‘Real Housewives of Orange County’ Reunion: It’s Time to Fire Alexis Bellino

Very few things unite the Real Housewives like a sacrificial lamb, and who better to throw to the wolves than Alexis Bellino? Jesus Jugs has fallen, anchoring herself to a ship that sank many moons ago.

It’s a disastrous end to a season-long strategy of being awful and making no friends, one that almost ensures Alexis has ended her arc on the show—if not for a miracle. If Vicki Gunvalson can survive the cancer scam, no one’s ever truly dead on The Real Housewives of Orange County, after all.

The reunion concludes with a shock cold-open that reveals the cast got together for a postseason sit down, an epilogue to the epilogue, if you will. This season is like the Scream 4 opening—it just never ends. And, like the Scream 4 opening, the continued fakeouts are fun and silly, and that makes them worth it.

Back on the reunion stage, Shannon Beador continues to slay a wounded Alexis. The IMDb quip is not only a hilarious callback to last season’s drama, but a deeply embarrassing one for Alexis. Ms. “TV star” has been in one episode of 4 different shows in the past decade, alongside her RHOC stint. Does that denote a career of 15 years on TV? Only if you’re using Real Housewife math.

Alexis has a level of delusion rarely captured on modern television. That’s something worth preserving, if only she could get out of her own way. Obviously, she does not do that. Instead, she wages another war with Shannon over the forensic accounting of her relationship with John, and insists Shannon lied about paying the full amount of the loan.

Even worse, Alexis’ engagement announcement included a photo of lemons… in a bowl. Chills. I have chills. Everyone knows Shannon’s brand is lemons in a bowl. It is the ethos of Shannon Storms Beador. And for Alexis to put lemon voodoo in her engagement post is satanic to the highest degree.

The final nail in the coffin may just come from her Carmela Soprano confessional with John himself, aired to the disgust of the entire cast, who heckle her like the jester she is. Alexis does correctly assess Gina and Emily as “tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumb,” but like, those are ladies you should’ve sought out as allies, Alexis.

It’s a harrowing watch. The entire cast constantly go off into side-bars while Alexis performs for an empty audience. Emily practically begs Tamra to cut the strategic alliance loose so Alexis can be fired with ease from the show, and Tamra barely pushes back. There’s blood in the water, after all. A shark like her knows better than to ignore that.

Watching the reunion, it’s surprisingly easy to forget Tamra and Heather are Alexis’s “allies,” especially when Heather throws that hot potato in Jenn and Katie’s direction. Apparently those are Alexis’ real friends. Who knew?

And just when things can’t get worse, they do. So much has happened that the alleged Ring camera videos of Shannon running amok had become a distant thought. Yet, apparently John is willing and able to show those videos to Shannon still—with Alexis in the room—in a sign of solidarity, definitely not an act of manipulation.

Poor Alexis truly is the puppet and whichever man she’s with is the master. She has crashed and burned tremendously, to the point where Andy basically asks her how she thinks she can continue on the show.

“Good luck with the wedding planning! And uh, we will look out for… that date… maybe, if some of the women here will get an invitation,” Andy tells Alexis as he dismisses her. That screams “fired” to me. Dismissed without prejudice, at best.

It’s sad in so many ways as we deserve many years of Alexis 2.0. Yet, it’s probably the most fitting end to her arc that she hobbles off stage with no dignity and a man who will likely leave her when the cameras go down. Alexis vs. Shannon is still a top-tier reality TV feud, now and forever. In five years when she returns on the arms of Shannon’s first husband, our Dynasty duel can resume. On the third day, Jesus Jugs will rise again, just as God intended.

With Alexis out of the way, the rest of the women have no fight left in them. They have sent the lamb out to slaughter, and now can celebrate that their oranges just got a little juicier. Mob boss Tamra saying John “did himself no favors by doing those videos” is about as good an admonishment of Alexis’ future as we’re going to get.

In the absence of Alexis, the focus returns to Tamra and Shannon. Surprise, surprise, the divas hug it out, as they always do. Tamra could burn Shannon’s house down and they’d find a way to make it back from that. Consummate professionals, these two.

The look of utter irritation on Jenn’s face as the two cry it out is perfection. Jenn is the true Tamra adversary RHOC has long needed, and the promise of a continued Tamra/Shannon rollercoaster with Jenn annoyed in the middle is very exciting.

In fact, it’s interesting that Jenn is left out of the postseason epilogue, spurred by Heather dropping a bomb right after the reunion filmed. Apparently, after the finale party, John admitted to Heather and Tamra that he did hear Shannon’s crash the night of her DUI.

This changes nothing and everything at the same time. We already are well-aware that John’s a shady weirdo who more-than-likely heard, but the confirmation is still nice. What’s actually interesting about the scene is what it hints for the future. Are we in for a season of Shannon Beador sycophants blazing a new trail? Or will this promised alliance crumble as quickly as it was created?

It’s always nice to end a season immediately yearning for the next. There are so many threads to pull on, and Jenn’s absence provides an even more exciting question: What role will Jenn play in the future of RHOC? Will she continue to rise

like a phoenix, or fade under pressure?

The most harrowing question of all is one that I fear has already been answered: Is Gina simply indestructible? At the end of the day, sure, she’s the weakest link, but the weakest RHOC is still a Housewife worth celebrating. There, I’ve completed my nice things about Gina quota. With that, it’s time to say goodbye to a truly monumental season of Real Housewives.

It may have been the first franchise, but RHOC is often underestimated. Year after year, the little engine that could constantly proves it has plenty of gas left in the tank. This season will live on in infamy as part of The Real Housewives of Orange County renaissance, one that shows that, no matter how down a franchise is, it can always find its way back. So stop doubting it.