‘Real Housewives of Orange County’ review: Tamra Barney and wine wars

Before Monday night’s “Real Housewives of Orange County” episode even started, there was one question that we admittedly were thinking about rather heavily: How much would the show continue to regurgitate the fight between Tamra Barney and Alexis Bellino from the gym opening?

Well, let’s start with the good news. They managed to move on! Sort of. Instead, Tamra found a new person to become angry at in Vicki Gunvalson, who fought with her over a Wines for Wives event gone horribly awry. The truth about these two is that, as we have seen in real life, we do think they have a real friendship. Unfortunately, their peaks and valleys in that are so much harsher than most. Being on a reality show is certainly not good for them, given that they are surrounded with people who are of course going to try and undercut their friendship at every turn.

The biggest piece of advice that we could give to them? To run far away from this show if you can. Considering that this is not going to happen, you can probably just expect instead for there to be a Tom & Jerry-esque series of fights that take place over things that are completely ridiculous. We actually understand the fight about them distributing the work in their wine business evenly.

On a different note, there was tension surrounding relationships all across the board here. In addition to Tamra / Eddie butting heads a little bit more, Heather had a whole “you don’t know how hard this is!” speech about the children, since she feels as though she does the bulk of the actual work. Meanwhile, we found out much more about Lydia McLaughlin’s mother, and how her past shaped her into the woman that she is. It was not really about the drama for her, but rather a nice chance to actually get to know the latest member of the cast better.

This all made for an entertaining episode, and one that makes us think that we are finally on the right track again. Do you agree? Of course, we want to hear from you below. Also, be sure to pop over here if you want to watch more clips from this episode.

Photo: Bravo