Real Housewives of Orange County: Underwear? Under There.

The girl who has everything.

Oh how the depressing, sun-blasted carousel just keeps lurching on. I watched Real Housewives of Orange County with a friend who'd never seen the show last night, and I watched in bemused resignation as her eyes grew to dinner plate size and she let out a low sigh and said "This is fascinating. Horrible, but fascinating." And she's right. This show is such a horrid, burbling disaster of a social experiment, and yet even as I watch through my fingers and my insides squeal in terror, I cannot tear myself away. It's like making first contact with aliens, extraterrestrial creatures who somehow manage to represent everything that is awful and wasted about our very own America—all of its apocalyptic, needy, dumb materialism, its horrorscape of ruined desert towns and bloated, chemical-filled lives. And I felt somewhat guilty for dipping my friend into this brackish baptismal pool, but in some ways these ladies of a terrible canyon are a wicked knowledge that we all need. Here are the toxic byproducts of American ingenuity and manifest destiny, everyone. We must take the good with the bad.

Well, not all of us. One cast member decided enough was enough last night and packed up her carnie caravan to travel off into the night, a brave and broken and fattened Mother Courage, onto the next vibrant battle scene. Will we miss Jeana? Oh, probably not. She was never my favorite Housewife—she always seemed so drably mean, allowing her three children to spend their teenage years as horrible, selfish monsters. Her past was interesting in a sad way, a former Playmate marrying a baseball player from a baseball family, a storybook fairytale ending for the curdling '80s. But Jeana in the here and now was always just sighing on the periphery, too lazy to really amp up the crazy (like Vicki) or the terribly misplaced sexpotism (like Tamra). I think Jeana was just done with a lot of life a long time ago, comfortable to be swaddled in the afternoon sadness of a post-Mansion existence. Jeana was always vague and distant. In the end she left with a small nugget of grace intact, telling the girls that she was done with "The Drama", had had it. Wanted to focus on her shattered finances and her aging children. I wanted some sort of triumphant moment, some stirring speech about the true value of life, some wistful car ride down the highway into the mysterious horizon. But instead her ending was just quiet and huffed, like so much of Jeana. Dinner with the kids, the kids who seem newly calmed, newly formed and adult. There they were just eating and talking and laughing, and life shuffled on. The cameras clicked off, and away we went.

So that was good. Good for her. As for the rest of these harpies? A pox. Now that Jeana is gone, of course two new boobs must grow out of the hydra's severed neck. They came in the form of a Big Blonde Christian named Juggs Jackson, a sloppy-eyed dump who calls herself "32 years old" when she is clearly at least 40. I guess you could call Juggs pretty. I mean, she has the bundle of features that would denote prettiness—smooth blonde hair, sneaky smoky features, breasts that defy gravity (she should be named Hillary). But none of these creatures are actually pretty pretty. They're pretty in their own stupid vacuum of misery, this oranged bag of failure that is the lonely strip between Los Angeles and San Diego. And I guess in the context of the show, that's all that counts. So yeah, the ladies are jealous of her and her looks. They stare skeptically at her two nannies that she carts around, little brown women who tote around her three children when Juggs and her husband, Ed Hardy, are sick of holding them—which is often. Juggs and Ed are also super religious, explaining that while their actions seem modern and now, the motivations behind them are very traditional and morally-focused. Which... fehhh. How stupidly convenient. How ugly and obvious. You wanna bet how these trophy-bearing, sham-marriage-having soulless hucksters voted on Prop 8? Sigh.

Though we briefly met this rank new couple last week, they really got their chance to show they shit and shine a light last night. The be-titted Tamra had them over to her be-titted house, where they all chatted be-tittedly about being be-titted. Ed Hardy proved himself to be a controlling weirdo who dresses like a college freshman at ASU—backwards cap, basketball shorts, Ray-Bans—even though he's clearly well into his 40s. In some ways it made me wonder if the men, in fact, are far worse than the women in these communities of the damned. After all, it's these pathetic, shifty-businessed, arrested development assclowns who encourage their wives to be blonde and be-titted, who are living out some sort of teenage masturbatory fantasy in whatever ramshackle, popsicle-stick way they can. It doesn't look quite as glossy as it did during that late-night fumbling, but it's a close enough approximation. If you squint your eyes. Blonde, busty wife. Nice-ish, mansion-ish house. Easy cash from an "easy", "flashy" job. Some horsepowered penismobile parked in the driveway. And then when it crumbles, when no extra amount of silicone and latex can withstand gravity's relentless pull, you just dump the broad and the kids and move into some other previously-unimagined scenario, the comb-over'd, paunchy silver fox. Meting out gold and diamonds in exchange for sweaty fits of pounding in breezy Scottsdale hotel suites. It's pretty horrific, actually. I'm gonna start blaming the men now. It's all their fault.

