So, Carole and Aviva are still fighting about who wrote what, the difference between ghost writers and real writers, and whose feelings have been more grievously hurt. Unfortunately, it all devolves into the other housewives pitying poor, childless Carole, who doesn't have anything else in the world except her poor little computer. I'm not sure how Carole standing up for herself and defending her career became all about her being one step removed from being a crazy lady with cats, but fine. If it makes Sonja and Ramona feel better to pity Carole, let them have their delusions.
Still, I just wished Carole didn't seem to play into this collective belief that she's a little pathetic. When she has a baby shower for a pregnant friend of hers, she pulls Ramona aside to tell her that her career is “all I've got” and then get a little weepy about Heather's daughter offering her a hug. If she's truly feeling a little down about being a childless widow, fine, but I suspect this episode's artful editing makes it seem as if Carole has been picking up the messaging of her frenemies and subconsciously agreeing with it. Gosh, if the other gals think my life is sad, it must be!
But speaking of sad, it seems that Sonja has somehow snowed a bunch of otherwise intelligent young people into sitting around her dining room table to listen to her scatterbrained nonsense while she lectures them about pulling their weight as the free labor she needs them to be. I'm expecting that next week we'll see Sonja holding a whip over her free interns as they make T-shirts and knock-off handbags.
Also sad this week (and she's not the last on the list) was Ramona, who feels as if her daughter growing up is like losing an arm. I'm not sure if Ramona is entirely clear on the difficulties of being a real amputee, but I guess that's her way of saying she's got some serious sad going on about Avery. I will say watching her wrestle between being proud of her daughter and terrified she's going to be humping her way through the school football team during prom is sort of sweet, even if desire to leash her child to her friends seemed, oh, I don't know, batcrap insane. But hey, that's Ramona!
We're still getting to know Kristen, but this week we learned quite a bit. One, she loves to trot out that Rodney King quote about how we should all get along, and two, she's a little bit of a whiny, hothouse flower in her marriage. While she's shown an endearing amount of quirk previous to this episode (which is why Carole liked her right off the bat), during the Spartan Race she showed an annoying amount of wussiness.
Sure, her husband Josh admitted that he tricked her into signing up for the race “because you wouldn't have done it” if she'd have known how tough it was. Bad, Josh, Bad. But when faced with the prospect of having to go through the race all on her own (except for a couple hundred other people) and neither Heather or Josh decided to hold her hand as she limped through the course like a wounded gazelle, she was furious. How dare they actually enjoy themselves! What crass, selfish people!
I think Kristen might have been the selfish one here, bursting into tears about how hurt she was and how abandoned she felt. Josh didn't leave her in the middle of the Sahara, for crying out loud. However, I think Kristen's mini meltdown speaks to a bigger problem in the marriage that we're probably just starting to uncover. Kristen's reaction seemed to be about more than slogging through a muddy obstacle course on her own. I'm guessing she was harboring past resentments when she started knocking over the guys standing at the finish line, unless she's actually certifiably insane.
Hey, it could be worse, Kristen. You could be (gasp!) living Carole's life! Mon dieu!
Do you think Kristen has a reason to be angry at Heather and Josh? Do you think Carole is in the wrong, or Aviva? Would you intern for Sonja?