The Real Housewives of New Jersey is in a most precarious state. We’ve suffered from the same cast for 873 years, and change is strictly forbidden in the bylaws of the Teresa/Melissa hierarchy.
But a Trojan Horse has arrived to save the day. A brash queen who’s not threatened by the strictly drawn team lines, with a sense of humor long lost on this humorless show, Jenn Fessler is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise tepid season. And she’s doing all that as a friend-of the Housewives.
There may be little praise worth giving the slow-starting Season 14 thus far, as the status quo remains firmly intact, and both sides of the Teresa/Melissa chasm are making solid cases to be booted before Bravo gives the show a fresh set of paint next year. But Jenn has existed on the periphery of this divide since she joined the show last season, managing to avoid the teams mentality that has doomed the franchise.
That’s making her presence a lifeboat in this time of need, Jenn somehow becoming the best player on the show simply by filming with everyone involved. Jenn’s funny, fresh, doesn’t take herself too seriously, and can spar without seeming rehearsed. She’s everything you’d want in a New Jersey Housewife. It’s interesting that Bravo introduced her alongside Rachel Fuda and Danielle Cabral, two full-time Housewives with noticeably less screen presence, and relegated Jenn to a life in the shadows.
Is she too slay? Is she too effervescent? Does her presence set off the divamometer to a level never seen before? Even Bravo’s horrified. Frankenstein’s monster has been created, and she can’t be given a hand on her hip in the poorly edited intro, lest she be too powerful.
Of course, while Ms. Fessler is a fan favorite over here, some of her castmates want to nail her on the cross like Jesus was (and he did nothing wrong). In last week’s episode, Jenn committed a cardinal sin: She spoke to Teresa. While it was simply an attempt to play peacemaker and salvage this untenable group dynamic (no doubt at the desperate producers’ beckoning), Rachel and Marge beg to differ. In their eyes, Jenn’s a flip-flopper who’s trying to buddy up to the Queen of New Jersey as she’s tired of life as a jester.
It’s kind of a self-own, really. The best thing anyone can ever do to Teresa is just let her speak and act on her own, as she doesn’t need to self-produce or be manipulated to show her worst traits. That’s why she makes the big bucks!
As a friend-of, Jenn’s in the perfect role to be a facilitator. Once upon a time, friends were background characters on Bravo, expected to do little more than eat bows off Heather Dubrow’s cake. But in the era of Adriana de Moura, the friend title is no longer an insult. Some wear it like a badge of honor, and Jenn’s certainly making a case for herself in the friend-of pantheon. She’s smart to realize that her best bet this year is to show Bravo she can film with just about anyone, and have fun while doing so, in order to survive the inevitable cast cull.
The problem for her alleged besties comes from the fact that, when Jenn has filmed with Marge and Rachel thus far this season, it’s not that fun. Those ladies are forgetting the key rule of winning a Housewives war is to film the better content. Spending your entire season harping on how awful Teresa is while you yourself are bringing little to the table is simply a poor strategy, especially when you’re getting outperformed by this random friend-of who Bravo clearly didn’t intend to give such a prominent edit.
Teresa hasn’t even done anything all season. Jenn’s had one conversation with her in between the solo footage of Tre moving her daughter Gabriela to college, and if Marge and Rachel were smart, they’d simply not give this any life so as to move the show in a new direction.ction free from the grips of the woman they hate the most. Show us what you’ve got, ladies. It’s now or never.
To Marge, though, it’s simple. To be her friend, you need to ice out Teresa and not film with her in any way.
“Jackie and Jenn Fessler are totally missing the point,” Marge says in a confessional. “I’m not asking Jenn Fessler to, you know, get in a knife fight with Teresa. I’m just saying, ‘Don’t have your head up her ass.’ That’s a totally different thing.”
The situation escalates to the point Rachel and Marge both breakdown in tears, leaving Jenn utterly befuddled. It’s a genuine laugh-out-loud moment watching Jenn sit there in such confusion, perplexed how one conversation with Teresa is the equivalent of stabbing 18 cats and running over an innocent family. Jenn has very smartly positioned herself as the straight man of this group of oddballs, simply by being somewhat normal and rational, and that’s a role she excels in.
As the episode comes to a close, it’s clear Jenn has become the surprise star of the season—to even the production team. After all, Jenn’s birthday party was the opening event of the season, and this rift is now central to the plot. If you measured screen time, I’d be confident that Jenn has surpassed Jennifer Aydin and Danielle Cabral in presence, and maybe even Melissa.
It’s pretty impressive to be a newer friend on this cast full of deadends and make such an impact, but Jenn is a natural. There’s no doubt next season will have cuts—likely on both sides—and no one seems safer than her. Even Teresa is more on the chopping block (or, rather, set for a pivot if Bravo finally greenlights the Giudice girls spinoff) than Jenn, who’s simply proving that good old fashioned charisma is the antidote to the worst Real Housewives atmospheres.
Dismissing the Rachel/Marge pity power hour down as “baby bullshit,” Jenn manages to cut through the minutiae and remind us that asking women in their forties and fifties to not betray you by talking to the mean girls is a strategy best saved for 7th grade choir. But the other women’s strategic flop is Jenn’s gain, and she ends the episode on an exceptional note.
“People have accused me of things in my life. Never has it ever been being a bad friend,” Jenn says in a confessional. “And if you don’t like what I’m doing, again, there’s a whole party here. There’s many, many women that would be there for you always (like I have). And have your back always (like I have). Go for it!”
It’s unlikely Jenn alone can save RHONJ Season 14 from its more middling existence. But her presence has given the season a much-needed boost, and I’m ever grateful for her. We love our Messy Fessy—and her identical twin mom and aunt—and hope she keeps stirring up New Jersey drama for years to come.
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