It’s The Shannon Show as the 18th season of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” kicked off on Thursday. And from the looks of the premiere, it might be the Season of Shannon, too, given how Shannon Storms Beador dominates multiple storylines.
For those you living under a rock, hopefully a nice cozy one with books and tea and no reality TV, let us recap: As the show reminds us with dramatic black-and-white images and an ominous score, something big happened on Sept. 7, 2023.
That was the day Shannon was arrested for DUI and hit-and-run after driving her car into a house.
A title card flashes on the screen – “Five months later” – and the show opens with Shannon at lunch with housewife Emily. Simpson.
“I was just making a lot of very, very poor decisions,” Shannon says.
“Do you drink?” Emily quite reasonably asks her.
“I’m like a two-drink max person right now,” Shannon replies.
She’d been at the home of her ex-boyfriend John Janssen the night of the crash; they were fighting, Shannon later says.
“He said, ‘You’re a drunken idiot; don’t get in your car,’” Shannon tells her daughters during a tearful mea culpa. “But I got in an accident seconds later because I revved up the engine so he could know how mad I was, and I lost control of the car.”
And she drove into a house. With her poor dog Archie on board, who, from the look on his face as Shannon tells her daughter this, still can’t believe this happened to him.
One of her daughters suggests this happened for a reason.
“God has a plan; I absolutely believe that,” Shannon says.
A scene or two later, housewife Tamra Judge, in a separate conversation with Emily at the gym, has a different take on God’s plan for Shannon.
“You want to know karma?” Tamra asks Emily. “God saying to her, ‘If you can’t (bleepin’) clean your act up after crashing your car I’m going to give your boyfriend to the girl you hate the most!’”
That would be Alexis Bellino, who a few months after the crash, met Janssen and struck up a relationship that may or may not be the reason Alexis is back on the series as an official friend of the housewives.
Related links
Real Housewives of Orange County finale: Tears and truth serum
Real Housewives of Orange County reunion special: Topless Tamra’s pixelated parts
Real Housewives of Orange County season finale: Evil clowns and home colonics
‘Real Housewives of Orange County’: Shannon dances on a bar in Mexico as the Tres Amigas party on
Real Housewives of Orange County: Sesame Street-Sasquatch baby drama
Alexis, Emily and housewife Heather Dubrow get together for cocktails, and Alexis explains – like the protagonist of REO Speedwagon‘s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” – she and John had no choice in what happened.
“We tried to fight the feeling,” she tells them. “After a week or two, we gave in.”
Alexis lets Emily know she is a little miffed that Emily called John a name on a podcast.
“He’s my Johnny J,” she says in his defense.
Heather, who loves a good brand as much as her champagne, is impressed.
“I don’t think I’ve heard a better rebranding since mayo went to aioli,” she says of the Johnny J moniker.
Things come to a head at Heather’s party at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach. Shannon, who had to figure out how to lie flat in her SUV livery car so as not to wrinkle her dress, is last to arrive. Once there she tells a housewife or two she couldn’t care less that Alexis is dating her ex – and then makes a beeline for Alexis to ask her to step outside so they can talk.
Emily whisper-shouts: “Red alert! Red alert! Red alert!” She, Tamra, Heather, Gina Kirschenheiter, Jennifer Pedranti, and new housewife Katie Ginella, looking slightly confused, all gather at the window to try to read lips and body language in the Shannon-Alexis showdown.
Shannon’s opening gambit about what’s bothering her is confusing. Alexis is having none of it.
“I think what the real issue here is that I have your ex-boyfriend,” she says. “If you don’t like it, there’s the door, Shannon Beador.”
The episode ends, but the party and the confrontation? To be continued…
Other highlights of the season premiere included:
• Is house-hoarding a thing? Last season, Heather and husband Terry Dubrow sold their Newport Coast mansion for a cool $55 million, and bought a fancy penthouse apartment in Los Angeles. But Heather didn’t have room for her four kids, so she and Terry had to buy – HAD to – a Beverly Hills mansion on eight acres for $16 million and teh millions are adding up as they meet with various contractors while they plan to tear the main house down to the studs and completely renovate a house that once was home to the likes of Lana Turner and Cary Grant.
“As we walked around, I kept thinking, ‘Gosh, if these walls could talk,’” she says.
If those walls could talk, Heather, they might be screaming, “What are you doing?!”
• Tamra has a mystery child! Actually, two! Longtime viewers know how many kids Tamra has, but if you’ve only started in the last 10 years you might not know about Sophia, who has lived with Tamra all that time but wasn’t on the show. Now, that she’s 18, she’s back, and we see Sophia and Tamra go to the tattoo shop for a little ink. Tamra’s small tattoo reminds her of another not-on-the-show child, who is estranged from Tamra.
• Jennifer is being evicted, and Gina, who helped her find the rental is not happy. Boyfriend Ryan – more on him in a minute – suggests she and her kids move in with him.
• Katie Ginella is the new housewife but she barely gets introduced much less involved in any action. We’ll have more on her in future recaps.
• Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Otani can unveil another unprecedented statistic this season: His name is getting bandied about “Real Housewives.” In the preview of what’s to come this season, we see that the series did manage to squeeze in a storyline on the role of Ryan, Jenn’s beau, in the gambling scandal around Ohtani’s former interpreter.
Ryan was named in court documents and news reports in May as an associate of the Orange County bookie with whom $16 million of Ohtani’s money was bet – without his knowledge or permission. The money was wired to an account controlled by Ryan; he’s not been charged with anything and the case remains open.
“How’s the FBI going for you?” Tamra asks Ryan as her husband Eddie Judge urges her to stop.
“FBI?” a wide-eyed Jenn replies.
Related Articles
Real Housewives of Orange County: Alexis Bellino and Katie Ginella join the cast
Martin Mull, hip comic and actor from ‘Fernwood Tonight’ and ‘Roseanne,’ dies at 80
Bill Cobbs dies at 90; prolific character actor had roles in dozens of films, TV shows
‘Hawaii Five-0’ actor Taylor Wily, who competed in first-ever UFC fight, dies at age 56
‘Fancy Dance’ director Erica Tremblay talks about creating complex Native stories