The Orange County Housewives have officially reached the end of their twentieth season, which means it is time for one final gathering of expensive hair, unresolved grievances, selective memories, and women who have spent an entire year insisting they are perfectly fine while preparing to explain why everyone else is the problem.
We pick up at the reunion with Heather Dubrow still very much in the hot seat. Her treatment of Carmella has become a major point of contention, and Emily and Gina are not particularly interested in letting Fancy Pants glide past the subject with a carefully arranged explanation.
Gina is still upset about Heather’s comments regarding her friendship and her handling of Carmella. Heather has suggested that perhaps Gina isn’t sufficiently secure, strong, or successful to be her friend. Gina is understandably offended. She has been standing by Heather, defending her, and trying to maintain the friendship, only to find herself being told that she may not possess the proper qualifications for membership in the Heather Dubrow Friendship Society.
Gina makes it clear that she has always had Heather’s back. She also points out that Heather is not exactly an easy person to have a disagreement with. Being Heather’s friend is apparently a little like working for a very wealthy, very particular employer who believes every performance review should begin with a discussion of your personal shortcomings.
Heather insists that she is Gina’s friend, but Gina is frustrated by the way Heather handles conflict. Heather seems to believe that if she has good intentions, everyone else should simply recognize them and move along. Unfortunately, friendships do not operate like a luxury hotel where the guest is always right.
Emily then joins the conversation, and things become considerably more uncomfortable.
Her issue is not simply that Heather said something unkind about Carmella. It is that Emily feels Heather presented one version of herself on camera and behaved very differently behind the scenes. Emily says she has never seen someone be so fake in front of the cameras and then criticize Carmella privately.
We get a flashback to Emily and Tamra talking during the reunion. Tamra had told Emily that Carmella contacted her and said Heather was trying to get her fired. That is a rather substantial allegation to be casually dropping into a conversation, particularly when the woman being discussed is sitting across the room wearing enough designer clothing to finance a small municipality.
Carmella wants to know why Heather did not simply speak to her directly. Heather explains that she liked Carmella but thought the arrangement was a bad plan. Her concern was that Carmella lived in Los Angeles, approximately an hour away from the Orange County filming area, which would make it difficult for production to film with her.
So, according to Heather, the concern was geographical.
Emily is not buying the explanation. She points out that the issue initially seemed to be that Carmella was trashy because of her restraining order, but now the explanation has become the distance between Los Angeles and Orange County. Emily feels Heather is changing the subject rather than acknowledging the actual problem.
Heather has already apologized for calling Carmella trashy, but Emily wants more than an apology for one word. She wants Heather to acknowledge the difference between what she says publicly and what she says privately.
Carmella also wants Heather to mean what she says, whether the cameras are rolling or not. She is not asking for Heather to become her best friend. She would simply like to know where she stands without having to hear about it through another woman in a trailer.
Emily accuses Heather of being more concerned with her image than with taking responsibility. Heather, meanwhile, seems to feel that the women are constantly waiting for her to make a mistake. She says she tries to admit when she is wrong, but it feels as though everyone wants her to trip, burp, fart, or otherwise demonstrate that she is not the perfectly polished person they see on television.
The problem is that nobody is asking Heather to burp on command. They are asking her to acknowledge that she can be unkind and that her carefully managed public persona does not always match her private behavior.
Heather also says she feels the other women want her to water herself down so she will be more digestible. This is a familiar problem for Heather: she wants to be accepted exactly as she is, but she also wants everyone to stop reacting to the things she says and does.
Emily is particularly hurt because she thought she and Heather had developed a genuine friendship. She feels that the woman she bonded with privately is not necessarily the woman who shows up when the group is together.
Heather is hurt by Emily’s assessment, too. Their friendship is now hanging by a thread, and neither seems particularly interested in pretending otherwise. The two women are describing the same relationship in very different ways, and the reunion is not producing the reconciliation either one might have hoped for.
Andy asks whether Heather believes she is capable of admitting when she is wrong. Heather says she tries, but the conversation circles back to the same problem: the women want her to acknowledge the specific behavior that hurt them, while Heather keeps returning to how unfairly she feels she is being portrayed.
It is a familiar Housewives standoff. One woman wants accountability, the other wants understanding, and both believe the other is refusing to provide it.
The reunion then moves into updates about the families, and the mood becomes considerably more serious.
Gina shares that Travis has been awarded primary custody of his children. She becomes emotional discussing the long process the family has been through and how much it means to see the situation moving in a positive direction. She is grateful that the children are doing well, and she is clearly relieved to have reached a more stable place.
There is also an update about Jenn’s son, Dominic, who was involved in a brush fire after filming wrapped. Jenn explains that the situation remains under investigation, so she is not going to discuss the details. She does, however, describe the work the family has been doing to address his behavior.
