“The Real Housewives of Orange County” wrapped up the second of two reunion shows on Wednesday with the revelation that Shannon Storms Beador, who worried all season that too much housewife tittle-tattle would scuttle her relationship, had in fact been dumped by boyfriend John Janssen.

Like most things with Shannon, it’s complicated.

The episode opened with a montage of Shannon and John clips from Season 17, ending with a warm moment in which he told her he was ready to take their relationship to the next level, fueling Shannon’s dream that once her twins left for college this fall, she and John might shack up together.

Bravo’s Andy Cohen, hosting the reunion show, quickly got Shannon to acknowledge that the couple was no longer together, and all had not been as rosy as she’d tried to portray on the show.

“We argued,” she said. “He would leave and ghost me and he wouldn’t speak to me for days. I had never been more in love with anyone in my life than I had with John Janssen.”

Why say he was ready to “take it to the next level” if he was thinking of ending it, Cohen asked her.

“He was trying to get through filming, so that he didn’t look bad,” Gina Kirschenheiter interjected as Shannon reached for the first of many tissues.

“He said it on camera and a week later he broke up with me,” Shannon said as tears flowed.

“Ugh, horrible!” Jenn Pedranti said.

After a tangent into Shannon’s frantic season-long efforts to keep her castmates from talking about her relationship with John on camera – more on that in a moment – the end of that relationship resurfaced on the show.

“He broke (bleepin’) up with me,” Shannon tearfully said. “He broke my (bleepin’) heart. Can I look back at certain scenes and you can see that he’s checked out? Absolutely I can.

“I’m like embarrassed,” she said. “I feel like I’m a smart person that has a semi-decent head on my shoulders. And I’m like, ‘My god, look at how he’s looking at you,’ or, ‘Did you not see things?’”

Cohen noted that photos on Shannon’s social media recently had shown her out with John.

“Are you back together?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

“Are you hoping?” Jenn asked.

A few questions later, Cohen said asked what he really wanted to know: “Is he a friend with benefits?”

“Sometimes,” Shannon replied.

“Wow,” Cohen said. “All right. We’re gonna leave it there.”

The shadow of Shannon’s recent DUI arrest again loomed over the proceedings. As in the first reunion show a week earlier, a text slide filled the screen at the start to note that the reunion had taken 10 days before that arrest.

And there’s really no way the show could have avoided acknowledging that, given that a large chunk of the second reunion episode again involved talk about Shannon getting drunk in a reality show setting.

After Shannon told Cohen that in fact she does consider Heather Dubrow to be a Machiavellian figure, Heather pushed back against Shannon’s portrayal of herself as someone who would never tell the other housewives about her love live’s highs and lows. Well, certainly not the lows.

“Please don’t get angry at me,” Heather began. “You tend to drink and then call some of us.”

Guess what? Shannon got angry at her.

“You know what, Heather, that is a (bleeped) up think to say to me,” she shouted.

“It’s not! You’re the town crier,” Heather replied.

“Do I go out and drink sometimes?” Shannon replied with a righteousness she probably regretted 10 days later. “For you to say I need rehab. For you to paint a picture so I’m calling people every single night.”

She turned from Heather to Emily Simpson.

“For you to say I need a breathalyzer –”

“I think it’s a good invention,” replied Emily, who during the season suggested Shannon use one before calling after she’d had a pop or two.

Shannon then turned to Gina.

“You saying it’s truth serum, when I haven’t had an intimate conversation with you,” she said, attacking Gina for her quip during the season that the sauce gets Shannon spilling secrets. “Let me reiterate, Gina. I don’t like you.”

Gina rolled her eyes, she does it very well, and then Emily turned the conversation in a surprising direction, ignoring the facade of reality around the show to discuss the nature of what a Real Housewife does.

“You share things with people that you’re on a show with while you’re filming, (and then) you act like you don’t understand how this works,” Emily told Shannon. “If you don’t want any of us to talk about it, and you don’t want it to come out –.”

