FrenchBug82

OK I hate that I am diving into the rabbit hole of sounding like I am defending her because I am not AND I strongly lean towards agreeing with you. What we know now certainly suggests she had an active role. BUT I also know there is a LOT we don't know. For instance, there might be legal reasons for which she is taking those legal stances: her lawyers might have told her she would be in legal jeopardy otherwise. A bit like a lawyer advises you to shut up and not talk to the police, regardless of whether you are innocent or not. It might sound callous or may make you look guilty but it might be a sound legal strategy. Who knows what's behind it? From the POV of an accused who do not think they did the crime, not being convicted is as much "justice" as making sure the victims are made whole. So in her mind, the former may be the priority and it doesn't have to make her a monster if she was guilty more of willful blindness than of being an active co-conspirator. We don't know her level of guilt and there might be a lot of variety of reasons for which she is taking the current strategy that are perfectly compatible with her being innocent-ish. Also, I wholeheartedly sympathize with the victims who are, ultimately, the victims. But let's not be naive. They too are following a PR strategy to put pressure on the Girardis, leaking stuff that make them look particularly bad (and that may or may not be missing some important context) and staging themselves to be as sympathetic as possible. It doesn't mean I don't believe them; it just means that shaping public opinion is ALSO a factor in their choices and making it sound as black and white as possible is in their interest. What they leak may not be the full story. We cannot take anything at face value in a high-stakes battle such as this one. Is there a high likelihood that Erica's role in all this will be too s***y for us to muster some sympathy in the end? Yes. It is a case closed we-know-everything-and-it-is-a-wrap throw-away-the-key situation? No. Not for now at least.

In all fairness, it does seem a good idea for a MAGA nutbag to kind of want to erase any reminders that he is an immigrant himself. I am sure His Big Orange Daddy doesn't mind white immigrants as much but you know... Might want to make the fact that race is what is motivating his hatred slightly less obvious and hide his own contradictions.

Not to be Professor Tsk-Tsk-Tsk here but "slutty" involves a judgement that is on the person who makes that call. Chanel could very well be sexually promiscuous but my personal reaction would be: so? Good for her if she wants to enjoy her body with people she is attracted to. Anything that involves consenting adults is fine by me and it doesn't make the character a good or a bad person. I for one am all for a female character on soap having a happy busy sex life and not giving a f*** what others think.

The show always treated Skye like they treat Olivia now - more as a chess piece to move around for the benefit of the A-level characters but I love RC and I miss her. And I will continue to say her once-upon-a-time chemistry with JPS on AMC means there is an obvious angle to play if they ever brought her back. Which they won't. But I wish they would.

In all fairness, and I am not defending her because I am not fond of her either, but Bershan immediately came for Eboni too in her first appearances so what's good for the goose etc. See. Here is the thing. Housewives is not good at doing that because it doesn't talk about secrets until they are revealed and then it becomes a pile-on. But life is complicated. People are complicated. It can be both true that she was, say, turning a blind eye to Girardi's shenanigans because she enjoyed the lifestyle and that she now is genuinely scared and sad and lost. It is a really hard thing for people to explore their compassion towards people who do bad things. If she is indeed heart-broken, does it excuse her looking the other way (at best) before? It is hard in particular because once you are revealed to have lied a lot, it becomes harder to know where the truth is. If she faked her life before, why wouldn't be faking now? But it is also entirely possible that the real truth lies in between and hard to easily throw into a Good/Evil frame. It could be she didn't know the details, knew enough to be suspicious not everything was on the up-and-up but both her love/affection for Tom and her sense of entitlement to her lifestyle helped her not want to try and dig deeper. How many of us have not asked questions when we didn't think we'd like the answers? There is nothing harder than making someone admit something when their livelihood relies on them not admitting it. She may not have realized the depravity. The fund transfer could have been thought to be a tax liability trick or some other things. Or maybe she did know and didn't care. And she could be genuinely remorseful either way! And She can genuinely miss Tom while trying to save her own hide. Be genuinely scared and upset and still work hard to stage her own salvation. Or she could be a horrible selfish person who didn't care then and don't care now and is just trying to save herself. Life is complicated. People are complicated. It is hard to know what is within people's heart and what happens in people's homes. I was thinking this just a couple days ago in the context of the discussion around Gizelle and Jamal. Blind items had "announced" their reconciliation "arrangement" months before it happened so it was clear to me from the get-go that it hadn't been an organic romantic reunion but something more "rational" BUT who are we to judge? Even if it is an arrangement: so? they care enough for each other to like being around each other but are motivated by the side benefits of being together more than passion. Maybe Giz figured she wasn't going to be lucky in love so since she likes Jamal, she could live with him having his own sex life if she could have a family again and enjoy the financial and PR benefits. So? Is that an illegitimate reason for people to be together? How many couples do we know have stayed together for reasons other than pure passion? It is a bit weird in their case since they had separated but there are a gazillion ways for couple to form or stay together that do not involve only traditional romantic love. We don't know what it is in their heads and what motivates them. Where is the line between "fake" and what is "different from what I would do"? Anyway point is Housewives is not doing a good job of exploring those shades of grey because the women are too busy scoring points against each other and fans are playing faves with those they like or dislike. But I reckon in all these cases the truth is infinitely more complicated and harder to give a definite judgement on than if we only take the little bits of info we have at face value. It is on them for refusing to reveal everything - obviously if Erika or Giz levelled with us it would be a different story. But I stay ambivalent because my instincts is that True Horrible People are rarest than everyone's actions would suggest.