The family is attending tutoring four days a week, behavioral therapy, and family therapy. Jenn and Will are also participating in family therapy. She describes the process as a reboot, an attempt to help Dominic and the family move forward with more support and structure.
It is a serious situation, and Jenn is careful not to speculate while the investigation remains open.
Emily also shares updates about her children. Keller and Annabelle have started new schools, and she says that she and Shane have been doing better with Luke because they now understand more about his diagnosis.
Luke has been diagnosed with Tourette syndrome. Emily explains that he experiences vocal tics and that he sometimes suppresses them at school because he feels embarrassed.
She becomes emotional discussing the impact this has had on the family. Emily says she has had to mourn the picture she once imagined of family life. She thinks about vacations, road trips, and the ordinary experiences she expected to share with her children, and she admits that those things have become more difficult.
She is exhausted by the constant effort of trying to understand what Luke needs and how best to support him. She emphasizes that Luke is a fantastic child, and she is not suggesting otherwise. She is grieving the challenges he faces and the uncertainty surrounding what comes next.
Emily hopes that a new doctor will help the family find answers and develop a treatment plan. It is a vulnerable moment, and one of the more affecting parts of the reunion. Beneath all the arguments about friendships and camera behavior, Emily is dealing with something much more consequential at home.
The women also discuss their marriages and relationships. Tamra reflects on her divorce from Simon and admits that if she had known what the future would look like, she might have stayed in the marriage to keep the family together. She describes the pain of losing a relationship with a child after divorce as one of the hardest experiences imaginable.
The discussion brings up the complicated ways divorce affects children and parents, and the women share their own experiences with relationships that did not turn out as they expected.
Vicki says she plans to bring her children together for the holidays. Carmella talks about her pride in her children, and Gina is emotional about the progress Travis’s family has made.
Then Andy brings up someone whose absence is particularly painful for Shannon: Archie.
The beloved dog has passed away, and Shannon becomes tearful discussing him. She is grateful that viewers had the opportunity to know him and understand what a special part of her life he was. She also acknowledges Tamra’s thoughtfulness during the difficult period surrounding his death.
It is a genuinely sad moment, and the reunion pauses long enough to let Shannon speak about a member of her family who meant an enormous amount to her.
We then return to Vicki, who has some explaining to do about the La Quinta trip and her relationship with Michael Smith.
Andy revisits Gina’s observation that Vicki does not take accountability. Vicki admits that there are times when she plays the victim. This is an interesting admission from someone who has spent much of the season explaining how everyone else has misunderstood her.
Vicki says that during the trip, Jenn, Shannon, and Emily kept pressing her about Michael. She felt they were asking too many questions and criticizing her relationship. She also says there was unaired footage that would provide additional context for why she felt attacked.
The problem, as the other women see it, is that Vicki does not want to discuss her relationship while simultaneously expecting everyone to accept her participation in the group as completely normal.
Jenn brings up Vicki’s comment about low-hanging fruit. She has not forgotten it, and she is still hurt by it.
Jenn tells Vicki that the remark was a terrible thing to say and that it was particularly hurtful coming from someone she considered a friend. Vicki responds that she could have been a lot worse.
Which is not exactly the apology Jenn was hoping to receive.
Vicki maintains that Jenn and Emily were picking on her. She says she felt sad when they left her home during the trip, particularly because Michael had arrived. She did not understand why they could not simply stay and continue the gathering.
Gina offers another perspective. She says Vicki’s reluctance to share anything about Michael affects her ability to operate authentically within the group. If Vicki is constantly separating her personal life from the show, the other women are left trying to build friendships with someone who seems to have one foot out the door.
The issue is not that Vicki has to reveal every private detail of her relationship. It is that she is participating in a reality television program and the other women are expected to film with her. When she shuts down conversations, disappears into another part of her life, or makes it clear that she has other priorities, it becomes difficult for the group to connect with her.
Vicki insists that Michael has never told her she cannot film. She also says she does not want the show to interfere with her relationship. She wants to protect what she has with him, which is understandable, but the women are asking whether she can participate in the group without making everyone feel like an inconvenience.
Shannon becomes less interested in defending Vicki as the conversation continues. She acknowledges that Vicki has been criticizing other women and that she cannot keep pretending those comments are harmless.
Vicki says she felt Jenn was picking on her, which is why she made the low-hanging fruit remark. Shannon points out that Vicki has a habit of making cutting comments and then acting surprised when someone is upset.
Vicki again insists she could have said something much worse.
At this point, the women are not exactly waiting for a heartfelt apology. They would probably settle for Vicki acknowledging that the remark was hurtful and that she did not need to say it. But Vicki seems more interested in explaining why she was justified in saying it.
