Danielle Staub may or may not be invited back for the third season of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, but Bravo's Garden State cast still has a few more Staub-heavy episodes left in its sophomore year. Like last night's installment, which featured three Jersey Girls traipsing around their hilly homeland of Italy in stilettos, whining about their husbands and then getting drunk off of homemade wine in a pig slaughter house. Really. Meanwhile, possible evictee Danielle Staub enlisted a sleazy private eye with a basement office to track down her birth mother.
Let's enjoy the most real and most fake moments:
REAL: Yes, the Housewives Really Did Visit a Slaughterhouse Drunk
"This is how they probably hook 'em." Those were the simple words the Bravo audience heard immediately following a commercial break that likely flaunted ads for low-calorie desserts and anti-wrinkle products. "They usually slice 'er throats," declared Joe (with a paper cup full of wine in hand) as he giddily showed the cast and cameras the dimly lit shed where his family wrung the blood from animals' throats. "E'ry five minutes you hear a pig screamin' because it's gettin' killed." Raucous laughter. "And you go, oh sh*t, another pig dies." More raucous laughter.
A tipsy Jacqueline (wearing designer clothing and also carrying a paper wine glass) brandished a slaughter tool and giggled, "Bend over Joe. I'll make you screeeeeam like a pig, Joe." More raucous laughter. End scene. That might have been the most morally bankrupt moment of this entire series.
FAKE: It Was Joe's Idea For the Entire 40-Person Group (Seniors and Babies Included) to Climb the Mountains of Sala Consilina, Italy
During one chaotic pizza dinner, Joe casually mentioned that the group -- which included six people over the age of 75, two babies and three stiletto'd housewives -- would definitely be scaling the hill to his family home as per Italian tradition. Realistically, you know that Andy Cohen had been envisioning a homeland pilgrimage set to old school Italian music ever since he greenlit production on this destination episode.
Once the group finally crested the mountain, Joe's native family flew out of the house, double-kissed everyone in the group (I imagine camera operators were included), cried a few rigatoni tears, and then invited the whole party inside for a full Italian feast. Since the only shots of the elder family members came at the beginning of the walk, I think it is safe to assume that production at least allowed the senior citizens to be driven up the hill (or took them up in a helicopter that was promptly deducted from their per diem).