Clash of the self-promotional titans! The “Real Housewives of NYC” end the season going head-to-head in a product-publicity death match.
May 6, 2009 Before we make real friends, we need imaginary friends. And once we stop whipping up pointless conflict with our real friends, we need imaginary enemies: Obnoxious, self-involved women who stir up trouble over every tiny bump in their paths. You know, people who remind us of our worst selves — only meaner, richer, thinner, and utterly devoid of shame. For a few weeks there, Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New York City” was hitting the Imaginary Enemy sweet spot like nothing else. Bad day at work Nasty Ramona called Bethenny desperate to her face! Unpleasantness with your boss Did you see LuAnn ship her child off to boarding school, condescend to her house-slave Rosie, then hit the town to prattle on about good manners through a boozy haze But the real fun came when Brand New Housewife Kelly Bensimon, — who’s about as close to housewife-dom as a steroids-addled tranny dressed as Doris Day — busted onto the scene, briefly pretended to befriend Ramona, and then began behaving like the confused overgrown teenager that she is. She ran in traffic! (“I love, like, running in traffic!” she proclaimed, striding along like Jerry Rice in front of a taxi, which inexplicably didn’t run her over.) Rate this story with Reddit: Yes, it almost goes without saying that the slow parts of “Real Housewives of New York City” are hopelessly dull: Ramona jabbers on about her age-defying skin treatments Jill redecorates her living room so that it looks more like a Vegas hotel room (Bethenny proclaimed it “Liberace, Versace, La Cucarach-I”) LuAnn attempts to enrich the lives of some inner city high school girls, presumably by counseling them on where to keep the good silver Alex and Simon redecorate their crumbling Brooklyn to resemble an Amsterdam brothel (Bethenny calls it “gothic bordello”). Sadly, though, it all ended on Tuesday night the way all Bravo shows end, in a spectacular self-promotional implosion. Thus, what began life as a deliciously catty soap opera ended with… soap. Really perfumey, expensive soap that Ramona “invented” with help from a chemist “friend” to keep everyone (with too much money) looking young(-ish) forever and ever, Amen.
But wait, was it soap, or skin cream, or fine fabrics, or a book about how to blow your nose just like entitled European royalty, or a guide to raising your children so they’ll grow up to be French With so many really important Housewife “projects” to promote, how can anyone keep track