“– don’t tell us,” Heather interjected.

“Our job is to say how we feel and to say the truth about what’s going,” Gina said with the kind of confidence that comes from having memorized the Real Housewives code of conduct.

“My job is to be Shannon Storms Beador!” Shannon replied at considerable volume. “So I am not going to look at things and go, ‘Oh, I am on a reality show, so I’m going to act different now.’ I act the way I am.

“Do you know what I’ve done on reality TV?” Shannon continued. “I took my shirt off when I gained 42 pounds” – a clip is helpfully provided. “I’m the first housewife that’s delved into infidelity.”

The housewives are unimpressed.

“Why does that make it better than anybody else?” Heather asked.

“Gina had a DUI,” Emily added. “Tamra weighed me at the gym.”

But really, the rest of the episode wasn’t nearly as interesting as what you’ve read already. You don’t really need a play-by-play of the the hearing by the House Special Committee on Who Called Who a Loser at BravoCon do you?

Nah, didn’t think so. Suffice it to say that by the end of the episode, most everyone had made up. Heather and Tamra, certainly had. Shannon still didn’t like Gina.

And with a round of tequila shots, and Red Bull shot for post-DUI teetotaler Gina, we bid our fair housewives adieu.

Exhibit A, the following moment from Wednesday and the first of two reunion shows as the 17th season of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” comes to a close.

“Question for the group,” Cohen announced, the six women of the cast all sitting up just a little bit taller in response to his serious tone. “Over and under: How many seasons have seen Tamra’s [bare breasts]?”

Tamra Judge tilts her head back, thinking, as a montage of her pixelated parts across the seasons scrolls in a box beside her head.

“Every season,” Emily Simpson guessed.

“Twelve,” Shannon Storms Beador offered.

“How many seasons are we on for?” Heather Dubrow asked.

“This is my 13th season,” Tamra mused.

There might as well have been a drumroll before Cohen relieved us of the agony of suspense.

“Seven,” he said. “Because how many years were you with Simon (Tamra’s ex-husband)? You weren’t showing them then.”

And now we know. By the time you read this, surely someone will have updated the show’s Wikipedia page to reflect this important leap forward in humankind’s quest for knowledge.

Reunion shows tend to jump around from topic to topic as the host revisits the season just finished. This one, filmed on a virtual beach – giant wrap-around video screens and tons of real sand on the studio floor made it feel like Cohen and the women were on the beach – was no different.

We got clips of Tamra saying mean things about the other women, with Heather and Jenn Pedranti her biggest targets.

“I feel incredibly sad,” Heather said of Tamra’s constant campaign to turn the other women against her.

“I never came into this group to turn everyone against you,” Tamra weakly replied.

“There wasn’t one episode where you didn’t say something unkind about me,” Heather said. “Not one.”

Jenn had been Tamra’s target just as long for her dedication to her boyfriend Ryan, who Tamra felt wasn’t good enough for Jenn.

Did Tamra and Jenn hug and make up on the reunion show? Let’s check the tape.

“I was your friend!” Jenn shouted at Tamra. “You’re a piece of (dirt) of a friend.”

“(Bleep) off,” Tamra shouted back. “You’re the piece of (dirt), you cheater.”

“You’re a (bleepin’) cheater too,” Jenn replied. “So welcome to your own (bleepin’) club, Tamra.”

This goes on for 30 seconds during which 10 adjectives we can’t print here fly back and forth while Cohen seems to slide further and further down in his chair.

So … they didn’t make up? Now, now, don’t be too hasty. Eight minutes later we get this.

“You deserve happiness,” Tamra tells Jenn. “You are an amazing person.”

Is this real? Is anything? Actually, one thing is. The out-of-control drinking that’s portrayed as entertainment on the show finally got a brief moment of serious attention. It probably had to, given the recent arrest of one housewife on a DUI charge.

