The Real Housewives of New Jersey is dead. Just like the rental home the ladies tried to visit for their canceled cast trip, the show is just rubble, the remains of what was once a signature Bravo franchise. At least it went out in spectacular fashion.
The Season 14 finale is the most intense and salacious episode RHONJ has aired in years. It’s a beautiful disaster that almost justifies the wildly uneven, narratively inconsequential season that preceded it. Almost. It’s nearly impossible to imagine anything beyond this. Then again, Pixar made Toy Story 4 (soon to be five!) and, somehow, Avengers: Endgame wasn’t the end of the Marvel experiment, so who knows?
The structure of the episode is classic, building up to a final group sit-down at the perfect setting: a rustic Italian steakhouse in the heart of Jersey. Although Dolores hopes the relaxing energy of the rustling train and exposed brick will bring good energy to balance out the toxicity emitting from the group, that’s nowhere near the case. In fact, the most beautiful thing about the finale is that just about every cast member is buried alive by the end of it, too deep into their own despair to even attempt saving face, leaving the show in such immense devastation that it actually feels Shakesperian.
If you think the finale vindicated Teresa, you surely have been hugging that tree as hard as you can for 14 seasons now, and I wish you well following her to whatever endeavors await (next up: House of Villains, then The Traitors). And if you think Margaret left the finale in good shape, well, that’s an artistic interpretation.
The veil has been pulled all the way back and it actually has been made clear why Bravo canceled the traditional reunion. Put Andy at the end of the table and you’d have functionally the same thing, albeit with some interruptions and a detour to discuss the lady pond. To be fair to Andy, though, he wouldn’t ditch the reunion when the drama heats up as Jenn Fessler did, although her approach is admittedly funnier.
The sit-down is preceded by a bizarre meeting between Dolores and Margaret, the former coming straight from Teresa’s failed legal event. While Teresa was unable to provide anything shocking or salacious to us viewers, her lukewarm tea did reverberate enough to shake up Dolores, who questions how long Margaret has been in contact with Luis’ exes.
Although Dolores stays chill when she learns Margaret has contacted the ex, though allegedly only in the last year, things go left when Margaret claims she invited Dolores to last year’s pre-reunion planning session. It’s here that the alarm goes off in Dolores’ head and she realizes Margaret is a liar. Dolores, serving as the episode’s protagonist, is thereby guiding us to lose trust in Margaret, after the last episode thoroughly shanked Teresa. The dueling ladies have both been destroyed by themselves, having successfully avoided each other all season, so you can’t even blame one for the other’s downfall, at this point.
That serves as a great precursor to the ominous final lunch, hosted by Dolores in a last-ditch attempt to save this fractured group. Everything about the lunch is so wonderful. It’s a disaster in the most exciting way, cementing the group’s destruction while also proving their worth. It becomes clear almost immediately that the lunch won’t amount to anything, when Teresa enters the room and refuses to sit across from Marge. Although she relents, the tensions continue escalating as Dolores gives the floor to Jennifer and Danielle. That should be the easiest feud to resolve here, logically speaking, so it makes sense to start small and dream big later.
Unfortunately for Dolores, that immediately goes south, as Danielle throws jabs at Jennifer’s home with 18 bathrooms but no decor or love, while Jennifer attacks Danielle’s husband’s man boobs. Jokes on Jennifer, as Nate’s burly chest is hot and clearly she’s noticed, but it does rile Danielle up to lunge at Jennifer, tossing plates (and perhaps a pitcher?) in front of her.
It’s a nice full-circle moment, given RHONJ Season 1 ended with Teresa’s table throw, so it’s always cool to have that kind of parallel. It’s also poignant that this one serves more as a death knell to the show, while the original was basically the entire reason we’re here today.
The drama escalates so high that Teresa and Melissa break their cold war. Teresa shouting “whore!” while Melissa smirks and retorts “white trash” is somehow the most visceral we’ve ever seen the two display their hatred, and a really nasty moment. You can almost see Melissa’s elation that this is all on camera, meaning Teresa’s high road approach has gone down in flames. Yet, whatever vindication could come Melissa’s way is invalidated by the decade of history we have with her, as she’s spent the better part of her run eagerly awaiting Teresa’s downfall, unaware that fall from grace would take her right down, too.
Frazzled, Jenn Fessler exits the scene in a state of trauma, leaving with her dignity intact, but it leaves her presence more of a blip on the finale. Maybe that’s a good thing given the state of conclusivity to it all. It’s fitting that this cast’s voice of reason has to flee the scene, and almost too on the nose.
When all the ladies return to the table, Margaret finally takes on Teresa. Admitting she has spoken to Luis’ ex, but claiming it was only after the Season 13 reunion (something that invalidates her earlier timeline), Margaret wants to make it very clear that she didn’t leak details of Luis’ sordid past to the press.
It’s a rinse and repeat we’ve heard many times before, until a real bomb is dropped right onto the table. Margaret reveals that it wasn’t her who first contacted the ex, but Jackie, who had conspired with her years ago amid the airing of Season 11. I truly gasped.
Everything about Jackie has been such a Greek tragedy this year. It’s a devastating end to her run, made worse by the fact she couldn’t even snatch a full time role amid this immense humiliation. What a fitting end that Jackie tries and fails to say she never met with the ex for a minute, only to finally reveal she did, before shouting “Shut up!” at Melissa and Margaret like an embarrassed sibling who just got ratted out to her parents.
There’s no going back for Jackie, no returning to her days as the common sense Housewife who’s a lawyer to boot—and has one kickass life! Jackie Goldschneider is being added to Merriam Webster’s dictionary as we speak, defined as “a Housewife who is tarred, feathered, and left with nothing, all in the search of some convoluted lust for fame even she can’t entirely grasp.” It’s quite a shame as Jackie’s far from the worst person to grace our screens. Really, the embarrassment of Jackie comes from the fact she’s so earnest in her desires, yet was unwilling to step away when they started to compromise her vision.
All Jackie gets is a sullen exit out of the restaurant, alone as the other ladies talk about her like the ringleader of a masterful operation and not just a Desperate Housewife. While we can break out a tiny violin for Jackie’s devastating end, it’s also one that will cement her legacy far more than a graceful end ever could. We won’t forget you Jackie, even if Bo Dietl did. I can hear Mary Alice Young narrating your exit now, queen.
Every Housewife hits a perfect note at the lunch, really. From Teresa making Danielle’s outburst about her own beef with Margaret, to Jennifer chanting “She’s! Aggressive! She. Is. Aggressive!” like a disturbed cheerleader, to Marge sending Jackie down the river then asking her, “What else have you put in the media, you little fucking snake?” like a pissed-off mob boss about to send her to slaughter, it’s all amazing.
The feeling of heaviness as Dolores sits alone in the steakhouse is truly something. Dolores says she views the whole situation as a death, and really, what else could it be?
Here it is, the corpse of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Never has a reality show had as crisp and poignant an end as this, truly a masterful episode front-to-back that will inevitably become a staple in Housewives history.
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