Yes. That Emmy... That Emmy... That Emmy... Grrrrrr

Setting aside the fact it was specifically Jax and that is a big no for me, I don't understand that soap trope of people immediately rushing to bed with someone else after having their hearts broken. And I mean immediately. It is not that it doesn't happen in real-life: casual sex sometimes helps heal wounds. But in the context of trying to sell us "Britt/Jason" as a great love, it really doesn't help. It is not sex-shaming: Britt can gangbang the entire hospital staff for all I care. But there is something about jumping into bed with someone else less than 24 hours later, even out of spite, that undermines the "magical romance" aspect of it. It becomes less star-crossed lovers and more two petty people trying to hurt each other with bad choices. And it is obviously less rootable-for.

Or at least if it was made explicit that most people GUESSED it was a marriage of convenience. Most characters even just a little bit familiar with the dynamic between those two and the context of the "business" being left in disarray after Sonny's death should be able to figure it out. Let's have a few characters gossip and speculate that this is what it is. Give us some hint the characters are smart.

I always go back to the fact "Dallas" bombed in Japan because Japanese viewers couldn't get past the fact the Ewings were supposed to be insanely wealthy and yet drove their own cars.

Your comment made me laugh because it occurred to me that while the character has changed quite a bit over thirty years, one constant thoroughline is that, regardless of whether she is being written as a heroine or a villain, she always manages to handle situations in the most "slappable" of ways. Think of every storyline she has had and "Someone needs to slap Sami" probably applies to 95% of them one way or another.

Heck, if they still wanted him to be the hero, they can combine the story they seem to hint at where Stitch is up to no good and have Chance "rescue" Abby if/when she gets in too deep. Not that I'd be fascinated by that story either but at least it would be a full-fledged narrative. I have given them plenty of charitable patience that what happened with Chance and having to write him out was a last-minute call they needed a bit of time to pivot from. But boy it has been MONTHS. They should have found a more solid storyline by now and dare I say that considering how fraught and convoluted the whole surrogacy story could be on paper - with lots of potential organic drama between the characters - choosing to paint it as a tedious lovefest and instead bringing a villain ex machina to be the conflict is dumb.

I am not loving the energy in this clip either but I hear her argument about why are THEY so pressed when Karen isn't? I find it irritating when friends of someone pick a fight that even that someone chose to walk away from. But I reserve judgement until we see the entire argument. I can see Wendy being the "lecturer" but there might be reasons she brought it up

The transformation of Rachel as a character overtime certainly worked but it does feel like one of the few instances where trying to turn her saintly just ended up intelligence-insulting.

I fully agree with that (especially since Karen wasn't the worst offender here) but it felt like a gimmick to "restart" the storyline for a new season. As discussed above, producers probably coax them to get the ball rolling in some ways before letting the momentum determines where the season then goes. Andy said he hadn't seen the audience turn on a Housewife like they have with Leah this season but I'd suggest he peruses the 180 in fan consensus on this forum with Eboni and now Bershan in a matter of just weeks. I am not going to lie: I bit my tongue with Bershan in the runup to her showing up on-screen but I always suspected her enduring friendship with and defense of Ramona should be a red flag she wasn't going to be what we were imagining so I wasn't too surprised with this turn of events.

The same thing happened to Eric Braeden over at Y&R. When did they decide that articulating was a superfluous skill as an actor and that mumbling was apparently the best way to convey dominance? I don't get it. I think this is unfair to blame on LW herself. The *character* has changed but it would be the same with any other actress. I understand the nostalgia for early Carly but subsequent roles has proven SB does not have magical powers if the writing isn't there. She would be playing soccer mom too. ATWT Julia was tedious like that.

