Far, Far Away

S05E03

Teresa is driving with my BFF Kim D., who explains to her what the solstice is and asks how things are going. Teresa immediately tells her about the clearly horrible thing she off-handedly said about Melissa to Joe and of course delusional Kim eggs her on. They get to the party, where Jacqueline's psychic, while drinking a beer (or perhaps white wine), is telling two grown women dressed as fairies to hand out bindis to the guests. The fairies, who are already visibility humiliated, decorate Teresa and Kim, and then Jacqueline, Lauren, Caroline and Melissa. They ladies are split up between two tables, Caroline tells us how much she hates Teresa, and now Kathy and Rosie are ready to party.

Within seconds, Rosie's bindi is already off, and now apparently powerless to her desires, she pulls Teresa aside and brings up the Melissa comment. Clearly the editing monkeys have very little to work with this season. Kim, meanwhile, probes Melissa about her "singing" "career," but no one can be distracted from Rosie and Teresa's conversation. They sit and we rehash things yet again, this time with Kathy at Table Melissa and Jacqueline at Table Teresa. The only interesting thing that comes out of this is Jacqueline finally saying, verbatim, "Go fucking talk to her yourself!"

Thankfully, everyone moves to one table so that Melissa and Teresa can talk about this bullcrap. Teresa whines that Joe never called her when Juicy was locked up. Melissa reiterates that Teresa denied all of the other times her family was in trouble. She then uses the world "jail," and Teresa storms off, as she cannot immediately think of how to lie her way out of this conversation, citing that she told Melissa to never use the "j" word in front of her. Kim and the psychic try to stop her from leaving, but Teresa ain't having it. I guess she will not be happy to learn that Melissa's EP this spring is ironically titled "Jailbreak My Body."

Obligatory "fun" segment: Rosie introduces herself to someone either named Jolene or Julie Anne or something with a J and a N sound and is received with a bout of 'tude. Kathy tells us Rosie doesn't have patience for airheads. Great.

Back to Teresa stomping to her car. Kim is trying to talk her down, and the ladies at the party are going over the details with Melissa yet again. Everyone is freaking out -- especially the psychic, for some reason! -- and Jacqueline walks over to Teresa, yelling at her for putting her in the middle and manipulating the situation. We hear both sides of the story, and surprisingly, Kathy is kind of with Teresa on this one -- it's kind of an old school Jersey thing, apparently, to say going "away" instead of "to jail," as a matter of pride and respect. Lauren then chimes in with another old school Jersey-ism, "If you're gonna say anything she doesn't want to hear, you have to suck on her asshole first, and then she'll listen to what it is," which I believe Deena from Jersey Shore can confirm.

And speak of the devil, here are the Gorgas now! And the Wakiles, too! Jacqueline tells the cameras that Joe is insecure and Teresa is playing with fire, and then we all go downstairs to say hello and kiss each other's tan cheeks while Juicy and Rich have a stare-off in sunglasses.

Over at the Manzo mansion, Lauren is making a breakfast shake while Caroline talks to her about the new diet. Day one was a killer, as any Biggest Loser contestant will confirm. (Just don't try to run a mile, girl!) Did you know that in the span of this one day of this weight loss journey, she's somehow lost five pounds, went shopping and fit into two different size eights? Caroline's like, "You go girl!" And Lauren is like, "I am losing this weight because I believe that you'd be as openly proud of me as you are of Albie and Chris if I was skinny... and rich! I also want to be rich," to which Caroline replies, "You go girl! The boys have this excellent black water that should help with all of those things you just said, probably."

Back at the Shore, Rosie's here! Oh Rosie, you so crazy. Everyone is heading off to the boat, which Rich jokes might soon be repossessed, and the little kids go off to play in the middle of the street as Aunt Rosie supervises. The Giudice girls throw themselves into traffic more than once. The adults shoot the shit, with Melissa revealing off-camera that she likes Jacqueline but doesn't like-like her because she's stupid enough to be Teresa's friend. And then Jacqueline spills the beans about Caroline's budding menopause, which Teresa clearly finds delightful, as "that explains why she's been such a bitch lately."

I can't be bothered with that ridiculous assertion, because PIZZA IS HERE for the kids. Gia cries that Antonia hates her and Rosie forces the girls to hug. Hilariously, Kathy's grown children are bored out of their goddamn minds. I kid you not when I say Joseph, 15, is literally just ripping apart a napkin at this point.

Some drinks later, Teresa is going on about how fabuliciously charming it is that Caroline has menopause, which even Juicy is smart enough to realize needs to stop. Instead, he goes the route of bringing up his black eye. Everyone puts the Giudices in their impossibly already low places, which Joe points out is a long time coming.