“The Real Housewives of Orange County reunion was filmed 10 days prior to Shannon Storms Beador’s DUI arrest,” a sober white text on a black screen announces. It’s the prelude to a DUI storyline this season in which Shannon claimed that by connecting Gina Kirschenheiter with an attorney she’d saved Gina’s kids from temporarily being picked up by child protective services.

When confronted earlier in the season, Shannon claimed she hadn’t said it. When a clip proved she had, she said she didn’t remember it.

“If you can say something that’s that (bleepin’) hurtful and not even remember?” Gina said to the camera. “You need to go (bleepin’) check yourself into rehab, and when you get to the (bleepin’) ‘I’m sorry’ step I’ll be waiting for that apology.”

Shannon does her thing where she tries to apologize without really saying she’s sorry. Gina is not having it. Shannon, cornered, lashes out.

“I don’t like you!” she yells, as clear a statement of that as you’ll ever hear on this show. “We don’t get along because you don’t know anything about me.”

Gina seizes the opening.

“What are my children’s names?” she demands.

“Sienna and … now I’m blanking,” Shannon replies, whiffing entirely on Gina’s sons Nicholas and Luca.

Gina orders Shannon to never talk about her kids again and she says it so loudly I don’t think I better even write about them again.

Another somber slide comes on the screen, this one telling viewers that if they know someone struggling with alcohol or substance abuse, call The National Drug and Alcohol Treatment Hotline at 800-662-HELP (4357).

Gina isn’t done telling Shannon what a bad thing she did, and how badly it has hurt her.

“It crosses a line!” she says. “A serious line! To the point where I don’t even know I can continue on here.”

Maybe. They could always start telling each other how amazing they are next week when the second, and thankfully final, reunion show arrives.

Gina Kirschenheiter loves Halloween like Linus loves the Great Pumpkin, and so she decides to throw a circus sideshow-themed party to wrap up the 17th season of the founding series of the Housewives franchise.

She’s dressed up as a sexy ringmaster with her boyfriend Travis her pre-tamed lion. Emily Simpson arrives as a box of popcorn – yellow popcorn covering her bustier top above red-and-white striped leggings for the box. Jenn Pedranti is the Cowardly Lion, Shannon Storms Beador is a fortune teller, Taylor Armstrong a pink poof of cotton candy, and Heather Dubrow a Cirque du Housewives aerialist.

And Tamra Judge? “I’m going to keep with my theme all year,” she tells Gina and Jenn at the costume store earlier in the episode. “I’m going to be an evil clown.”

No one is surprised.

“It’s very appropriate,” Gina says after Tamra arrives at the party looking like a meaner Harley Quinn. “She’s like a little Chucky doll. She’s coming in for her next kill.”

Her target in recent weeks has been Heather, whom Tamra accused the previous week of calling Gina and Emily losers. Much of the finale is spent investigating that claim. When Gina, hurt and angry, meets Heather to talk it out, Heather has a smoking gun: a podcast hosted by Teddi Mellencamp of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” where Teddi is talking with Tamra about how she, not Heather, had called her castmates losers.

Gina is back on Team Heather by the time the circus party kicks off with costumed unicyclists and stilt walkers mingling with the guests.

“I just want everybody to get along,” she tells Emily, apparently forgetting what kind of show she is on.

Tamra is not impressed.

“Gina was basically what I call Heather-merized,” she says, dismissing her defection to Heather.

But Emily is also willing to forgive and forget, and after she and Heather step aside for a private chat, during which Heather reveals Tamra had mocked her career as an attorney and party planner on the girls’ trip to Montana earlier this season.

Now Tamra looks nervous. She may be an evil clown but she’s no ventriloquist’s dummy, and the tides are shifting against her.

Undeterred, Tamra takes her evil clown-ness across the room to confront Heather, who, realizing she’s got the upper hand, stares her down.

“I’m fine with the truth,” she tells Tamra. “I don’t like your nonsense and your spinning things.

“I’m not interested in this,” Heather continues, with a perfectly executed dismissive wave of her hand.

