RHOC: Saying Goodbye 🍊💫

Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino

Danny Pellegrino delivers his final recap of The Real Housewives of Orange County season 20, declaring the season a disappointment and annou

Key takeaways

• The season failed to deliver compelling drama or emotional depth, leading Danny to conclude it's not worth continuing full recaps.
• Vicki Cumberland's consistent disengagement—evident in both Orange County and Ultimate Girls Trip—is portrayed as a major narrative flaw.

Main topics

• Final recap of RHOC season 20
• Vicki Cumberland's disengagement and behavior

Notable quotes

"I made it 10 episodes and I kept saying, maybe next week will get better. Maybe next week will get better. Maybe next week will get better. Unfortunately, maybe this is a me issue."

"Vicky, you can't play the quiet game when you're on a television show that you're filming and there's a camera right there."

Conclusion

Danny Pellegrino bids farewell to full RHOC recaps, attributing the decision to

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:14) Travel down the road. Your heart is true. Speaker 2 (0:24) Hello, everyone, and welcome to Everything Iconic with me, Danny Pellegrino. That was our dearly beloved Cher, the one and only Cher, singing the Golden Girls theme song and saying thank you for being a friend. And I wanted to play that at the top of the episode today, because I'd like to start off this podcast thanking the Real Houses of Orange County for being a friend to us for all these years. It's the 20th season, and I was so excited to recap the 20th season here on Everything Iconic. Unfortunately, we are bidding them adieu. because I have no other way to say this, but the season has been such a flop to me. And so please, if you are really enjoying this season of Orange County, for the last time I want to tell you, please turn off this podcast, because I'm going to drag it a little bit, and I don't want to yuck your yum, so turn off this podcast if you're liking this season of Orange County. But this will be the last Orange County recap, at least the last full Orange County recap that we're doing for quite some time, because... I made it 10 episodes and I kept saying, maybe next week will get better. Maybe next week will get better. Maybe next week will get better. Unfortunately, maybe this is a me issue and it's just not for me. And so I need to say goodbye. And we have Orange County or we have Salt Lake City coming back next week. Roni's back and the premiere was pretty good. And so I think we're just going to dive into Roni and Salt Lake City and we are going to bid adieu to our Orange County housewives. Unfortunately, they did not bring it this year. And so we hope for next year, if they're still around, that they'll give us something good. But for now, I can't do it anymore. I took notes this week, and I told you guys last week, this was going to be it. This was the last chance. This was the last chance. I gave them 10 chances. This is what, episode 10? They had 10 chances to turn it all around. And I just am not. And again, maybe it's a me thing. Maybe it's just me. I'm not into it. But seeing them go to Solvang and do this thing that they've done a couple times in the past few seasons where they split the cast up into two separate cast trips, which it's like, what are they doing that? It just feels cheap and it feels like they're going to overnighter with half the cast and one overnight and other half. And they try to present it as. Speaker 2 (2:28) Tamara's inviting some people one place and she's like, I don't want to invite the people that I'm not getting along with. And then Vicky's got to invite the other people. And it's like they try to present it as if this is a normal thing of like Vicky being inviting Emily. And who is she having at her house? It was Emily and Jen and Shannon. It's like, yes, she's friends with Shannon, but never under any other circumstances would she invite Emily and Jen to her house in La Quinta. And yet for the TV show, she has to pretend like, oh, I just want to get to know them better. It's like if there's one thing I know about Vicki Cumberland is that she doesn't want to get to know anybody better. If anything, she wants to get to know them less because I'm seeing her on both this show and Ultimate Girls Trip, not even wanting to engage with the other cast members. I mean, if you're watching Ultimate Girls Trip right now, I mean, Vicki, it's shocking how disengaged she is from. The other women in Atlanta, she was saying she didn't want to be there. She didn't feel comfortable in her outfit. She wanted to go home. And there's all these housewives everywhere. And it's like, Vicki, you should be engaging. And then we saw a couple weeks ago on Ultimate Girls Trip when she was doing her work. She had her laptop in the back of the Sprinter van or whatever. And she kept telling people to have quiet time. And I thought for sure she did that on Ultimate Girls Trip, which I believe was filmed before this season of Orange County. And I can't understand how she did the same thing so close together. on Orange