Manzo mansion. Lauren and her boyfriend are cooking a delicious stuffed chicken dish for everyone, and a meal of one single strip of lettuce for her. Poppa Albert, for some ungodly reason, is like, "Look at the bright side, you fatty! If you two have kids, they're also going to be fat!" and everyone laughs but is slightly horrified... though Caroline makes it a point to tell us that she really believes her daughter needs to lose weight. Jesus Christ. I'd like to point out that even Danielle Staub wouldn't say this kind of crap about her kids, and you know damn well Dina would never say an unkind word about Lexi or Grandma Wrinkles. Now Chris and Albie chime in about how obese and grotesque Lauren and Vito are, and it's met with great fanfare. Lauren tells us how much she hates herself and then awkwardly announces to her family that she thinks Vito is interested in other women. Sinking lower, Caroline smiles and says to her daughter's boyfriend, "You're allowed to look, Vito!" Fortunately, the conversation turns to Albie's new love interest, and then everyone takes a turn hugging him and telling him how strong his abs are.

The Shore cruise is now a night cruise. Jacqueline is clearly drunk and trying to make everyone play nice. Dr. Melissa Gorga is tries to explain Jacqueline's psyche, which will no doubt be the inspiration to this summer's big dance hit, "The Pressures (of Being Teresa's Friend)." Fortunately for all, the boat docks so that this madness can end, just as Rosie is this close to drowning all of the little kids.

The day, Jacqueline and Caroline are donning all-white for some sort of solstice party that Jacqueline's psychic told her to have in order to rid all of the bad energy in her life. 'Kay. Caroline asks for the dirt about last night, and Jacqueline immediately comes clean about telling everyone about her menopause, preemptively squashing any beef that might have come from Caroline hearing about it from anyone else. Was that so hard? Melissa then shows up and talks about Teresa's rude gold digger comment. Blah blah blah, Teresa is an idiot, "Unless there's blood dripping down my face, you get a pass." (To all my fellow Parks and Recreation fans: Sometimes when I watch this show, I feel like Ben Wyatt listening to Joan Callamezzo.)

Anywho, apparently Joe says horrible and probably actually true shit to Teresa all the time about Juicy, so in her mind trading these kind of comments is just what they do as siblings. It's revealed that what's really going on here is that everyone knows that Juicy is cheating on Teresa -- Joe is even texting Juicy about it, at this point -- and Teresa is desperately trying to find a way to soften the blow and spin the Juicy stories into run-of-the-mill gossip. Jacqueline finally gets it, and goes to retrieve Melissa. This should go over well.

Teresa tells us she won't apologize. Melissa tells us she is over playing nice. After more rehashing and Teresa tripping over her words, it's obvious that Melissa is about to reach her boiling point, and coincidentally, her single for summer 2014 is actually called "Boiling Point." Teresa will not stop talking about Melissa potentially cheating on Joe and then weirdly start imitating her voice. It really just goes downhill and becomes painfully obvious that Teresa is taking out all of her Juicy frustration on her sister-in-law. Melissa is milking this shit to the point that she is clearly just as awful as a person as Teresa (if not worse, as Potes has stated). Also, they're still wearing their bindis, which makes this all seem that much awesomely trashier.

In case you're wondering, Caroline and Kathy are talking about how terrible Teresa is.

Now Teresa and Melissa are yelling at each other how wonderful Joe is, and Melissa's like, "He's so great, I actually just wrote a song called 'So Great (My Man)' and it will hit iTunes after this conversation!" Somehow divorce gets brought up amongst other nonsense and Melissa calls Teresa "Miss Matriarch," which is also coincidentally the name of her upcoming album, I think. Melissa screams at Teresa to finally just apologize to her, Teresa calls her a bitch, both of their voices get really high, Teresa calls Joe out on not being confident, Melissa says she doesn't want to get in between the siblings and it's more of the same until Teresa totally gets pushed into a corner when Melissa calls her out on not buying her kids birthday gifts. Busted, Teresa flips over her car and starts screaming, "PROSTITUION WHORE!"

Seriously though, she tries to calls Melissa materialistic and totally fails (since she's the one who started the fight about buying presents for the children), and then she's reduced to once again imitating her voice in the most infuriating way possible, backpedaling and compares talking to her with conversing with a wall. Melissa calls her a coward, and for some reason, this comment is the final straw. Teresa gets all up in Melissa's face. God, the fact that neither woman knows how to win this argument shows you how terrible they both are at everything. Then in my favorite moment of the episode, Kim slithers out from the shadows for a moment and Melissa is like, "Go back to your hole, snake woman! Also, that's the name of my new fragrance line hitting CVS pharmacies this winter!"

Melissa goes to collect her posse while Teresa gets in her car to talk about the fight with Kim, blaming everything on her brother. Everyone's screaming at each other in the parking area, mostly in Teresa's general direction about talking to her stupid brother herself. Teresa asks if he's at home, and Melissa's like, "I have no idea," to which Teresa smugly replies, "Oh you don't know where your husband is?" Melissa backfires some sarcasm and says how embarrassed she is about all of this drama. At least she realizes she's part of the problem, right?

week: Manzo brothers are rewarded for being so perfect, Jacqueline Skypes with Ashley(e) and more rehashing about the gold digger comment... which, if you can believe it, "Rehashing" will be the name of the Melissa Gorga Denny's omelet special in participating restaurants for the week. Bon appétit!