Right, so The Real Housewives of Melbourne Reunion Show kicks off with the housewives arriving at the studio, with, shock horror, no makeup on and wait for it…wet hair. I know. I could hardly believe it either. They all hit the hair and makeup chairs where we watch each housewife debrief with their makeup artist, who listens attentively applies more mascara as each gal chats about how nervous and anxious they are.
Once the transformations are complete and the wet hair is long gone, we join the housewives on set with host Alex Perry, who doesn’t muck around with any boring introductions and gets straight into all the reunion action. It’s here, in the first five minutes of the show, that we discover Chyka finds it strange that randoms now want to get their photo taken with her at the supermarket, Janet’s son is doing really well after his terrible accident, Jackie hasn’t been doing much goat whispering lately, Gina’s half way through writing a book, Lydia’s graduated from her Interior Design course and Andrea has become an expert at managing twitter trolls.
We then watch the housewives watch snippets of the show for the very first time, a scene that finishes with Alex Perry asking Jackie a very in-depth and insightful question, “Jackie do you think you’re a cashed up bogan?” (FYI: she doesn’t think she’s a cashed up bogan, she just thinks Andrea called her that because Jackie said the Liberty Belle party was “f*&king boring” so I’m glad we got that sorted.)
Next up, AP focuses on the the housewives fashion sense and it’s here that we learn Chyka “loves fashion”, Lydia’s “very Melbourne” in her style, Gina’s “a bit more conservative” (um, okay then), Andrea thinks it’s “nice to buy a nice tight dress and look sexy for your husband” (thanks for that visual), Jackie loves “mixing high end fashion with high street fashion” and Janet can “buy anything” she wants (half her luck). AP then asks the housewives a Viewer Question: “What’s the most expensive outfit you own?” Which is a tie between Janet, who spent $5,500 on a dress a few weeks ago and Gina, who owns a $5,500 handbag. Andrea came in at third place with a pair of $800 shoes that are five years old, so that was a bit awkward for everyone.
There was then a fairly odd focus on Lydia and her obsession with talking about sex, where she tells us all sorts of sex based wisdom such as, “There’s more options if you go both ways.” This was followed up with Bruce sending Chyka a video message from Boston, where he gave all the housewives clever little nicknames like “The Juggler” (Andrea, because she’s juggling so many balls…his words, not mine) and “The Ringmaster” (Chyka, because only she could manage all the big personalities) so that was both clever AND thoughtful of Brucey.
We then watch footage of Andrea’s time on the show, where she repeatedly tells us she’s a working mother who works 40 hours a week and is very time poor. Unlike all the other working mothers out there I’m guessing. Andrea then tells AP that she doesn’t have five nannies. They are in fact “five university students that she can call on at any time of the day.” Yep, having five uni students who can look after your kids at the drop of a botox filled hat sounds COMPLETELY different to having five actual nannies. In fact, I might go and do a bit of a drive past my local uni tomorrow and see if I can drum up 5 random students to come and look after my kids on a rotating basis. Nothing weird about that. It’s actually quite a sensible approach to outsourcing pesky mothering duties such as supervising homework and making school lunches.
Andrea then became very emotional when telling us “once upon a time our bank accounts were in overdraft” which was kind of weird, partly because her tears came out of nowhere but mostly because she was crying about money. I mean, I don’t know what the poor love would do if she ever saw my credit card statement. She’d probably need some form of sedation to get over the lack of money I have left on that thing. But then Andrea went onto say she was crying because “people don’t get it. For people to say on social media ‘she’s got five nannies’ it’s so wrong. I have five confident people who I trust to look after my children.”
So she wasn’t crying over money after all. What a relief. Because how awkward would it be to have an entire nation of unorganised, checklist free, not very hard working mothers think you were sobbing over BEING POOR. Fark. Book sales would plummet. Thank god Andrea clarified she was tearing up because her nannies aren’t nannies. They’re uni students. Pretending to be nannies. So I guess that makes them Faux Nannies. Or Fannies for short.
But back to the reunion. So it’s about now that AP notices Gina going in hard with the eye rolling and calls her on it. Gina denies any eye rolling action, which AP comes back with “um, we just got it on camera.” Ouch. That’s gotta hurt. Except it doesn’t. Instead Gina tells AP that Andrea has “started a campaign against me” and actually used the words “hashtag vulgar mouth”, which apparently is something Andrea threw around on twitter. Andrea and Gina go at it for a bit before AP interrupts them to show a recap of Gina’s time on the show, where she calls Lydia and prostitute and Jackie a foul mouth bogan. So that was nice.
We then watch footage of Jackie’s time on the show, which focused on her friendship with Janet (“It was a soul sister connection”) and the run in that Jackie had with Gina back in Episode Two. The two of them go at it for a while before Andrea chimes in with, “Gina is one of the most vulgar people I’ve had the misfortune of ever speaking to” to which Gina cleverly replies with, “You’re an insignificant arse hair.” Which, I have to say, is a term I’m not familiar with, so it was refreshing to hear something new.
AP then adds a bit of fuel to the fire by asking Andrea a Viewer Question, “If you dislike Gina so much, why do you care what she says about you?” Andrea craps on about why she doesn’t care before dramatically pulling a piece of paper out from the cushion behind her. OMG CAN YOU FEEL THE TENSION IN THE ROOM? SAME! I mean, what’s in the email? It must be something good for Andrea to HIDE IT BEHIND A CUSHION.
So Andrea reads the email and it’s to the producers from Gina. I KNOW. I’M SITTING ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT TOO. Basically the email involves Gina telling the producers that her partner did not sign up for the show and as such does not want to be discussed on the show. AP asks Andrea, “So what is your issue with the email?” to which Andrea replies, “It was unnecessary to send. It was completely unnecessary to CC Lydia and I in on it.” Yes, you’re right. That is a HUGE issue. One so big that even Chyka weighs in on it. She sensibly tells the housewives that the email was probably just a mis-understanding. Gina agrees and apologises. Andrea accepts the apology. And then launches into another fairly heated discussion about Gina.
AP tries his best to calm things down a bit, but fails miserably. So we’re shown a sneak peak of the next Real Housewives of Melbourne Reunion Show instead, highlights of which include Figaro leaping up onto the couch (how clever!) and Jackie walking off set because she feels “physically ill” (how dramatic!) Can.Not.Wait.
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