County because we're seeing her go to La Quinta and she's in the car and she's beep-bopping on her computer on her laptop and she's beep-bopping away and Emily Hipp is in the back seat saying, Vicky, you need to engage with us. We're on camera. You got to talk to us. We have to have conversations. And Vicky's like, let's play the quiet game, which she said on Ultimate Girls Trip. And it's like, Vicky, you can't play the quiet game when you're on a television show that you're filming and there's a camera right there. What do you mean the quiet? There's no such thing as the quiet game at that point. You've passed the stage of quiet game. And so I can't even imagine how either production, the network, people had to see the way that Ultimate Girls Trip was playing out. Even Vicky, I would think, would feel it. She would feel her cast members on Ultimate Girls Trip feeling her disengaged. So I would think then when she goes over to film Orange County Housewives, she would have been like, hey, let me not bring my laptop in the car. And then furthermore, I understand that she was. Given the orange, I believe at BravoCon, this was November. That was when they surprised her by giving the orange back. So she did have other things that she had been working on. I'm sure she was doing the insurance and really diving into her insurance business. She had her podcast. She had all these other things going on. And then it was seemingly a surprise to her that she was not only going back to Orange County Housewives, but Ultimate Girls Trip. And so maybe she just had a lot of work that she couldn't get out of because... She had already planned for that work. But then it's like somebody should have stepped in and said, Vicky, like, you can't bring your laptop. If we're filming you, we have to film you because every time you're in a car in a sprinter van or engaging with the other women and you say, let's play the quiet game or let's stop talking, it like just halts everything. And so it's very frustrating. And I know they keep calling her a Debbie Downer. And I was defending her. You guys know that. This is episode 10 of the recaps of Orange County Housewives, and I had been defending Vicky's return to the show, but it almost feels impossible to defend it any longer because it's like she's just halting everything. And she's such a downer. And the same schtick she's doing with Shannon we've seen a hundred times, like when they're doing the pratfalls and everything. But by the way, this is not, I don't think the show Orange County Housewives this season is like a strictly Vicky problem. I actually think it's an everybody problem because Vicky might be taking the brunt of it, but at least she's offering like a very dark depression cloud over the show. At least she's offering like some sort of heightened emotion for the show. Because I look at the other women, it seems like Tamara's completely disengaged. I know she sent over the flowers last week and it was like a little tiny something. It seems like Heather's doing the bare minimum. And Gina's trying, but then everything Gina does, I'm like, oh, this feels like she's trying so hard for the show. Same with Hip. And then Carmella, by the way, like I was hopeful about Carmella. You know, she's my high school sister. And it feels like she's completely disengaged. And part of, I think, Carmella's issue is maybe that she's coming into the show at a time when the other women don't want to engage with it or they want to engage with it at the bare minimum level. And so she's just offering what the other women are offering because they have to lead by example. So if they're all leading by example and not giving anything to the TV show, what's Carmella going to do? But it seems like Carmella's not even engaged. Carmella's got all this stuff with Heather and how Heather called her trashy, but Carmella seems to not care at all about it. And then the other women are trying to make a big deal out of it because they have nothing else going on. So they're trying to be like, well, Heather, you called Carmella trashy. And it's like, Carmella, don't even give a flying fuck about that. Like Carmela accepted the apology. And if maybe Carmela had more experience with Housewives or something, she would make more of a mountain out of a molehill. What's the same? Mountain out of a molehill. And she would be able to like have more drama around it. But like with Carmela disengaging from the drama with Heather and everybody else trying to engage with the drama with Heather, it just leaves the audience being like, well, why should we care about this if the person who was wrong doesn't even care about it? I don't give a shit that Jen cares about it or that Hip or Casita do. It's like very weird. It's very weird. Speaker 2 (7:40) Anyway, so we are bidding adieu. So this is actually like the Orange County. This is like our, this is our funeral for the show, Orange County. Not for the women because they're still thriving and I want the best for them. And if anything, I hope this gives us a reset for next year and maybe next season, it'll be a good season, but I can't go