The camera cuts to the closed door of the women’s restroom inside of which Jenn, Shannon and a very tipsy Taylor are loudly trying to figure out how to get out of their Cowardly Lion, fortune teller and cotton candy costumes to relieve themselves.

“You are laboring under the misconception that I give a (hoot),” Heather continues.

“I don’t care about you either,” Tamra replies weakly.

“Then let’s move on,” Heather says, turning on her heel to walk away.

“Yeah, goodbye, (bad lady),” Tamra replies.

Cut back to the exterior of the restroom: Jenn, Shannon and Taylor still haven’t figured out how to go.

Speaking of bathrooms, the second biggest storyline this week involves Shannon arriving at Tamra’s house with a home colonic contraption she’s thinking of marketing as her next big product line. Jenn arrives, unaware that Shannon intends to have her try it out – Jenn had complained about her irregularity in Mexico a week earlier.

After we’re treated to scenes of Jenn on the potty, Shannon in the open doorway coaching her how to use the thing, and Tamra rolling on the floor laughing while holding her glass of wine, everything works exactly as planned. Stay tuned, I guess, for the Beador Bidet on a home shopping network soon, I guess?

Back at the freak show, everyone eventually gets back into their costumes and grits their teeth to take a group photo that Gina insists on getting, no matter how awkward it now feels.

“It’s like when you force your kids to take family photos,” she tells the camera. “Everybody knows that’s the worst (bleepin’) day ever. But smile, take the picture!

“Because I want the (bleepin’) memory, (bad ladies).”

It’s 12:30 a.m. and Shannon Storms Beador, Tamra Judge and Vicki Gunvalson are still at it. Tequila. Dancing. Tequila and dancing on top of the bar.

“Tonight, to be able to all dance on a bar top together, even though we’re old ladies,” Shannon says, bringing Tamra and Vicki in for a group hug. “We can sometimes still have fun.”

Yes, you can! And normally we’d make a few jokes here about the old ladies atop the bar, trying not to fall down. But this week? Yeesh. Real life intruded on the semi-reality of the show when news broke that Shannon got popped on suspicion of DUI and hit and run after police say she literally drove into a house in Newport Beach on Saturday.

This week’s episode started with Shannon and several of the others going snorkeling to look at sea turtles, a sweet moment that — wait, what? They’re pouring tequila into their snorkels to take shots through mouthpieces? Ugh.

Not a good look, on a show that at times makes questionable decisions on how to highlight the housewives getting hammered on camera. See Exhibit A, the time many of the housewives ridiculed and disparaged former housewife Braunwyn Windham-Burke’s decision to stop drinking because she’d decided she is an alcoholic.

OK, back to the fun and games, such as they were, which truthfully wasn’t much fun at all. With only the finale to go next week this season’s reliance on who-said-what-about-whom gossip and recriminations is thankfully almost over.

The episode picks up with the aftermath of the previous one, in which Tamra, with a little help from Vicki, had once again left Jenn Pedranti in tears by trashing her boyfriend Ryan for his acknowledged promiscuous past.

In her room at the Mexican resort, Jenn calls Ryan to ask him if there’s anything more he needs to tell her — Tamra had claimed Ryan was carrying on for a year behind Jenn’s back, while Ryan had previously only admitted to a single one-nighter during a period of several months when he and Jenn were taking a break from each other.

Ryan seemed sincere in his insistence that that is all there is, but dude, when you’re on a break, read a book or something and leave the ladies alone for a hot minute.

The next day the women divide up. Team Turtles ‘n’ Tequila includes Gina Kirschenheiter, Emily Simpson, Shannon and Tamra. Team Parasailing has Heather Dubrow, Taylor Armstrong, Jenn and Vicki.

The Turtles spend more time on the boat as far as we can see. Shannon more or less slides down the side of the boat, scraping her arm, because she’s afraid to get in the water. The usual housewife joke about the warm water — who peed?! — is every bit as funny as it always is. These people.

