RHONJ Recap/Review

Article from NJ.com.

'Real Housewives of New Jersey' recap: You eat, you drink, you pay
Vicki Hyman/The Star-Ledger

Like "Real Housewives of New Jersey" star Teresa Giudice, I too am on a vacation I can ill afford. How about I regale you with details of my meals out? Do you want to hear about my in-laws, who are hosting my family in their delightful home? Mind if I complain about how exhausted I am after wrangling my 9-year-old though Legoland? No? Then you won't mind if I keep this recap short, because there's nothing quite as boring as hearing about someone else's vacation. Yes, the Italian holiday continues for Teresa and Joe Giudice, Jacqueline and Chris Laurita, Caroline and Al Manzo, and various and sundry parental units and offspring.

They eat, they shlep up a hill, they meet the Giudices' Italian family. Joe complains at length about getting ripped off at their Naples hotel: "I didn't touch nothin' out of the minibar!" In voiceover (though we wish it was to his face), Jacqueline wryly observes, "You eat, you drink, you pay." Apparently that's not how the Giudices roll.

Photo: Bravo

The charter bus ride to the Giudices' hill town outside Naples is long and tedious and wears on the Guidices' young children. Many pans to Caroline looking exasperated, but it doesn't look like we're going to get to see any fireworks between Caroline and Teresa over the latter's rather questionable childrearing tactics. The worst we get is Caroline saying, "I was annoyed," and Al commenting that the kids need more discipline. Maybe if Danielle Staub doesn't return as rumored, we'll see more "Housewives" infighting. Caroline vs. Teresa? Epic.

Teresa says that she and Joe own a house here -- funny, I don't remember seeing that listed among their assets in their bankruptucy filing -- and they eventually want to fix it up. For their last dinner together, Teresa and her family make a grand entrance, with the daughters in matching custom-made outfits that defy description. Suffice it to say that pink ruffled pants are involved.

Teresa's mangled word of the week: Bidet, which she pronounces as "obehdeh." Fancy.

Back in Jersey, Danielle tells her daughters about her plan to search for her birth mother, which at least Christine already knows about, because she heard it from a friend who heard it from an aesthetician who heard it from Teresa. Christine uses the word "ass," and Danielle takes her to task for being so crass. "Behind, bottom ... You're too beautiful and too spiritual to speak like that." Because only ugly and godless people curse. Has she ever heard herself?
Danny Provenzano shows up to tell Danielle that the Manzos et al. are in Italy, so Danielle is free to cross the border into Franklin Lakes. See, Danielle really, really likes the panini at Market Basket in Franklin Lakes, and she's been afraid to go there because she never knows when or where someone is going to attack her. (Here's a clue: If a woman is headed your way and is being trailed by a cameraman and someone with a boom mike, assume the worst, and run.)

Danny recommends a private investigator to track down Danielle's mom, who gave her up for adoption when she was 15. She wants closure, Danielle explains, and, she says, "It would be nice to have another adult in my life." Um, who's the first one? When Danielle meets with the investigators, she says that if they do manage to find her birth mother, she doesn't want to meet her if the woman has an addiction problem or is homeless: "I'm not finding her to make her better. I'm finding her to make me better." Oh, I smell a spinoff. And a trainwreck.

Danielle's mangled word of the week: Ethniticity.
Next week is the season finale, and it involves a "Godfather"-style meeting between Caroline and Danielle. Oy.