Real Housewives of New Jersey Finale: What The...?

Turns out that the season finale of the Real Housewives of New Jersey was a ratings home run. 4.6 million people tuned in to watch crazy lady Teresa flip a table on sketchy and controversial Danielle. Bravo.

I knew we were in trouble early in the episode when Teresa announced that she was having a housewarming party at a restaurant (which seemed to defeat the purpose of a housewarming party, but I digress) and she announced that she would be inviting Danielle. Because Jacqueline is friends with her. Right...Teresa tells us "Do I want to be friends with her? No. But I'm not a rude person." Which is pronounced "The producers made me invite her so there would be drama. Done and done.

Second indicator that we were in trouble - we see Danielle sitting with her daughters showing them some pictures from her modeling days. The pictures are blurred out so we do the math on our own. Danielle tells her children that her "modeling days were a little hedonistic at times" and then starts telling her daughters' about "the book" - the publishers of this book have got to be loving all the free publicity. Danielle describes this as damage control and proceeds to tell her daughters that there's a book that they will be hearing a lot about in the next few months and that they should not listen to everything they hear. We see Danielle tell the camera that she was stripper, has changed her name and was arrested. We don't see her tell her kids this but we can assume she has prepped them privately.

Most of the episode was fairly boring, so let's cut to the chase. The dinner was phenomenal in that "schadenfraude" sort of way that makes you appreciate that your life is not quite as dysfunctional as some people out there. Things start innocently enough. We see all the housewives minus Danielle gathered around Teresa's new bubbies and everyone seems to be having a good time. Then Danielle arrives and with her arrival the temperature in the room just dropped at least 30 degrees. The tension is as thick as Danielle's ex-boytoy Steve. The women make small talk for a bit and suddenly we notice "the book" sitting on the table in front of Danielle.

A few minutes earlier, the camera caught Danielle entering the party with a small black clutch. Clearly too small to carry "the book" around in. It makes me wonder about these shows and how much "reality" is actually involved. I'm just saying.

Danielle confronts the women about not coming to her before assuming that the things in the book are true. She says that there are a lot of lies in the book and the only things that are truth are that she was arrested and that she changed her name. She seems to have forgotten the stripper part she admitted to ealier in the episode. Oh well.

At some point Caroline assumes the role of the referee. She suggests that the kids be taken out of the room before the situation escalates any further. Teresa's children are removed, Danielle allows her children to witness what follows. Caroline cops to showing everyone the book even though Danielle has pointed the finger at Dina. Dina asks Jacqueline to back her up and Jacqueline does the opposite and completely throws her under the bus. She says she's not going to cover for Dina anymore and calls Dina a liar.

Teresa says that there must be some truth to the book and then it seems that she starts speaking in tongues. Most of what she says is unintelligible. The phrase "prostitution whore" is mentioned - seems a bit redundant -and that's when the table starts flying. Literally. Teresa gets up and attempts to flip the table over and we see her shove one of Caroline's sons away from her when he attempts to restrain her. Her husband Joe, who seems almost amused by the whole thing, pulls her off to the side until she calms down. Which she does. Approximately two seconds later.

It was quite the eventful evening for the housewives. There have been many episodes of Real Housewives of other locations that have been juicy, but this one absolutely takes the cake. If this is any indication of what we're in for on the reunion show...we better hope that everyone has had all their shots!