By ANDREA HIGBIE
"I don't want us to become mean girls," Aviva tells Heather and Carole after the Countess dives into their lunch meeting and informs them that Ramona is threatening to blackmail her.
"No, we're never!" says Heather.
Yeah, right.
Last night, in this fifth season's second episode of "The Real Housewives of New York" the Countess LuAnn de Lesepps and Ramona Singer met up at Central Park to exchange some dull dialogue -- "Apologize!" "I won't apologize! You apologize!" "No, you apologize!" -- before Ramona distracted herself by admiring her shiny nails. Snapping back to business, she barked, "I can't think of one thing I like about you."
And then they ended, aka paused, in a truce, of sorts.
The Countess contended last week that Ramona threatened to blackmail her after the Countess held a party for her 15-year-old son, Noel, where a classmate passed out. Previously, there was some back and forth about her 17-year-old daughter, Victoria, and drugs. And, most to the point, the topic of the Countess's parenting. Good mother or bad? Ramona says bad, very bad.
The Countess believes otherwise.
She did hold a showing last week of Victoria's artwork, heavy on the skulls and nude bodies though it is.
Since the truce with Ramona has been called, the Countess took it upon herself in last night's episode to badger Noel about not doing well in his French class, seizing this as an opportunity to remind all of us out in TV Land that she speaks French, as does her mini-David Schwimmer boyfriend (though his accent has always seemed suspicious at best).
Since the de Lesseps children speak French, that speaks highly of the Countess as a maman, n'est pas?
So the Countess counts this all as a win. Except for the fact that one of the new "Housewives" is Carole Radziwill, as in Princess Carole.
Hmm. Princess trumps countess. Especially since the prince is deceased while the count left his wife for another.
On the downside for Carole, who at least does not insist that she be addressed as "the Princess," unlike LuAnn insisting that she be introduced, especially to the underclasses, as "the Countess" -- why not the Maestro? -- is that after telling Aviva Drescher (the only one of the "Housewives," so far, to show no downside, except that her husband is Fran Drescher's cousin) during a shopping trip that she and her current boyfriend have an open relationship, she fails to pick up a looker in the shop.
Worse still, Carole fails to get the answers she wants from that boyfriend, Russ Irwin, in Aerosmith, and after failing to find out what goes on with the groupies after shows, she tries to coerce him into titling a song "To Carole, With Love." And then she references the 1967 Sidney Poitier movie, "To Sir, With Love." And he doesn't get it. Or acknowledge it.
"Would you let me sing background on one of your songs?" Carole asks, pleads, perhaps hoping to get that promise signed and sealed on TV.
No answer.
Oh, well.
Sonja Morgan missed her cue when she was awarded with something or other at a GLAAD event last night, but she did not miss the opportunity to announce, as usual, that she was wearing no panties. Presumably, she went home alone.
A sex kitten in her own mind, Sonja didn't do much better with the contractor at her crumbling Manhattan townhouse. Not even when she wriggled -- "I'm just fixin' my skinny jeans!" -- or giggled, making it clear that she can't call on her ex-husband, as in FORMER HUSBAND, HE'S NO LONGER AROUND, for help.
With all this failure, it was refreshing to see Heather Thomson giving a party, though it was also a sort of a memorial for her recently deceased father.
Yet sadder than sending off a loved one is sending him off in a second home in the second-rate Berkshires, while loudly, so very, very loudly, singing the area's praises.
"It's peaceful, and it's unpretentious and it's real," Heather says.
If there were a thought bubble? It would read, "Just a few seasons of this damned show, and it's off to the Hamptons."
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Victoria de Lesseps' ArtworkTHE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK CITY SEASON 5PHOTO DIARIES -
Say What You Mean, Just Don't Say It Mean: Most Amazing MomentsTHE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK CITY SEASON 5EPISODE: 2AMAZING MOMENTS GALLERIE
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