The Parasailers are more entertaining in part because the sight of an outdoor massage session on the way to the boat triggers Vicki’s memories of the two times she had a massage that ended more happily than most normally do. On the boat, she proceeds to tell the others exactly how that works. Heather’s mouth literally is agape, while Jenn looks terribly confused with a dash of embarrassment thrown in.

Then tag-teaming the parasail with Heather, Vicki screams bloody murder the entire flight. She is so loud you absolutely know that just outside the frame, thousands of parrots take off to escape the caterwauling.

You know how Twitter, excuse me, X, always used to have a main character? Someone who said something dumb or offensive, who spends the next day or two the target of tweeting torpedoes? This week on the show it’s Heather who takes all the incoming fire, and for once, you actually feel a little bit sorry for her.

Everyone starts to blame Heather for saying every mean about everyone else. No matter that it’s pretty obvious Tamra has said as much or more mean stuff about the others. And that Emily totally misunderstood a key piece of information that Heather shared with her a few episodes back.

Heather is “it” and the fine face she puts on everything is starting to crumble. By the time the van drops her, Jenn, Gina and Emily off in Tulum to shop in the tourist town, she’s almost in tears.

“I’m definitely at a breaking point,” she says. “If retail therapy can’t cheer me up, that’s a problem.”

Jenn, Tamara, Vicki and Shannon have opted for a different kind of therapy — a session with a shaman named … Charlie? Yes, Charlie, who Jenn hopes will bring some resolution to the strife between her and Tamra. Spoiler alert: It’s probably going to take more than Charlie the Shaman blowing his conch shell for that rift to mend.

Later, they all meet for dinner at a Tulum restaurant that looks someone had the idea of “What if a monkey house, but with expensive food and cocktails?” To get to the bed-like tables around bar tops you have to walk across nets, which is absolutely beyond Shannon and Vicki’s ability to do. Fortunately there’s a walk-around option.

There is no option that allows Heather to escape the arrows that start flying her way during dinner, when at the moment it appears like Tamra has been caught talking trash on Gina and Emily, Tamra deftly turns the target right back on Heather. She may be evil, but you have to hand to Tamra, she is not an easy villain to vanquish.

As things heat up, Vicki leaves the table to get a shot of tequila at the bar because, as she explains to the camera, she’s just not someone who enjoys being around people who are fighting.

Chef’s kiss to the editor who put together the montage that plays next of scenes of Vicki absolutely losing it in episodes from 2006 to the present, most of which involve her screaming some variation of bleep you at the others.

Eventually, Heather joins her in the bar, too, announcing as fed-up housewives often do, “I’m done with the show, I’m out.”

If she’s out, and if Gina and Vicki are out, as they declared earlier in this episode, and if Shannon is out, which she announced several episodes ago, then that means — ah, who are we kidding? As long as the Bravo checks clear, none of these women is going anywhere.

Beador, 59, was released shortly after she was booked. On Tuesday, a Balboa Peninsula resident said she wasn’t around when a car collided with a concrete flower bed in front of her home, but a neighbor called police. Beador was arrested a few blocks away, at Via Oporto and Via Lido, according to Police Sgt. Steve Oberon.

Both charges, if filed, would be misdemeanors in Beador’s case, police said.

“I spent quite a bit of time with Shannon yesterday. She is extremely apologetic and remorseful. We will be awaiting the official information on this case as it becomes available, and Shannon is prepared to accept full responsibility for her actions,” Beador’s attorney Michael Fell said in a statement Monday.

Jeff Lewis, a real estate agent and radio personality who is friends with Beador, said on his Sirius XM radio show that he spoke with Beador following the crash, in which he said she was injured.

“I was shocked because I’ve never known Shannon to ever, ever, ever drink and drive,” Lewis said. “That is something that we both have discussed previously.

“I will tell you she’s accepting full accountability,” Lewis said ‘She is ashamed, she’s embarrassed … I think she’s going through a lot of personal struggles right now.”

