VAPID, vacuous and vulgar.
It’s bad enough, when the economy is strong, to watch desperate women afflicted with a never-enough psychosis parade themselves on TV – clueless that they are being mocked by their own producers. Train wreck TV? No, just train wreck. You cringe and then flip the channel to get relief.
But now that the economy has collapsed and people are losing their homes, watching these same women unchanged and unchanging, still believing that it’s important to look rich because then maybe they’ll be accepted into a society that doesn’t even know they exist, is the height of vulgarity.
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I’m talking about “The Real Housewives of New York City,” yet another in Bravo’s demeaning, anti-female franchise that purports to show the lives of women who marry well for a living. If nothing else, it does prove that there is no free brunch – no matter how vintage the wine coolers. The depth of vapidity.
We are supposed to – what? – be envious that they sit around their houses in the Hamptons, desperate to get invited to parties that most people wouldn’t even remember being invited to? A vacuous waste of airtime.
That being said, the housewives in question – Alex, Bethenny (who isn’t married), Jill, LuAnn and Ramona – are joined this season by a genuine Hamptons socialite, former model Kelly Bensimon, who is divorced from a French photographer it was my misfortune to have worked with a few times when I was the Elle beauty ed itor.
Tonight’s pre miere is devoted to “plotzing,” as Jill would say, over a Cindy Adams column. My friend Cindy will laugh her tail off watching Jill, who ran her mouth to Cindy, acting shocked that a reporter would reprint the embarrassing, uncouth things that she said about Alex’s husband. We’re supposed to care that she vacillates between being contrite and being angry that she has to be contrite. Now that’s entertainment!
Highlights, or make that lowlights, of tonight’s torturously long back-to-back episodes include a description of the pool at the rented house Alex and her man-kini-wearing husband, whazzizname, are staying in being called “reminiscent of ancient Babylonia.” Or modern Babylon.
And then there’s LuAnn, who never tires of saying she married some count, ordering a pizza on the phone and identifying herself to the pizza man as “Countess de Lesseps.” Two pies to go. As my colleague says, “She’s preparing to enter her Margaret Rutherford phase, so be kind.”
Kind? I deserve combat pay. Endless prattle that’s endlessly boring.
“The Real Housewives of New York City” Tonight at 10 on Bravo Absolutely NO stars