Tamra also weighs in on Vicki’s work obligations. She makes the point that Vicki cannot be trying to conduct her other business while filming and then expect the women to simply accommodate her schedule. The cast needs to be able to film together, and Vicki’s divided attention makes that difficult.
Vicki does not seem to agree that she has done anything particularly wrong. The women, meanwhile, are still trying to figure out whether she actually wants to be part of the group or simply wants to appear when it suits her.
The reunion then takes a detour back to Tokyo.
Carmella admits she had serious FOMO about missing the trip. Her anxiety and diabetes made traveling difficult, and she acknowledges that she missed out on an experience the other women shared. She is disappointed that she could not participate, although she also recognizes that she has to make decisions based on her health.
The women revisit some of the shopping and social moments from the trip. Gina seems to have embraced both the culture and the shopping opportunities, which is apparently the ideal Housewives vacation combination.
Tamra and Jenn’s renewed friendship also comes up. The two women defend the relationship and maintain that they are in a good place. Jenn has questioned whether the reconciliation is genuine, but Tamra and Jenn both insist that they have worked through things and are enjoying being friends again.
There are still some little reunion jabs about who takes pictures with whom and who appears in whose videos. Heather’s relationship with Tamra is also discussed, including the feeling that Heather was looking for a buddy during the season but did not necessarily find one.
Even after all these years, the women are still monitoring who is standing next to whom, who is taking selfies, and who has been left out of a group photograph. The technology may have changed, but the Housewives friendship economy remains a highly competitive marketplace.
Finally, Andy turns the conversation toward the show’s twentieth anniversary.
Twenty years. Two decades of orange-colored drama, screaming in driveways, wine glasses being held aloft, friendship contracts being broken, and women announcing that they are done with someone approximately fourteen times before lunch.
The women reflect on how the franchise has changed their lives and what they have learned from being part of it.
They describe the group as something of a dysfunctional family. There have been friendships, marriages, divorces, personal struggles, and more arguments than any normal family should be expected to survive.
The conversation also turns to some of the show’s most memorable moments and the women who helped make the franchise what it is.
Jeana Keough comes up, and Tamra shares that Jeana is struggling with tongue cancer. She describes her as inspirational, and the women acknowledge the difficult circumstances she is facing.
Andy asks Vicki whether there was one new Housewife who particularly irritated her, aside from Carmella. Vicki names Lizzie Rovsek as someone who bothered her, but then quickly insists that Lizzie is a quality person and that she loves her.
Shannon reminds everyone of Vicki’s old description of Lizzie as the valedictorian of a class of one. The insult has apparently remained in the Housewives archives, ready to be retrieved whenever necessary.
The women also reflect on how unlikely it once seemed that the show would last twenty years. Andy acknowledges that he was only 36 when the franchise began. That is a rather alarming reminder that some of us have been watching these women longer than certain Housewives have been married.
They are asked to share what they are taking away from their time on the show.
Gina talks about her friendship with Emily, which has become one of the most important relationships in her life. Emily says the show has helped her marriage, and the women discuss the ways their experiences have changed them.
Jenn says the show has helped her find her voice and feel more comfortable expressing her opinions. Shannon appreciates the relationships she has formed with the women and the support she has received through difficult periods.
Heather says the show has been meaningful to her and that she values the experiences she has had. Tamra says she has learned that she is a bad bitch and can overcome anything.
Vicki, the OG of the OC, expresses gratitude for the experience and the people she has met, including the newer women. She has certainly had her opinions about the new girls over the years, but twenty seasons later, she is still here, still talking, and still prepared to tell someone they are wrong.
The women raise their glasses for one final toast. The drink is called “songria,” which is apparently what happens when the Housewives have been together long enough to turn a perfectly ordinary word into a reunion activity.
And then Tamra decides that the best way to close out twenty years of Orange County television is to jump into the grotto topless.
Naturally.
She strips down and jumps into the water, bringing the reunion to an appropriately chaotic conclusion. After all the conversations about accountability, family, friendship, health, and personal growth, Tamra has apparently decided that the most meaningful tribute to twenty years of Housewives is a naked swim.
And really, what else would we expect?
The twentieth season ends with friendships in uncertain territory, Vicki still defending herself, Emily and Heather facing a serious rupture, Gina trying to hold on to the relationships that matter to her, and Jenn and Tamra insisting that their renewed friendship is the real deal.
There are heartfelt family updates, some genuinely emotional moments, and enough unresolved tension to keep the reunion from becoming a commemorative slideshow.
Twenty years of Housewives. Twenty years of people saying they want honesty and then becoming furious when they get it. Twenty years of friendships that are supposedly over until the next group trip.
And Tamra is naked in the grotto.
The Orange County women may have grown older, but the franchise has not lost its ability to end a season with a woman removing her clothes in a swimming pool.
Cheers to twenty years, ladies. And please, somebody get Tamra a towel.
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