Real Housewives Recap

Friendships start to fray on Real Housewives of Dallas

Cary Deuber and LeeAnne Locken of Real Housewives of Dallas

Cary Deuber and LeeAnne Locken on the Real Housewives of Dallas.

Photo courtesy of Bravo

They tried to shuffle the woman cards on Real Housewives of Dallas this week. Nobody is happy with the hand she’s been dealt.

The ladies at the center of the Bravo series travel in tight pairs, but alliances seem to be fraying. LeeAnne Locken, the socially connected charity maven, has been close buds with Tiffany Hendra, former actress and LA transplant now back in Dallas with Aussie musician hubby Aaron. (His Twitter handle is @MrKeithSuburban, which is too perfect.) Brandi Redmond, the ex-cheerleader, is joined at the hip to wispy blonde Stephanie Hollman.

Two more, SkinSpaMED plastic surgery nurse (and doc’s wife) Cary Deuber, and lawyer’s wife Marie Reyes, float among the other four like free-roaming antibodies. Or in the case of Cary, anti-fat bodies. She’s a relentless chub-shamer.

Cary took Tiffany to We Yogis for some hot asanas in this week’s episode, and while she was showing off headstands, Tiffany just perspired and looked on in awe. Then they got green smoothies and verbally cold-pressed LeeAnne.

This is the teaser of what’s to come, the sparring match before the end-of-episode public cage fight. Do reality TV housewives day drink and get physical on each other? As reliably as they wear jewel tones and too much mascara.

All that goes down in the latest RHOD, plus sloppy tears; a road trip to Coweta, Oklahoma; and a too-quick peek at Fashionistas founder Heidi Dillon’s art collection, which includes an Alex Katz that she tweeted is “my prize possession.”

It’s LeeAnne, wearing her black hair in a Tuptim topknot, who visits Heidi’s towering manse to talk charity stuff. (LeeAnne uses “charity” as every part of speech, saying it 17 times in this week’s show.) LeeAnne convinces Heidi to be part of her Paws Cause event helping the SPCA of Texas. “Pets are just something I’m always gonna have a heart for. Woof, woof,” says LeeAnne, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

LeeAnne, if you’re just catching up, is this show’s tent pole housewife and stirrer upper of trouble. She’s a self-described “carny kid” who isn’t mega-wealthy and has no children, and she lives for charity events, of which she attends many.

Cast as LeeAnne’s nemesis is 12-years-younger spitfire Brandi. This week we got to see redheaded Brandi, redheaded husband Brian, and redheaded daughters Brooklyn and Brinkley having breakfast. (Maybe they eat together only at meals beginning with “b.”)

Brandi is portrayed as a sad nymph longing for familial connection because Brian is away on biz so often. Brandi and her kids pile into Stephanie’s big honkin’ SUV with her kids (who are crying, making Steph wish aloud for a car equipped with “muzzles and tranquilizers”) for a jaunt to Coweta to visit Steph’s parents.

Dad Frank and Mom Susan are nice people. Coweta, Frank explains to Brandi, is a small town where people exercise-walk through the cemetery because it’s safe there. How dangerous is Coweta that walking among the dead is safer than among the living, we wonder.

Frank and Susan put their salad dressing bottles on the dinner table just like the rest of us. They eat deviled eggs that Brandi says “smell like Stephanie’s farts.” Being around them inspires Brandi to try to patch things up with her long-estranged grandparents.

Back home in her mansion, Brandi calls her granddad to invite him to visit Dallas. Nothing reads “sincere” like healing a long family feud via speakerphone in front of reality TV crews.

Cut to the near-throwdown at the fancy cocktail party at the now-closed Stephan Pyles restaurant. Brandi, Stephanie, Cary, and Marie hug the wall in their jewel-toned dresses and glare at LeeAnne, who is holding court with Tiffany about one arm’s length plus a gelled nail away. “I don’t have a malicious bone in my body,” declares generously gristled LeeAnne.

Tiffany crosses the Rubicon to reach out to Brandi for some diva détente. “Tiffany is on me like a 50 percent off sale at JC Penney,” Brandi says. Someone spills that LeeAnne once pooped her pants after too much Jesus juice.

Brandi repeats the story immediately, using “shat,” which is adorable. We have not yet had a poop-free episode of RHOD. Ex-Lax should be a sponsor.

LeeAnne starts barking at the other ladies. Woof, woof! Given what we’ve just heard, maybe she needs to go out for a walk. Don’t forget the plastic bag.

Brandi says something mean. LeeAnne says something mean back. Voices are raised. Steph tunes up to cry. Marie’s long neck stiffens in horror. Nobody’s talking about why this housewife hates this other housewife. There are so many elephants in this room, PETA should be protesting.

The previews for next week show LeeAnne and Tiffany having it out right outside the restaurant. There is shoving, poking, and screaming. LeeAnne throws a punch at a camera. We know how she feels.

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Real Housewives of Dallas airs at 9 pm Mondays for the next six weeks on Bravo.

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Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first but not by much

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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