It’s appropriate that this is the fifth episode of the season, which means the restrictions against judgment imposed on us by the Eileen Davidson Accords have been lifted and we can now let it rip on the new women. Because, wow, both had quite an episode, and I feel like Noella, in particular, is the type of person who is always having an episode. She has more episodes than The Simpsons and The View combined. (Could you imagine combining The Simpsons and The View?)
Dr. Jen says that Noella is on a snowballing path of destruction, which is sort of like a spiral of destruction and a snowball’s chance in hell rolled into one, but Dr. Jen tried. I think what she really means is that Noella is the type of person where everything is complicated, where everything is a saga, where even the easiest interactions take on the tenor of an opera singer having a heart attack and dying mid-aria. Just look at her husband serving her divorce papers. The first time, the process server arrived and threw them at her mother. When that didn’t work, he sent the papers in a bouquet so that she would come to the door and physically touch them.
This is shady on Sweet James’s part, but it points to Noella as someone who chose this man. Of course, she chose someone who is too much. Of course, this is the man she fell in love with. Of course, they were together for five years and had a fake wedding when he was still married to his ex-wife, and, of course, they were only married a year ago, and, of course, it’s already disintegrating, and, of course, it is more complicated than the assembly instructions on an Ikea waterbed. Of course, Noella is so upset by all this that she loses her voice and will only talk in a whisper because this is the sort of entirely invented affliction that befalls someone who doesn’t know when to stop. Of course. That is all I think of when I see Noella. “Of course.”
All of this, of course, is great for television, and I am happy to have her along this season, but it makes sense that she is a friend with Braunwyn because she has the same pick-me energy. She has, dare I say it, the same thirst. Noella is thirstier than Zendaya and the Fremen in Dune. She’s thirstier than Nicki Minaj’s dead houseplants. She is thirstier than Grandpa Gene when he’s on the prowl at the Quiet Woman. Just look at her underboob in her “Slutty Billie Holiday” costume in her latest confessional. From her parched forehead to her gulping baby toes, she is thirst personified. No one has ever wanted it worse than Noella, and nothing will keep her from getting it.
This is the insult that she lobs at Dr. Jen, which I couldn’t find farther from the truth. Dr. Jen doesn’t seem thirsty she just seems, I don’t know, not cut out for this game. She seems like she doesn’t really care about being here. Not in the way that Mary Cosby seems to both want to be here but resents what she has to do to stay; it’s more like Dr. Jen knows it’s a good idea to be here but doesn’t quite know or believe why. She’ll invite the girls over, she’ll go on events, she’ll show up at the parties, but beyond that, Dr. Jen is just dreaming about her hot shirtless husband at home with a quivering chihuahua sitting next to his quickening heart.
Her thirst comes up at Shane’s “I Limboed Under the Bar” party when Dr. Jen asks Noella why there is tension between them. Noella says that Dr. Jen met her a few times and then was overly familiar with her and asked for a selfie. A selfie? The cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity, and the gumption! I mean, that’s sort of like going up to the bisexual child of a woman you just met and screaming, “Are you Max? I’m bisexual tooOOOOoooOooooOOooooooOOO.” So, yeah, Noella is mad that Dr. Jen posted an unflattering picture of herself and tagged Noella in it because everyone knows that Noella works with a different med-spa.
When Dr. Jen tries to fight back and make sense of all this, Noella tells Dr. Jen to go be “relevant somewhere else.” Wait, does she think Dr. Jen is chasing relevance by fighting with her, a complete nobody and a newbie on the cast? If Dr. Jen wanted to try to be relevant, she’d pick beef with Shannon Beador, who has more beef than Ruth’s Chris Steak House. She’d pick beef with Heather Dubrow, the new and returning champion. She wouldn’t pick beef with Noella, a leftover scallop ceviche from a Top Chef quickfire challenge.
Not that Dr. Jen is right. She says that one night at Braunwyn’s, Noella said that “Tom Ford is God,” and it offended her religion. Oh, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, and two of the wise men because fuck that dude who brought myrrh. This is dumber than screen doors on a submarine. If Dr. Jen can’t ascertain figurative language and separate it from actual religious doctrine, she is less sharp than Nicole’s cheekbones, which are the third sharpest cheekbones on the show after Heather’s and Terry’s.
It’s another swing and a miss from Dr. Jen when Gina, Emily, and Nicole, the grifter without a face, come over to her house for a little chat and catch up. She brings up that Noella isn’t married but had a fake wedding, and are they even really married? Emily Simpson, PI & Esq., says immediately that if they’re getting divorced, then they’re married. Ah doy, Dr. Jen. I think that Dr. Jen’s spirit is correct, but she gets her facts all wrong. Yes, she is trying to poison the other women’s minds against Noella, but she shouldn’t have been casting doubt on the wedding. She should highlight that maybe Noella isn’t as innocent as she claims in this whole Sweet James saga which, well, based on the tea leaves I’m reading, seems like it could be the case. That’s what I mean about Dr. Jen. She fires the right shot, but she has no idea where the target is. (In my experience, the Target is usually near a Lowe’s.)
I don’t think that Dr. Jen needs to worry too much because it seems like Noella has her sights set on Heather Dubrow, who had a humdinger of a week herself. She made Shannon apologize to her husband Terry for not telling them their friend Nicole once tried to sue them even though they were friends with that petty criminal for six years before Shannon came around and exposed her. They shouldn’t be making Shannon apologize; they should be sending her a muffin basket. Heather keeps saying that Shannon was “coming for her family.” How? By exposing the woman who used you to get on this show, who was just going to buffoon you this whole time? If that’s coming for your family, what did Nicole do?
Heather also takes Gina to the track where Gina manages to buy the ugliest hat on offer out in front of the horse races and then inserts her head and her hat so far up Heather’s asshole that when she comes out, she smells just like one of Terry’s leather jackets. I do think it’s kind of cute that Gina only has one rich friend, but this is Housewives, she needs to at least act like she’s been around cloth napkins before. They talk about how Noella says that Heather is a “fake bitch” and “can’t be trusted,” and I have no idea where Noella is getting this from other than that she is trying to be relevant around Heather Dubrow, something that reminds me of a very familiar sensation: thirst.
