The RHONJ Season Finale! Fake Boobs! Fake Tears! Fake Feels! Fake Tans! Real Jail Time!

You could almost hear the director:
"OK, Jacqueline, Kathy, I almost felt it this time. Again...remember you're shocked...scared...sad...Let's go, folks: the jail sentence reveal: Take 30!"

Yeah, it was like that in this season's RHONJ finale. All throughout this entire lackluster season of The RHONJ the running back story has been the Guidice Fraud-A-Palooza and will they/won't they go to jail, get deported, break a nail. Whatever. So here we are at the last episode and, even though the season was filmed several months ago, Bravo had to find a way to shoehorn in the actual legal outcome of T and JJ's future since it was announced in real time earlier this month. So what did they do? They filmed several "reaction" shots spanning three of the housewive's, well, houses. We caught up with Amber and Jim, the Asshole From Outer Space, who, due his extraterrestrial space pack, apparently has some kind of smartphone that gives him blow-by-blow details directly from inside the courtroom. He tells us just as JJ admits to a "problem with alcohol", he reads us verbatim JJ's address to the judge, followed sometime after by T's address. I'm watching this wondering what kind of phone this fucker has that he can give a blow by blow of what's going on downtown AS IT'S HAPPENING! Amber is, of course, adequately SHOCKED! GASPING FOR BREATH! COVERING HER FACE IN HORROR! CONTEMPLATING NEXT SEASON NOW THAT THERE'S A PERMANENT HOLE IN THE CAST!

But nobody can beat Jacqueline in the "I'm Alive So I'm Going To Find Something To Cry About" sweepstakes. We join Kathy, her idiot husband and Rosie the Riveter at Kathy's house also apparently tuned by phone into some special cousins-only broadcast channel, 'cause the idiot husband, just like the Asshole From Outer Space, is filling the two ladies in with minute-by-minute updates. Soon Kathy receives a text from Jacquelinw, worried as usual, and is told to get her and her husband's asses over there. Sure enough, one commercial break later and now Kathy's little kitchen is crammed with her three loons and Jacqueline, her gun-nut husband Chris Laurita, and their special brand of loony-ness. Well, truth be told it's only Jacqueline that is loony, but she's loony enough for both of them.

Astonishingly the minute she arrives Jacqueline immediately focuses the drama on herself. With lip-quivering fake acting 101, Jacqueline, face down in her phone begins to wonder aloud what this whole thing will mean to her "friendship" with T. How can she cope with everything that's going on? WHAT ABOUT HER FEELINGS!? SHE HAS A CHILD ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM!! Can Chris the gun nut at least pistol whip some sense into this whiny, monumentally annoying ninny that he married? Also interspersed throughout this finale was stock footage, accompanied by appropriately police-y sound effects, of T and JJ walking the press gauntlet into and out of the court. But seriously, Bravo? We can see that it's ALWAYS the same 15 seconds of footage...you aren't fooling us just because you throw in some WOOOOOOOO sounds effects of a police car siren. Also? The cutaway shot of the helicopter circling overhead? It's T and JJ; not OJ, relax.

Also featured in this finale was the culmination of all of Dina's season-long planning for her "Ladybug" charity event. Hosted at a friend's "house" that appears to have at least four wings and a central spiral staircase that makes Scarlett O'Hara's Tarah look like a rickety back entrance, also...an elevator. The plus side is that this "house" has three wonderfully huge and adorable Great Danes and one very adorable, stocky as hell bulldog. Having dogs just kinda warms me up to a person from the get-go. What can I say? The ABIB is a sucker for a wet nose and wagging tail. The charity event is mere days away and Dina is putting the final touches on the childrens' fashion show while simultaneously putting the fear of god into both the twins, Nicole and TerESSa, and T, to lay off the family-hater drama still simmering from I Fucked My Mother In Law Gate. The twins are still "incensed" (Rino's been sharing his Word of the Day calendar) that T would pass along such a vulgar rumor once it was heard from Victoria Gotti. T, as is her wont, admits zero wrong doing and in fact insists that, by sharing the rumor with Dina in advance of the Boca Bash, she was PROTECTING the twins since if things got out of hand Dina would be able to quash the troubles. Of course, we know it didn't turn out that way, thanks to big mouth Amber and her Asshole From Outer Space husband. Dina ominously tells us that if anything cray cray gets started at her Ladybug event, the person who starts the bitch fest will lose a friend; namely her. Tread lightly, ladies; my girl Dina is subject to work a root on your assess if you cross her.

Needless to say the drama launches shortly after the Ladybug event begins, but not before we get to see T and Melissa's two little hookers in training strut their stuff down the "catwalk". So cute, two little seven year olds learning early just how important stuff on the outside actually is. These two future little golddiggers can't start learning soon enough. Melissa's kid especially doen't have a prayer as we see her mother, earlier in the episode, drooling over Joey The Ape as he pretends to drive an earth mover, shouting at him above the rumble of the engine to "dig our house! build our house! You're such a MAN!" She tells us that she's just plain helpless in the face of a man in an earth moving machine and that there are none sexier than her very own Joe Gorga. Can I just say here, in case I've not yet made it clear, that I flat out despise Melissa Gorga? She is everything that is wrong with the world in one overly pampered, surgically altered, idiotic package. I mean I just plain hate on her. Melissa the Gorgon is THE WORST.

Back to Great Dane Manor and Dina's charity event is well underway but the twins and T are in the process of "reaching closure and moving forward" from their earlier "I hate her unto death" standoff. Things between them reach a predictable Bravo-scripted resolution (it is the season finale, after all) but not before we get a talking head confessional from TerESSa telling us that all the shit that's going down with T has been brought about by the ill treatment afforded TerESSa's family by T and her part in the Victoria Gotti rumor from MIL hell. I believe the actual quote from TeRESSa is "Karma's a bitch, what can I say?" Oh, kids, she's gonna pay for that somewhere on the upcoming three part RHONJ Reunion. On a side note, can i just say that, it may be the Botox injections, but the twins' mother, Santa, herself the target of the I Fucked My Mother In Law rumor never seems even remotely phased by it whenever the topic comes up. Further proof that Bravo is really grasping for storylines here.

Another little concluding arc that we learn in about 30 seconds is that Dina's daughter, Lexi, she of the NYU reject pile, has been accepted to "a great school in the city". Considering it's unnamed and that these women positivelly live for status statements, we have to believe that the "great school in the city" is actually Wayne Community College. Yeah, not expecting any brainiacs to come out of any of these ladies.

So we end where we began this recap, with the Bravo director, offscreen coaching the fuck out of Jacqueline and Kathy to wring out a few crocodile tears on behalf of the dreadful sentencing verdict that they JUST HEARD on their own, private Guidette Bat Channel. The last shot is of them in each others' arms, dissolved in "tears" as someone, I SWEAR I HEARD IT, supresses a chuckle just offscreen. My money's on that bozo Richie Wakile, but serioulsy, facing that Waiting for Guffman display who the fuck can blame him?