Guerdy pulls a baffling stunt to get back at Julia, and it sends the whole group spiraling.
Photo: Bravo

Brandi Glanville’s Disease is an acute and often incurable ailment among Housewives. Its symptoms include having the moral high ground in an argument and then doing something so egregious — accusing someone of being a drug addict; slapping someone in the face; or calling a person a name that rhymes with the best kind of cake, Bundt — that not only is the argument lost, but that person ends up looking like the villain. Not since Kelly Dodd told Tamra Judge, “It’s no wonder your daughter doesn’t talk to you,” have I seen a flare-up of BGD as bad as what Guerdy did to Julia at her celebration-of-life party.

The party, a huge spectacle for only 40 people, is intended to be a celebration of Guerdy’s victory over cancer. It starts wonderfully enough with Guerdy — in her white pleated gown that looks as though a swan is trying to 69 her — giving a lovely speech about how cancer taught her a new way to live. She’s not only celebrating that she is cancer free, but she’s also giving a check to a cancer charity to help other women like her. She thanks her husband, stone-faced angel Russell, and her two sons for helping her get through it. It’s adorable. It’s sweet. Everyone is tearing up. But she teases more to come.

Once Russell is sent home with the kids, the real stunts can begin. “I would like to shed some clarity on a situation that has cast a cloud on some of my friendship relationships and my character,” she says, taking to the mic a second time. “Tonight, I feel like it is necessary for me to set the record straight by telling the truth and exposing the lies.”

That’s when they go up on the screens behind her: all of the texts between her and Julia about this stupid cruise that none of us saw and few of us even care about. Tons of them — screens and screens of long paragraphs with a few things blocked out. Larsa, like so many of us, said that she gave up after the second sentence. What are we even looking at? What is going on here?

A producer asks Guerdy in a confessional what the smoking gun is, and she says that she was proving she didn’t ask Julia to go on this cruise with her; Julia asked her to come. Thank the Catholic Jesus there is a NeNe Leakes–reaction GIF for every occasion, and in this case I will summon up the “Uh … Okay” GIF. The thing about this fight is that this is not even one of the major points. The crux was never who asked whom to go; it was who behaved badly on the boat. Now we know that Julia asked Guerdy, but based on how Guerdy is proving her innocence, maybe she was the one who got out of line on the high seas.

We then see a flashback to 36 minutes before the big reveal, when Guerdy is talking to Russell, and he says that he had a conversation with Julia about their friendship. It is an incredibly awkward interaction, and I couldn’t tell if that’s because Russell knows Julia has been mean to his wife or if it was just Russell not saying much of anything and having very little effect. Was he being stony because he’s pissed, or was he just being, you know, himself? Anyway, Russell tells Guerdy that Julia thinks they’re making progress. Then Guerdy asks how that might be possible when they had agreed to squash their beef and not bring it up publicly, but then Julia asked about it in front of the group at Alexia’s Goddess Gathering, Which Was Definitely Not About Todd, So Please Quit Saying It, Stephanie.

Was Julia bringing it up again the infraction? If Guerdy were serious about wanting to mend things with Julia, she could have just talked to her, told her she thought it was over, and tried to set the course straight again. She could have even been a little loud about it to keep Julia in line. She says, “This was a little slap on the wrist to say, ‘Don’t fuck with me.’” You call this a slap on the wrist? That was like a slap with a wrist. It’s as if Guerdy took a zombie’s disembodied lower arm and swatted Julia in the face with it in public. The major problem is that this punishment certainly didn’t fit the crime.

During her speech, Guerdy says, “The goal from this is not to prove who is right or wrong … This, I think, will be helpful for our group and allow us to move forward in a positive, truthful manner.” She then caps it off by saying, “Now that this is out there in the open, let’s celebrate as I present to you Rocky Lanes.” Yes, she’s going from a receipts display to a shirtless contortionist named Rocky Lanes, which sounds like the name of a drag queen who shows up onstage on a Rascal with two flat tires.

