Real Housewives Recap

Awkwardly real reality creeps into Real Housewives of Dallas

Brandi is outwardly bubbly but inwardly sad about her hubs always being away.

Photo courtesy of Bravo

In real life you probably wouldn’t stand alone in a room, stare at your phone, and sigh like a tragic heroine. You most likely wouldn’t plan a sit-down with your best friend in a restaurant to berate her for supposed slights. Or loudly confront another sorta-friend with printed out texts that impugn your character.

In real life, you’d just cross people you’re mad at off the Christmas list, unfriend them on Facebook, and be done with it.

Real Housewives of Dallas — like other “housewives” in the ever-expanding Bravo series franchise — routinely do the unreal versions of de-friending, however. And they do it in heavy makeup. With a camera crew focused on every word and sigh.

Episode six of the 10-episode run of RHOD was chockablock with such amusing nonsense and a moment or two of awkwardly real reality. It’s not news that these shows are hell on marriages. Each incarnation of the popular series has seen couples call it quits. Among the Dallas housewives, it’s Brandi Redmond whose home life is in turmoil at this juncture.

This week Brandi took a break from chugging “Jesus juice” (wine) with giggly best bud Stephanie Hollman to try to reconnect with husband Bryan. He’s out of town on business a lot, leaving Brandi at home in their echo-y mansion with their two little nanny-free daughters.

Brandi, you’re a fine girl. What a good wife you would be if only you could make Bryan understand how lonely you are in your gilded cage. (They’ve been together since high school, so that’s about 20 years a deux.)

Quick with crude jokes and a bit too open with pal Steph about Bryan’s nasty personal habits (chewing his toenails and picking his nose), Brandi is outwardly bubbly but secretly sad. This week she put on a bright orange mini-dress for “date night” with Bryan at Texas de Brazil.

In a tight close-up shot, she nervously orders a martini and tries to tell him she feels neglected and wants more together-time. He sits stone-faced. “I feel like I give you all the attention,” he says.

“I don’t understand you,” Brandi says, so quietly there are subtitles on the screen.

“Okay, dude,” Bryan huffs, “I’ve had enough. I’m done.” Exit Bryan as “sad electronic music plays.” (That’s what the subtitles say.)

This is genuinely awful. We feel you, Brandi. Stay strong. (According to Bravo’s show blogs, the couple is still together.)

Meanwhile, back at other people’s mansions, charity stalwart LeeAnne Locken holds hands and prays aloud with her bestie Tiffany Hendra (rocking a side ponytail that would make Andy Cohen squeal) in the driveway of minor housewife Marie Reyes. They ask for divine guidance for the shouting match about to ensue. Something about nasty text messages Marie has sent to Tiffany about LeeAnne.

None of that is as interesting as Marie’s head ornament in this scene. It seems to be made of entwined twigs. Perhaps she bought it at a sample sale in Middle Earth.

Later in the hour Cary Deuber and plastic surgeon husband Mark shop for glittery dresses at Stanley Korshak, then he works the camera for a photo shoot wherein she doffs her top, revealing some top-grade bazooms, and flips into a handstand while wearing leather pants.

Cary says Mark’s hobbies are “cooking, photography, and sex.” In every shot, he’s on her tighter than Spanx on cellulite.

A teensy crack of discontent is revealed in the seemingly hunky-dory marriage of mega-mansion dwellers Stephanie and Travis Hollman. He wants to control her every move, including her decorating efforts. She says (not to him) that “I want him to trust me.”

Travis objects to the window treatments she’s picked out for their sons’ bedrooms. He says he doesn’t like curtains. So she throws him some shade: “He has the worst taste in the world.”

Exhibit B in her case is then introduced to the jury: huge statues of Samurai warriors guarding the front yard of their suburban palace. Travis bought them and planted them there. “I named them Gayle and Oprah,” Stephanie says.

Brandi and Stephanie are then seen dressing the scowling warriors up with shiny scarves, beads, and other frou-frou. It’s the happiest Brandi has looked in weeks.

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Real Housewives of Dallas airs at 9 pm Mondays on Bravo. You can also watch episodes online.

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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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