Speaking of Scottsdale, and pathetic middle-aged men, Gretchen and Doug Smiley spent a beautiful classy weekend in Arizona last night. They were there to celebrate the 62nd birthday of one of Gretchen's high school classmates, a be-titted blonde thing that hideously reminded us that, oh god, this problem is not solely endemic to Orange County. It's everywhere, out West. It's everywhere down South. Sigh and shudder. Gretchen used the birthday party—which had a lovely pink & white theme, leaving the door open for pathetic middle-aged men to wear pink shirts—as an opportunity to stage something of a coming out party. A year had passed since her last meal ticket, Jeff, passed away, so she got up from her Shiva chair, tossed off the black veil, tore the covers from the mirrors. Grieving had been long, and now grieving was done. So she whooped and whistled and twirled around on a stripper pole (a hallmark of any decent 62nd birthday), and we all desperately hoped that she would calamitously fall off, but alas it didn't happen. Instead Doug's innards-like genitals just sproinged into wheezing alertness, and a trickle of blood poured out of the corners of our eyes.

The weird thing about the Gretchen/Doug weekend was how they kept candidly talking about how poor they both are. They just up and said it. And you know what? You kinda gotta respect them for that. Now, both of them are foolishly hitching their stars to each other's respective wagons, hoping, as if in some sort of perverted Gift of the Magi, that the other will lead them to the fame and riches they so desire, which is awful. But still, for right now they're actually enjoying each other's company without the comforting buffer of money. So what a tiny iota of sunshine that was, what a surprisingly honest little chink had been cut through the dusty cave to the actual world. I tip my backwards Kangol to them.

Back in Coto de Calamity, Tamra was going over to Jeana's to figure out just what the eff her deal was. Jeana just sighed and sat back and let her enormous couch swallow her, all things becoming watery and foggy, Tamra's dim cawing getting more and more distant. Jeana had suggested that perhaps Tamra apologize to Gretchen for judging her life, for saying brazen things about whorishness and gold-digging. Tamra flipped out at this idea, why did she owe anyone any apology for making terrible accusations that she couldn't prove, on national television? How dare Jeana suggest anything like that? Blah blah blah and gurgle and gurgle and fade it all went as Jeana retreated to the warm comfort-space in her mind, a place where it is still 1981, where the crack of a baseball bat still fills her with warm chills, instead of a cold, curling dread. A place where no one is blonde, where there is always steak. In the regular world, Tamra finished her tirade and finally noticed that Jeana's eyes had gone glassy and still, and that she was muttering something very softly, some noise, a sound like "Hef-hef-hef-hef," over and over again. Not manic and urgent, just simply eased and hopeful. A wonderful tuft of a sound. Hef, hef, hef.

When Gretchen got back from her sex trip in Scottsdale, it was time for her to do a formal hang with ol' Juggs Juggeroo. Naturally that involved a crazy spinning class in which Juggs detailed her insane workout regimen, all designed to keep her Randy Quaid-esque husband stiff and happy, and Gretchen complained about how spinning hurts her noonie. So as you can surmise from those brief details, it was a lovely and classy outing, befitting of white gloves and graceful, sweeping hats. There was tea and cucumber sandwiches and a foppish young gentleman in a tuxedo playing Rachmaninoff in the background. The cherry orchard outside was in full bloom, the delicious fruits of others' labor. Gretchen and Juggs are going to be fastest friends, both skinny and blonde in their ambition, both possessing of pea-sized hearts rattling tinnily around in feathery ribcages. Though Juggs seems to want it more, or maybe to need it more. Gretchen seems content boozing it up and rarely exercising and letting her old friend Mindy Metabolism do the work. Juggs on the other hand must scrape and sweat and heave and hurdle to make herself lovable. Sad, but true.