on like this. I can't go on the microphone. And I learned this week with the Roni because I did enjoy the Roni premiere. I haven't, look, I don't think it's the best thing ever I've ever seen. But it's much better than the last, at least so far. We'll see how episode four, five, six of the season of Roni goes. But for now, I enjoyed the premiere. And when I was doing the recap, I had so much more fun recapping it because they had some quirky characters. There's some new people to talk about that I'm not really sure about their personalities. We've got the Haley. We roller skating in. She had a relationship with John Gosselin. We got Daisy. We got the billionaire, Erica. What's her name? It was dating the billionaire. We got Carol back. It's like there's things to talk about and it's fun to talk about. And I was recapping the Roni premiere and I feel like I was having so much fun with it. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I remember. I'm finally remembering what it's like to recap a show that I'm enjoying watching. And when I don't like enjoying watching, I feel like I'm just dragging the shows. And although some people do like listening to podcasts where I'm just being super mean to the show, because I do hear from people who are like, I loved when you were just dragging the show. It doesn't make me feel good when I leave a recording and I'm like, I just shat on that show for an hour. So that's why we're moving on from Orange County. And we will check in. If you listen to the Roney recap or the Salt Lake City recaps as we go forward, like if something happens on Orange County, we will be there to check in with it. I just can't do like a full hour recap of Orange County going forward. So this is our funeral for the Orange County Housewives. And we are saying goodnight and we are saying goodbye for now. And we'll see if they pick it up. I tried with the shows to follow my heart. And you know, if you've been a longtime listener of Everything Iconic, there's been seasons of Beverly Hills that I don't cover. Or sometimes it's a scheduling thing. Like when we had the baby, I wasn't able to cover certain shows. Or, you know, there's things that happen. But when I feel like the shows are not operating at the level they should, like Beverly Hills, this happened to in the past. I was like, I'm going to stop right now. Or Roni, that happened with the reboot seasons. I was like, I have to stop right now because... I think they're too bad. And when they're better, then we'll hop back on. Okay, that's my disclaimer. So we opened this week with Tamara Packing for Solving. Tamara's going with Heather Carmella and Gina. Not even a full cast. Speaker 4 (10:14) I don't even want to, I Speaker 2 (10:16) don't know. By the way, although I do want them on a full cast trip, like everybody in the cast should be on the cast trips. The full cast trip this season when they went to Vegas was such a flop. Like, nothing happened. Think about that cast trip. They went to Vegas for a few days, and it was the most boring cast trip. So maybe production, giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they were like, hey, we should split them up. Maybe it'll be better than when we did the full cast trip. I don't know. But then Jen, Emily, and Vicky, and Shannon, they're going to La Quinta. And they're all getting ready for these two dual trips. And it's like, we know what we're going to get in the episode. We're just going to get them bouncing between these two trips. And we're going to see the, they did this last year. Wasn't it Heather and Emily did a trip? They do that a lot on Orange County Housewives. It's like, get them all together or something. Because I don't even buy it. Like, I don't buy that. Again. that Vicky would invite Jen and Emily. Like, she hates those two. And for her to say, oh, I want to get to know them better, it's like, no you don't, Vicky. Like, I have to spend way too much disbelief to believe that Vicky just wants to invite them to her home. And obviously, by the end of the episode, she was kicking him out of the house. But Emily, speaking of kicking him out of the house, Shane, I think, is ready to kick Emily out of the house, and Emily wants to kick Shane out of the house. Like, he's mad that she's leaving. He feels like he's doing all the parenting stuff. They obviously hate each other. Then we see Shannon getting ready to go on her trip and they're playing the silly music and she's in her driveway and she's got like gift bags for everybody and she's kind of like plopping all over the place. And she, Vicky arrives and she's worried that she's going to get run over. Like Shannon's doing this bit where she's like, oh Speaker 4 (11:55) my God, I'm going to get run over. There Speaker 2 (11:58) was a moment later in the episode, you guys, where Shannon and Vicky were trying to move from the pool to the hot tub. Speaker 2 (12:09) I was so frustrated. It was like they were trying to do Molly Shannon physical comedy. Speaker 2 (12:19) And I just thought, get in the fucking hot tub. Just plop in the hot tub. Like, I can't watch you guys putting up the