This. So so so much. Especially because when there is no existing subtext, then they feel the need to INVENT feuds and that's how we end up with whatever Leah did with Heather and Eboni not letting go of something that should have been one episode at most (or Sutton/Crystal over at BH) and now Bershan being a tad more elephant-in-the-porcelain-store that is necessary. Which brings me to agreeing strongly with your other point. It was pretty obvious in Eboni's case but now that the same thing is happening with Bershan, I am actually starting to go back and wonder if Leah's questionable choices have not been, too, due to producer intervention. Not that Leah is not capable of being tedious on her own, but in hindsight most of what we are seeing this season seems to be housewives trying to make things happen, which is behavior producers worried about a small cast and no obvious storylines (since none of them have anything specific going on in their own lives unlike in past seasons) might try to encourage. This is going to be a potentially unpopular suggestion but maybe they should consider not sticking to a strict filming schedule. Atlanta should have resumed filming RIGHT when the Porscha thing came out in public. And inversely if nothing of interest was happening to the NY housewives it was fine waiting an extra six months to film.

I mean I giggled and I appreciate the self-awareness but there is a hint of unprofessionalism about an actor seriously s***ing on his own show and writers publicly like that. We are not talking SC gently mocking the obsession Steffy and Hope have for his character. We are talking an actor straight up saying the writing for his character sucks and he doesn't know what he is playing. It is almost as if he is trying to provoke a "falling-down-the-elevator-shaft" situation and be let out of his contract.

A recent example of why I would not be shedding a single tear - despite thinking it is a bad move for the show - over Ramona being fired in this manner. https://www.realitytea.com/2021/05/26/ramona-singer-no-1-dorinda/ The energy you put out in the world is the energy you are going to get back. That being said, I do feel they are leaking it now because of something coming up. Maybe I am wrong but if even Kelly Dodd was given the courtesy of a proper "process", me thinks there is something Ramona is going to do or say they don't want to touch with a six-foot pole.

May/December romances are not unheard of in soaps or in life obviously but it does feel the Dobsons really wanted to make happen a lot of M/D romances that were pretty obviously doomed, weird even on paper and... visually incongruous, shall we say. Louise Sorel was a beautiful woman and a great actress but those early Joe/Augusta scenes were also just... a no for me. As I was saying about the Dobsons probably being sexual "freaks"...

I think we would be forgiving if the corporate sets were basically the same room just with the furniture rearranged slightly in between scenes and different paintings on the wall. We might recognize it is the same set but it'd be less jarring than their current choice of not even trying.

I fully agree but I am actually even less charitable than you. B&B may not be low on cash and does have some decent outdoors scenes (the scene itself was stupid but the beach scene with Steffi and Finn was fine visually) but a lot of their outside scenes are pretty clearly the roof of the studio (that "restaurant").

My irritation at the first comments after yesterday's episodes were generic and while I am glad some have her number, perusing this thread makes pretty clear not everyone does. The imbalance between the bile directed at Gizelle and Candiace vs the others is pretty obvious so, yes, it feels like some things need to be said just to temper the conversation from time to time. If it is not relevant to you, great! You can add your two cents which are generally a lot more detailed and thoughtful than mine and ignore my pithy attempt to defend the entire cast against overeager fans. Anyway back to the program itself...

Agree. Ronan was a seriously underwritten character and a lot of his storylines were bad - I mean they managed to make Eden Riegel tedious too which is quite the feat. But his charisma still shone and he has proven to be a good actor. So I'd buy it.

I don't know how unclear I could have been considering how many times I repeat it. But that's exactly what I was talking about with GDW; seems there is a bit of a blind spot among fans regarding Karen. Anyhow don't assume that because someone is not a stan, that it means they are a hater. I like these ladies and this is probably the only franchise where I like them all.

If this had been at the end of last season I would have been delighted. I really can't take much of Ramona's hypocrisy and BS. But this season has clearly underscored how much better the show is with veterans to anchor it so this is the wrong direction. I agree some newbies should be on chopping block instead - and the cast expanded some. But of course it is not entirely incompatible with Ramona being gone. On the plus side, considering the nasty gloating things she was saying about Dorinda's firing before the season premiere, the karma would be delish. I abolutely adore that frenemy relationship. But I am grateful that I hear pointed out the obvious: which is, no, Karen is not "unbothered" and it is pretty easy to "find her". I like her "I am above you" quips but they are just that. The initial tone of the reaction of the premiere were a bit too unbalanced towards GDW (Grand Dame Worship) for me so I am happier reading the new entries in the thread this morning.