You know what also makes a woman lovable to her husband? Sexy lingerie. Every girl knows that every guy wants his wife in sexy lingerie, always. When she is cleaning hair out of the shower drain? Sexy lingerie. When she is furtively pooping while reading In Touch magazine? Sexy lingerie. When she is standing shaking in the pantry, weeping for her lost life, because she just found an old picture from her freshman year at Ball State before she dropped out to move to California with a "wealthy financier" who was in town buying some shitty little company and hit on her in his oily way at The Chug one night? Sexy lingerie. It's just how it goes. This important fact in place, the ladies decided to all hang out with Juggs for the first time at a lingerie party at Madame Cho's Bustier Barn in downtown Orange County. A little old Asian lady greets you as you come in, then a kid with no shirt on gives you champagne, and though he is in good shape, he's not really in good enough shape to work solely as an underpants'd lingerie store champagne waiter. But ah well, no matter! There's lingerie to be jiggled into, and creepy middle-aged men to ogle you proprietorially.

Well, unless you're Juggs. Juggs and her husband, meaning just her husband, don't believe that Juggs should be trying on lingerie if other men are present. Because, I guess, in a very literal sense, Ed Hardy owns her breasts. I mean, he likely paid for 'em. And, by extension, he owns everything else. So that was super awkward and uncomfortable, as Ed was allowed to look at the other ladies, but the other husbands weren't allowed to look at Juggs. Bravo is clearly trying to shape a narrative out of Ed's creepy controllingness, and this was an auspicious and grim beginning. Everyone else was just flopping around, giggling tee-hee to everyone else. Even Gretchen and Tamra buried the hatchet for the afternoon. I mean, who can stay mad at Jenny Jiang's Jiggle Junction? Nobody, that's who. At one point Lynn showed up, all flaky and horrible, having just spent the rest of the episode packing up her rental house that she can no longer afford to move to another rental house that she will soon no longer be able to afford. We all felt a little bad for her bedraggled husband last night, who wearily said that he just didn't see the market imploding the way it did. The man builds houses. In Orange County. I mean, that dude is frigg'd. Just totally frigg'd. So that was a mite bit sad, but any pity we had for Lynn and her family was immediately washed away when SHE BROUGHT HER 17-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER TO A LINGERIE PARTY.

Did you read that clearly? Let me say that again. Lynn, a woman on this show, brought her teenage daughter to a lingerie party where adult men and women were present. Not bathingsuits, which would have been vaguely weird enough. Lingerie. Sexy lingerie. Lynn, honey, I know it makes you feel young to brag awkwardly about how you and your daughter still wear the same size (a creepy thing to say about underwear, but evs), but it makes you look even older. This sad creaky old bitch swiveling her replacement hips around, waving her young and already-ruined daughter around like some sort of fake police badge she bought at a novelty store. "See? See??? It means I'm real." No, honey it doesn't. Also, asking Juggs creepily about her body and saying "So'd, you go through a surrogate or what?" is why, on the reunion specials, people call you dumb. Because you are dumb. And awful. And destroying the lives of two children. Congratulations. Here's a lingerie cake.

While America burned to the ground around them, all the ladies met Juggs and said stupid things and there was lingerie to be stared at and the little Asian lady cooed and crowed and cackled and cackled and cackled, her strange magicks working just as she'd planned. Her secret lover/apprentice Champagnepants smiled a curling grin and they both knew that these ladies were theirs. To be harvested for plastic and bone, to be run over with razors and combs. They were making a monster, a golem, you see. And when they were done with it, it would spring to life and lope over the land foreclosing on houses and tearing out breast implants. And when the ladies, strip-mined and barely alive, would stagger back to the lingerie store to plead why and demand an answer, the store would be gone. As if it had never been there at all. The ladies would scratch their heads and stand there in the clumpy setting sun, thick breezes billowing their day-glo clothing, knowing somehow that they'd been had.

But not Jeana! No Jeana would be somewhere else. Rescued from this world by her own impulses, some small switch that turned on inside of her and a blip blip bilp of her soul's radar beginning to sound an alarm. The devil approaches, that pesky noise said. You are not safe here. No one is safe here. So Jeana moved on. Jeana humped it all up onto her back and carried it off, humming her strange Heffy song.

And somehow they felt it, the other ladies. In their beady little marble eyes, in the thick cords of spaghetti squash that lie mounded in their skulls. The last train had just groaned out of the station, and there they were, stuck and alone. Their husbands getting that itchy look in their eyes, that hungry-dog jonesing for something new and firm and young. What a dumb mistake they'd made. What a clotted compromise. Why had this happened, they wondered? Why had everything tumbled this way?

And then they looked down and they noticed. The scalloped cups and sagging, silky vees. They didn't have purses or wallets or trousers or blouses.

All they had, was lingerie.