Sacked by Bravo?

Well, we finally did it, we made it over the Housewife holiday hump and have mercifully turned the page on 2010, and are ready for a new beginning and a fresh start.  Or are we? There still seems to be a lot of old acquaintance that should be forgot going on in Housewife land. Teresa and Melissa are still carping at each other about nothing at all while the Joes stand in the background looking just this side of ugly drunk. Melissa sings badly (seriously I don’t know how K Mack lives with himself) , thanks Jesus alot,  and models yet another horrendous fuzzy apron.  This one looked like feathers, which doesn’t seem to be a very wise choice when you are working around an open flame.  But maybe that’s just me.

Meanwhile, Teresa is still trying desperately to pretend that the bankruptcy will be behind her, and life in 2011 will be about food, family, and good sex, when in fact it’s probably going to be more about lawyers, guns and money. In other words, less Martha Stewart, more Werewolves of London.  But you gotta give the girl credit for some championship denial skills. And I have to give that poor abused photographer a Kim G double snap for surviving the Giudice family kitchen shoot without throwing himself over the banister.  I think he needed the assistance of a young priest and an old priest just to deal with Malania alone. And of course, Jacqueline is still trudging forward doing her best Mildred Pierce impersonation, while Ashley rolls her eyes and acts like an ungrateful brat. All pretty much status quo. Basically, like Rich Wakile said at the stroke of twelve at the Brownstone, “new year, same a**holes. “

Yet, somehow, things aren’t quite the same.  I sense a new and ominous force lurking behind the scenes, and while I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, I have a feeling that it’s coming for Caroline. First of all, the New Year’s Eve scare-doo. What was that about? Even her sons were unnerved by it, and I don’t blame them,  she looked practically undead. I myself was waiting for Queen Caroline to pull on a big ruff collar, paint her face white, and marry England. Seriously, did they do that to her at La Chateau? And was it on purpose? This is not the rough and tumble, tough love mom in the Bam-Bam dresses that I remember from Thanksgiving and Christmas. So what gives?

The quality of Caroline’s scenes have changed too.  First of all, there aren’t very many of them, and when Caroline does manage to materialize, she doesn’t really participate in the action. Nobody looks her directly in the eye anymore.  It’s almost like she isn’t really there. It’s the ghost of Caroline, a disembodied voice from beyond, chiming in with pearls of wisdom like- “Always wear your seat belt. Don’t fight with your fambily. Beauty is from the inside,”  or my favorite “Maybe you got eight pounds of sausage in a five pound bag right now, so what, you’re a wonderful, wonderful kid.”  I probably would have told my daughter at that point that she is beautiful just the way she is, but then again, I’m just a mere mortal, and these days, Caroline moveth in mysterious ways which passeth all human understanding.

So I’m wondering, is Caroline’s sudden and unearthly transformation happening because she has finally become so superior, so evolved that she no longer requires human form? Or is she, like I’ve heard through the grapevine, one of the dearly departed housewives, who won’t be returning next season? What do you think? Could it be possible? I don’t know. How would anybody in Housewife land be able to tell the difference between right and wrong without Caroline around to show them the way?

And one final note, which falls into the things that make you go hmmm category.  Did anybody else notice that weird Bravo spot that ran during Sunday night’s episode with Caroline Manzo and the Countess from RHONY in a potato sack race?  The copy line read “Sacked by Bravo” and Caroline won the race. Of course she did.