Beador joined the Bravo Housewives show in 2014.

Drinking is a major part of almost every episode of the RHOC. Beador, Tamra Judge and former housewife Vicki Gunvalson called themselves the Tres Amigas for their tequila-shot-taking, hard-partying ways, especially on girls trips the show has done several times each season. Earlier this month the Tres Amigas were reunited on a Cabo girls trip and got hammered.

In July 2019, Orange County “Housewife” Gina Kirschenheiter pleaded guilty to DUI, according to news reports appearing on the Bravo site. She previously made a public apology on Instagram.

Register staff writers Mona Darwish, Sean Emery and Peter Larsen, City News Service and CNN contributed to this report.

You know Snuffy from “Sesame Street,” of course, a show where you will never see Big Bird do body shots of tequila or Bert and Ernie go the medi-spa for a his-and-his botox treatment.

Oscar the Grouch, we’re not so sure about. If Tamra Judge were in one of those moods, he’d probably match her shot for shot until they both crashed out inside his trash can.

Snuffy showed up midway through Wednesday’s episode when Emily Simpson was taken aback by Heather Dubrow’s suggestion that she looked like Mr. Snuffleupagus. Something about how she’d jumped from a 36-foot-tall platform into a deep black cenote, emerging from the water hole looking a little bit worse for wear.

“Heather thinks I’m mean, but she is, too,” Emily tells the camera. “Isn’t she doing mean things when she says I look like a Snuffleupagus? It’s a big, huge furry Muppet!”

Later, after a water aerobics class for which the women all wore swimsuits printed with photorealistic images of muscular male torsos on them, some complete with hairy backsides in back, the debate picks up.

Heather explains that Mr. Snuffleupagus was her imaginary friend – typical Heather, trying to steal Big Bird’s imaginary friend – and that she loves him and so Emily should take it as a compliment.

“It’s very on-brand for Heather to have an imaginary friend who can’t talk back,” Gina Kirschenheiter tells the camera.

Shannon Storms Beador and Tamra, women with children who presumably might have seen “Sesame Street” once or twice, are mostly mystified by what on earth he is.

I don’t know what a Snuffleupagus is but I’m assuming it’s like super hairy and big, Shannon says.

“You know, the hairy guy who runs in the jungle,” Tamra says. “Sasquatch! He’s like Sasquatch and an elephant mixed up.”

Then Tamra proceeds to imagine how a Sasquatch and an elephant might accidentally have a child together, but that’s not something we want to explain in detail in the newspaper, is it?

Emily accepts Heather’s explanation, or maybe she is just tired of the conversation. We look forward to next week when the housewives debate which one of them looks most like Po, the Purple Teletubby.

For most of the rest of the episode, the housewives enjoy a sunny day, sweeping the clouds away in favor of ATV rides, cenote plunges, spa treatments, and a trip to the waterpark. But dark clouds arrive during a game of Truth of Dare, when Jenn Pedranti has the misfortune to pose a question to Vicki Gunvalson, who shows up a day or two late to the trip to surprise all the others.

Vicki chooses truth. Jenn suggests that since they don’t know each other maybe someone else should ask. Vicki pays no mind to that and decides that her truth will be to tell Jenn that she’s probably in love with the wrong guy and Vicki says she knows this for two reasons. One, it happened to her once, and two, Tamra has been spilling all the tea in Newport Beach about Ryan to Vicki.

Jenn absorbs this blank-faced as usual, which the other housewives are increasingly finding odd. Why doesn’t she react? Gina wonders. Why doesn’t she stand up for herself? Emily and Taylor Armstrong agree.

Be careful what you wish for, maybe, because the next day, Jenn goes off.

At brunch, Tamra and Jenn get into the whole thing all over again, and when Tamra tells Jenn that she “ruined her whole family” to leave her husband and be with Ryan, Jenn goes off.