She is misstating her goal here. It was obvious that she was right and Julia was wrong or she never would have done it. Also, she thinks this is going to move the group forward in a positive and truthful manner? This is going to curdle the dynamics for the rest of the season. This is going to make the vibes positively rancid. Marysol immediately says that this is dirty and she doesn’t like it. Julia, rightfully, says it’s in bad taste. Larsa wonders why Guerdy is bringing all these other people at the party into a feud they will have no idea about. Stephanie says the night is supposed to be about surviving cancer and it shouldn’t be about settling scores. Dame Brian Moylan says if you are going to do it, then you should be off-book and not reading from your phone, because it makes you not only look petty but also like an idiot.

Marysol, Alexia, Julia, and Larsa all decide to leave the party and congregate out front to hash it out further. Marysol says that it was a public humiliation, and she is right. That’s the problem here. There is no going back from this. What Guerdy did to Julia was so public, so outsize, so dirty that Julia is never going to be her friend again. This is what she decided to end it over: Julia asking a hot life coach a stupid question?

That’s the problem. Guerdy was totally in the right here. I believed that Julia was the one who was a jerk on the cruise. Julia threw water on her and had an outrageous reaction when Guerdy tried to discuss it with the group. Julia was wrong when she brought it up again. Guerdy has done nothing here but be right, but her BGD destroyed it all. Now all they’re going to remember is her putting private texts on a very public screen.

There is also the cooling effect that this is going to have on the show. Alexia says she doesn’t like text messages, and she follows the old Dorinda Medley adage “Say it, forget it. Write it, regret it.” But after Guerdy did that to Julia, now she’s not going to text any of the women. There will be no receipts for any of them to post on the wall or print out in a binder and bring to the reunion. If all communications between the women are susceptible to airing out, they might stop communicating entirely.

It’s also already causing chaos with the women. Stephanie tells them she wants to hear Guerdy’s side and remain neutral, and Alexia freaks out and accuses her of kissing Guerdy’s ass. Stephanie immediately takes umbrage with that, as she should, but then we quickly learn that Alexia is really just mad that Stephanie keeps talking about Alexia’s pending non-divorce from Todd. Well, of course she does; they’re all talking about it. Alexia asks her if they should talk about Stephanie’s husband, and that is so dumb that you would think it’s from a Jim Carrey movie. Why should they talk about Stephanie’s husband? Did he file for divorce, move all of his things out of the house in secret, not go through with the divorce, then try to win her back? Of course they’re all talking about Todd. He’s an asshole who is torturing this poor woman. If I were friends with Alexia, it’s all I would be talking about too.

Adriana, who wrongly has Guerdy’s back in all of this, goes outside and tells her friend Julia to get out her text messages. Why should she do that? They’re the same messages with the blue bubbles on the other side of the screen. She tells Julia to tell her side of the story, to get her truth out there. But this isn’t about the truth, and it’s not even about the text messages; it’s about the tactics. Julia is proving that she’s not going to fight dirty, that she’s above this. She’s now, miraculously, in the right. She has the upper hand on Guerdy, who is inside saying, “It’s my party. I can do whatever I want.” She’s not wrong. She could get up and take a big steaming dump in the middle of the stage (another symptom of BGD), but that doesn’t mean people have to like it or that it’s even going to serve her.

This is the same rationale that Kenya Moore used at her disastrous salon opening, where she displayed posters of Brit Eady doing intimate things. I can see how the ladies would want to steal the spotlight at their event. This gives them a chance with a microphone to get their case out to the other women without interruption, derailing, or backbiting. This is also what’s wrong with it: It is shatteringly public. It doesn’t allow the other party to speak. It’s a conviction without due process and is therefore humiliating for that person to sit through. Now that we’ve seen two of these in a year, hopefully the ladies will learn that they don’t work because they are riddled with BGD. It inverts the aggrieved party so that as it ends, we’re not thinking about Guerdy and her triumph — we’re thinking about Julia and her perfect wet-look hair. We’re thinking about her calling Martina and pleading in her softest voice for her not to go to sleep because she’ll need venting and counsel when she gets home. We think about her walking to her car, getting in the back seat, and crumpling into tears that are as rooted in anger as they are in sadness. We think about her staring out the window, a new shadow soaring across her face as she passes each street light, thinking that each second that she’s closer to her own bed is a little bit of salvation.

VULTURE NEWSLETTER

Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!

Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice