This week on the Real Housewives of Orange County, Heather Dubrow introduced Vicki Gunvalson and Tamra Barney to her group of girlfriends and, in so doing, completely upstaged the entire cast of the OC Housewives.  There’s nothing more fun than watching mean girls who regularly engage in  drama, quietly jealous over other girls who are nice and have a much better life than they do, is there?  This week, we got to see a completely different type of show and we saw quiet jealousies silence this pair of loud, ordinarily crass, women.

Heather and her group of 5 girlfriends want to open a restaurant together.  They are women who are stay-at-home moms, but they’ve got brains and a vision to do something more now that the children are comfortably situated.  It’s not that they’re bored, it’s just that they’d all like a group activity that is productive that they can focus on outside of the family and home.  With just a small investment from each of them, they can have their cake and eat it, too, by way of an upscale restaurant more typically found in LA.

Armed with that decision, they begin their research and decide to take a fieldtrip to LA to visit and speak with the owner of a favourite restaurant. They helicopter into the city, meet with the owner and then dine. Heather has invited Vicki and Tamra to tag along, both for the adventure of it and to meet some of her friends.

Humbled by a private helicopter.

Both Vicki and Tamra were stunned quiet.  Stunned for a few reasons.

They were out-classed and it was evident they were like fish out of water.  What?  Women who are both beautiful and nice?  Women who respect each other and know how to have a good time without tearing each other apart or talking about others?  Women who have class?  Neither Vicki nor Tamra believed such a thing was even possible.

They were, in fact, so overwhelmed that they whispered about it and they even seemed intimidated by it. To even imagine that such a thing was possible was outside the realm of their reality.  This we know for a fact.

They were deflated and the substance of the girl’s friendships kept this pair…dead silent.  Ah hahahahahaha.

What?!! Vicki Gulvalson dumbfounded?

Oh what fun.  To think that there was anything that could silence Vicki was beyond even my wildest imagination.

Oh, she piped up when she thought she had business advice she could impart upon Heather, but as Heather pointed out, Vicki’s coming from a negative place.  It’s not that these girls don’t need to treat it like a business, but these are things that attorneys are paid to deal with and their husband’s have attorneys specifically for these purposes.  These women don’t need to police their attorneys.

These girls will get to focus on the fun stuff instead, like picking the location, selecting all the elegant accoutrements, like dishware and linens, select a menu direction and then hire the staff.  Then they get to plan the grand opening, market it and party with their friends and family and hold important bragging rights.

Some people have a decidedly inflated sense of self and think they’re “all that”, and some would put both Tamra Barney and Vicki Gunvalson into that category of people.  They think that they’re more beautiful than the typical OC woman and they might have thought that they were the most well-to-do.  It is, after all, a show about well-to-do women being eaves-dropped on by us ordinary folk.

So how much fun was it to watch their reactions as they were exposed to private helicopters and a group of ladies who sit much more comfortably, financially, than they do?  In fact, it was a little like the proverbial flipping of the bird when Heather perceived that she had “gotten” these girls with this one and I laughed silently. It’s not that I think Heather was trying to “one up” them, because at a certain level of financial comfort people don’t feel the need to talk about money.  I just think that Heather was amused by their reactions.

The differences between the two groups of women was huge.  Though they all looked beautiful, one was a very relaxed group, the other, uncomfortable.

Take, for example, the fact that both Vicki and Tamra have to work for a living and actually left their husbands because they didn’t want to carry their husband’s dead weight. Take, for example, that these women have what Vicki and Tamra do not, the freedom to decide what committees to co-chair at their children’s private schools or what holiday to spend together as a group, without having to take time off from work or worry about income whilst they’re gone.

Yes, life is good when you’re in Heather’s class of friends and now Vicki and Tamra have something more that they can “want”.  I don’t think Heather’s friends have deadbeat husbands who go to jail for not paying their child support.  I’m not saying that Heather’s friends are immune from life’s problems.  They’ll face some of life’s uglier events just like we all do, but they’ll be on a different scale and of a different type.

It’s a fact that, admittedly, we like mean girls and we like drama, so we like watching Tamra and Vicki wade through their lives, but I don’t think there’s anything more fun than watching mean girls who regularly engage in  drama, quietly jealous over other girls who are nice and have a much better life than they do, is there?

Heather, bring your friends around more often, please.  We like to watch our girls squirm!

Your friend,