clears his good name. John says absolutely nothing because he’s too chicken shit to go on camera and talk about it. But what’s the worst Shannon has said about him? That she paid for everything? That she has normal fights with him that take her days to recover from? She’s never accused him of cheating, abuse, mistreatment, or any other malfeasance.

Both the women in his life say he wants to seem like a paragon of the community, so why is he launching this retaliatory lawsuit against Shannon? As the women say, if he’s so happy with Alexis, just recoup as much of his money as he can and put it behind him. But he’s not and this is making him look worse. If John had just faded into obscurity, we all just would have thought of him as Shannon’s mildly annoying but somewhat anodyne ex. Now, we think of him as an emotional terrorist and an actual extortionist. More and more women on the show are starting to use the E-word because that is what it really looks like. As Emily says, “It’s dirty, it’s salacious, it’s gross,” which would also be the tagline for my podcast if I were to ever start one.

After Shannon gets the call from her lawyer, she talks about the situation with Gina, Emily, and Katie, and Gina says that she doesn’t know what he wants “with the video thing.” Shannon immediately asks, “What video thing?” 157 times in a row until someone answers her. Emily and Gina stare at their feet and think about Jack in the Box tacos while Katie steps up to the plate, saying that John has Ring camera footage of her in the front yard the night of her arrest. Shannon goes outside and talks to her lawyer. She comes back in and says, “I just told my lawyer to pay him whatever he wants.” See! If this isn’t literally extortion it is getting the exact result of one. That is Shannon paying up because she’s afraid of what is in the videos. Since the suit is still ongoing, we know that it didn’t happen, but his feint worked.

Shannon, already on the brink, goes to lie down, and we don’t see her again until she knocks on Heather’s door wearing a bathrobe and no makeup at all. If I were to guess, Shannon has been in her room having a heart-to-heart with a producer who told her that John Janssen is not looking out for her so she needs to not look after John Janssen. She has arrived at Heather’s door with a story and a mission.

She tells Heather that on the night of her DUI, she pulled out of John’s driveway and then, three to five seconds later, plowed into the house across the street. John never came to help her or poor terrified Archie Beador who was in the backseat. She took a picture of herself and sent it to John around midnight, but he didn’t respond. Then, an hour and a half later, she says she gets a text from him saying the police were at his house with Archie, and he didn’t know what was going on. Of all the horrible things that happened that evening, leaving eternal good boy Archie Beador at John Janssen’s House of Lies might possibly be the worst.

I don’t entirely understand the implications of this story. Is Shannon trying to say that John knew she was injured and didn’t do anything about it? Is she trying to paint him as callous and heartless and didn’t even bother with Shannon until the police (and a gorgeous golden retriever) got involved? Is that what she’s saying? But we all know a picture is worth a thousand words, and Shannon, her fingers shaking like she left her vibrator on a high setting, pulls up the picture.

It’s Shannon looking normal, with her hair done and her one earring looking wonderful. But the other half of her face is covered in blood. One of her eyes looks like it had been ruptured. She looks like a ghoul. Shannon says she doesn’t remember taking it — here is present Shannon looking at past Shannon and not recognizing her at all, not knowing how she got there. Shannon stares at her own body in the phone, but her spirit is elsewhere; it’s floating somewhere above her in Sonoma, near the spa, near the wine tasting, near the rushed-out umbrella stands to combat the rain. It’s hovering, wondering where she can go next, wondering how she’s going to get out of this. It’s spinning, it’s disassociated, but more than anything, it’s scared about what revenge is going to look like.