Teresa and Joe Giudice have filed for bankruptcy, withstood rumors of Joe’s cheating and tabloid stories that he, or both of them, may go to jail.
But go to therapy?
Horrors no! It’s against her “values,” Teresa says.
On Sunday night’s episode, though, she eventually changed her mind.What could have gotten Teresa so desperate that she’d consider such a distasteful thing?
Well, after that ambush (her word) in last week’s episode, Teresa sees that she’s got no more friends, so she has to make peace with her family. And therapy is what brother Joe has been pushing for.
First, though, let’s go to the top of the episode and recap.
Caroline is in her Franklin Lakes kitchen. The phone rings. She tells her dog, Austin, that she’s not going to answer it. Then, she tells the camera, “At this point in time, I’m done with Teresa.”
Caroline’s brother, Chris Laurita, then brings wine to the Manzo siblings and Greg, who are in a backyard, presumably the Manzos’ place in Franklin Lakes. Chris tells them how upset Jacqueline is over her fight with Teresa. But when Jac’s done, she’s done. When she decided her previous marriage was over, he says, she “threw all his stuff on the front lawn. That’s it.”
“But now we have this trip to Napa,” Chris Laurita says. “I might have to uninvite Teresa and Joe.”
Cut to Jacqueline, who says she’s been crying non-stop over the end of the friendship.
Cut to Montville, where Juicy is being unusually solicitous of Teresa.
“How you feeling now,” he asks.
Teresa tells him that Jac was questioning her about the tabloid stories.
“I never ask Chris about his business. I never asked Al Manzo about his business,” Juicy says.
His advice: “Tell Jacqueline to shut up.” (Joe has a few standard responses to crises: “What are you gonna do?” “Who cares?” “It is what it is,” and of course, the all-purpose, “Shut up.”)
“Now, what are you going to do to move forward with this thing?” he says. “You need a new friend.”
Then, he says something shocking: “I love you.” Have we ever heard those words out of Juicy’s mouth before, at least without being prodded? Wow.
“Friends come and go,” Joe tells her. But there’s only so much patience a guy like Juicy can muster, before saying, “Tre, I heard enough already…”
Cut to cousin Kathy Wakile in Wayne, who’s working on her garden and waiting for the call she thought would never come.
She answers the cellphone and it’s cousin Teresa, wanting to meet for breakfast or lunch.
“Are there ulterior motives?” Kathysays to the camera. “I don’t know.”
But viewers, of course, do.
Teresa and Kathy go to the Garden Cafe (on Henley Ave. in New Milford), where the two reminisce about how they used to be “like sisters.” Teresa recounts how she was “ambushed” by Jacqueline and Caroline. Kathy takes out a pair of what look like fancy toddler panties that Teresa had given her daughter 17 years ago. (Did she not save any baby dresses?)
Kathy tells the camera, “Something went off in my head. Ding, ding, ding. She needs someone on her side.”
Ya think?
Cut to the Montville home of Melissa and Joe Gorga. She’s putting on makeup and getting ready for an interview with Ryan Seacrest about a remix of her song “On Display” — a phone interview that will air on his radio show. Even Joe seems perplexed by this. The call comes and either it’s a very short interview or such a bad interview that that’s all the “RHONJ” producers could salvage for the camera. But even from the little bite we hear, it’s clear that Seacrest doesn’t sound thrilled to be interviewing Melissa.
“I don’t necessarily think that Ryan likes my song, but I don’t care,” Melissa says.
Meanwhile, in another part of Montville….
Joe Giudice is perplexed.
“I can’t find the koi anymore,” he says looking in their little pond. There used to be about 100 of them and now they’re all gone, he says.
The camera focuses on a white bird standing by the pond.
“Oh, maybe the stork ate them,” says Teresa.
It’s these kind of exchanges that almost make “RHONJ” still worth watching. Almost.
Enough about the koi, though. “Even though it goes against my values,” Tre says, she wants to talk about going to therapy – something that Joe opposes. Turns out he had to go to a therapist in high school, when he was a little wild, and that person did him no good.
“Maybe this therapist can help my brother,” says Teresa, who, of course, has no issues of her own to work on.
“Does your father know you’re going to therapy,” Joe asks. “’cause I think he’ll hide his head like an ostrich.”
At this point, you have to just laugh. Does her father read the newspapers, see the supermarket tabloids, watch the show? Out of all the things that could make Mr. Gorga hide his head in shame, Joe picks therapy?
At any rate, Juicy ultimately gives her his “blessing.” But he can’t resist a parting shot at Joe Gorga. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s not your brother anymore. He’s your sister.” Okaaaaay.
And then they’re all off — to a party Joe Gorga’s throwing at Hudson Terrace in Manhattan — to celebrate the remix of Melissa Gorga’s “On Display.” (Remember, these episodes were filmed last fall, before all the stories about the Gorgas’ reported money woes started coming out in earnest.)
“I think at the end of the day, Joe just likes to have a party and put his wife on display,” Chris Manzo observes.
Clik here to view.
Joe and Melissa Gorga at the party he throws for his wife.
At the party, Kathy is talking to Jacqueline and Caroline about…who else?
“The fact that Caroline is done with Teresa, it’s very hurtful,” says Kathy, while her sister Rosie, who’s clearly been imbibing, is having a fine old time on the dance floor.
Inevitably, there’s a Teresa-Jacqueline confrontation. The former can’t seem to get that there are mutual grievances.
“Why are you always the one hurt?” Jacqueline says to T. “No one else is allowed to be hurt?” (Why is the word “narcissist” springing to mind?)
Watching this argument from the sidelines, Chris and Albie Manzo do a funny running dialogue of what they imagine the two women to be saying. (Faux Jacqueline: “If you were really mad at me, you’d throw a table in my face, right?”)
Teresa, to the camera, calls Jacqueline a “psycho bitch,” adding, “Right there , I should have punched her in the face.” (There are a couple of references in this episode to fights that Jac and Caroline that involved punches to the face. I must have been snoozing,though, ’cause I don’t recall hearing about this before. Did we?)
Later, Jacqueline tells Chris that he can still be friends with Joe Giudice, but she’s done with Teresa. “I’ve seen how she treats people, and she’s not a good person.”
After the friendship-ending showdown with Jacqueline, Teresa takes on Melissa, wanting to know why she told Danielle Staub about their family problems. (Remember that long-ago reunion show fracas over Teresa not going to the hospital to see her nephew?)
“Caroline and Jacqueline get mad at each other, they punch each other in the face,” Melissa says. “You and I get mad at each other, I talk to Danielle.”
But Teresa’s gonna be big and forgive Melissa for how she wronged her.
“I never imagined me getting along with Melissa and Kathy but fighting with Jacqueline and Caroline,” Teresa tells the camera. “Why do people have to change?”
A bit earlier, Teresa had also reiterated, “I’m hoping the therapist will make my brother realize that he’s the one with the problem.”
Preview clips from next Sunday’s episode show brother and sister in therapy. Teresa may pose as big a challenge to this therapist as Bill Murray’s character did to Richard Dreyfuss in “What About Bob?”
What about Teresa? Oh, where to begin….
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