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AngloAm;3979277; Stone Temple Tess wanted nothing more than to stir her pot. Any protestations on her part to the contrary are utter BS. And uh, OBTW her home is in foreclosure as Sad Jackie let on. Just not the Stone Temple bought and paid for by fraud and bad intent.
But holy hell, what a mess. First the scene in the North Joysee Country Club. Another chunk of Tess’s BS is that she said ‘honey’ all sweet and nice. This is a classic mean-girl trick – to communicate hostility and contempt behind blameless innocence. Mean girls are sneaky. Somehow the best thing was to discuss the values of Tess’s Temple and when Danielle said it was in foreclosure that’s what really set the Tessinator off. See, I figure that this was just about when she and Juicy’s bankruptcy was going through and she was awfully desperate to fare la bella figura – to make a good face. Which in her mind would be optimally done by shrieking like a fishwife and tearing off after Danielle.
So Danielle scampers off weeping and wailing and overacting, and has to be shepherded out by her pretty bodyguard, backstreet guttersnipe bellowing obscenities hard on her cheap-ass broken heels. Danielle makes it out to the bushes where she cries and moans and whines while Tessinator practically bites the hands that are holding her. From nowhere Jackie decides to tell all and sundry that she read her court documents and that Danielle hit somebody with a gun once. Because that’s relevant as she’s running away from her. I guess. ?
If you don’t think Tess threatened violence, think back to her comment “I’m from Patahson” Paterson, NJ’s crime is well above New Jersey’s averages. Tess figures herself a closet Donna Brasco, a real mob made moll. But the threat to anyone who could decipher it was clear. The minute she said that I thought – mmm maybe Danielle’s not so irrational after all.
As Danielle is moaning and sobbing nasty little Ashley puts out a fat little hand and yanks her head HARD, pulling out some extensions and possibly some ‘real hair.’ At that Danielle emits a frightened little shriek and runs into Old Kim’s Bentley, to speed dial the police and demand that everyone be arrested.
Because they’re so conciliatory and non-confrontational Tess and Sad Jackie (who has converted into her evil alter-ego, Steady Stare Jackie) head in their separate ways to the Bentley. Tess wants to convince everyone that she just wants to talk to Danielle, which is fooling nobody, and Steady Stare just stares, steadily. We find out that Awful Ashley yanked the weave to ‘protect’ her mother. Rather than going to see if mum was okay, she just committed assault. She’s got a MENSA future in front of her – but as the cleaning lady where they have their meetings. Steady Stare sends Awful Ashley home to resume staring, menacingly, at Danielle.
Then both Kims, Old Kim and Shop Kim, prove they are as horrible and nasty as I have ever thought them by sliding over to where Tess is, and sympathizing with her. Oh, sweet camera time! It makes all four of their faces beam with delight.
Proving her piercing intellect Awful Ashley tells the cops that since she only pulled the weave, she didn’t technically touch Danielle and therefore it wasn’t assault. Keep in mind this girl is the creation of timid-seeming Jackie and reasonable Chris. Either she’s a changeling or those Lauritas aren’t as nice as they seem…In any event, nobody is actually arrested, although Danielle demands it and is determined to press charges (and why not), and everyone goes off home in their respective luxo-barges.
Next day Danielle confides in Desperate Dan who admits he can’t control himself, and goes off to meet Old Kim in some diner over cold French Fries. Now Old Kim I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw the entire Garden State, and she just basically turns on her supportive friend act, with that little soupcon of classy mother figure. It’s an old routine with her, ever since she turned 80 years old it’s worked well. The classy mother figure is her exit strategy whenever Danielle’s antics become too much – she’s reminding us that she may at any point have had enough.
Tessa and Steady Stare Jackie go off to Caroline to tell their tale and (hopefully) be rewarded – imagine their surprise when it doesn’t quite work out that way. Caroline doesn’t buy the “I just wanna say hi” crap, and is on record as saying that Jackie needs to develop a backbone with regards to Awful Ashley.
Caroline has some worries of her own. Is it me or does Albie get a little less cute every episode? Albie apparently was given a telephone number to call for accommodation for his disability. When he called it nobody answered so he…what? Called back? Left a message? Left many messages? Found the address and went there in person? Told whoever it was who gave him the number to get another number or any kind of assistance? All we are told, circuitously by Caroline who dragged the information into a discussion of Albie’s need to fill in some apps, is that he called it once, got no answer and that’s why he never had his disability accommodated. My theory is that he gave the attempt the minimum effort he thought necessary and dropped it once it required more of him than a phone call. Sorry, Albs the world demands persistence even from golden pretty boys with Mugger Moms. A lawyer will be asking for salvation in the form of a fob-off letter from Seton Hall in the form of a letter saying essentially “We have tried to make a lawyer of him but have failed. We have no objection to your school trying.” Albie is apparently no pussy but he’s no big fighter either…based on what his mum said I’d never hire him as a consigliere.
Jackie and Chris and Awful Ashley (a poster child for birth control) have a discussion in which nobody manages to convince the dreadful teen that she is one slice short of a loaf, and her biggest accomplishment is to make trouble for everyone else. Personally I was glad that Chris is one step from giving the appalling little girl the old heave-ho. Of course, with her astute and erudite mind, all the lumpy thing can say is “whatevurrrr.” (Code for “Oh, please, please, please punch me in the face, pretty please!!!”)
Jackie goes on to play a silly game with Danielle’s energist. Oh, I’m sure she thinks it’s funny and clever to do what she did but (a) it shows that she’s a coward who couldn’t just call BS on the woman and hang up and (b)she needlessly harmed this woman’s ability to earn a living just out of spite and nastiness. The more you scratch Jackie the more you find a very sneaky underhanded and responsibility-avoidant personality. She’s like an apple with a worm in, all rosy on the outside, and rotten within.
Tess and Juicy prove that they are morally, spiritually, intellectually and aesthetically unfit to raise a goldfish let alone four children. They revel in Tess’s bad behavior, simplistic justifications for it, before she flashes her new plastic ‘clevelidge’ for Joe. I learned more about Tess in that little five minute or less exchange than I had all two seasons up to that point. She really is low-rent and married exactly in her station. She’s back-streets all gussied up and fooling nobody. She’s money and not one iota more. She lacks the intermittent wisdom of Caroline, the pathos of Danielle, the on-again-off-again compassion of Jackie, but rolls all their bad traits (bullying, violent paranoia, fickleness) into one unappealing package.
Based on this episode, where everyone acted in ways that would embarrass a toddler, I understand Danielle a bit more, but feel sorry for her in her on-going attempt to live in the real world, continue to loathe the Kims, and wouldn’t have dinner with Tess or Jackie for all the bling in Perth Amboy. Caroline I still waver on; she’s smart but for all her talk of family, except for the Albies, Christopher, and Lauren, she’d throw any of them under a bus for pins. Summary: They are all appalling.
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