It’s too much depressing back and forth to get into here – Jenn probably should have put a stop to this weeks ago – but at one point Jenn does nail the reason why all this mean gossip keeps going around, I think.

“If you need my (stuff) to make you more (bleepin’) relevant, good for (bleepin’) you,” she tells Tamra.

If only the mic had dropped then and there, but alas, you don’t need to be Snuffy to sniff out that this storyline is going to be with us for the rest of the season.

And now … not so much?

“The Real Housewives of Orange County” took its time getting to the good stuff on Wednesday, Sept. 6, but this is where we finished up, gathered at a fancy feast at a very fancy Mexican resort with Emily and Heather on opposite sides of the table.

“By the way, I don’t care what you think,” Heather says with that little flick of her index finger she uses for extra emphasis.

“I don’t care what you think, either,” Emily replies.

“Great. I think you’re a (lousy) friend –“

“I think you’re a (lousy) friend.”

The neener-neeners go unspoken but hang heavy in the tropical air.

“This is going to take awhile,” a waiter tells the manager in Spanish, and he’s right: “To be continued …” flashes on the screen.

We ain’t getting out Mexico any time soon.

The roots of this fight had been brewing since the fancy soiree Heather threw for the HD Network, some kind of lifestyle channel she’s acquired on the Fireside streaming app, of which Mark Cuban is one of the founders.

We get the usual housewives-getting-ready-for-a-party montage, and then their arrivals. Emily and Gina Kirschenheiter, Jenn Pedranti and Tamra Judge, who show up in different outfits of the same shade of neon lime. Shannon Storms Beador, who hasn’t been getting along with Heather, is a no show, and you know that’s not going unnoticed by Heather.

Heather is already there with husband Terry Dubrow.

“I am throwing a party that feels very Heather Dubrow lifestyle,” Heather Dubrow says of herself and her lifestyle. “Living your life in high definition.”

Ugh. And HD logos are everywhere, which Emily, who leaves four glasses of champagne in various stages of completion on the cocktail table, has not overlooked.

Emily had started to tell the others sans Heather that their hostess had teased knowing some dirt – something that Shannon told her about Emily at BravoCon in New York City – but then refused to tell her on grounds that it been confided to her “in the vault” of secrecy that one housewife can declare to another, and thereby ensure its confidentiality.

I think Emily and I both would agree that The Housewives Law of the Vault should be amended to also ban teasing someone about knowledge gained in the vault. If you know there’s something in there, it’s gonna drive you crazy, and when the party moves to the dinner table, Emily goes a bit champagne crazy.

The appetizers arrive with caviar featured on one. Emily loudly declares that she doesn’t like to eat these things.

A fancy salad arrives with thin slices of cucumber sliced lengthwise. Emily bites one end and lets the rest of hang down past her chin like an old-timey cartoon wolf who’s just seen a real hotsy-totsy number swish past.

More bites of the salad and Emily starts repeatedly ask Gina if there’s sand in her salad too.

“Heather, why don’t you put your initials on more things,” Emily says. “I don’t think there are enough.”

And later: “I’m surprised we didn’t branded (with an HD) on the way in here.”

Gina is alternatively mortified and amused.

“Why are you saying all this (stuff) at the table?” Gina tells the camera later. “Just wait until after the (bleepin’) party and then call me and we’ll talk (trash) like normal people.”

Heather’s face remains frozen – she’s got appearances to keep up, after all – until Emily tipsy-teeters off to the restroom with Gina.

“For Emily to be sitting here, acting like an ass, it’s so crass. So rude,” she says to the camera. “But I’m not going to allow her to take this away from me.”

Then to the table: “I feel like she’s on my case,” Heather says. “Eat your (bleepin’) food and shut up.”

Mmm, who’s being rude now, huh?

Elsewhere this week on “The Real Housewives of Orange County”:

— Heather and Terry close the deal to sell their Orange County mansion for $55 million, though Heather hasn’t yet told the others, and she kind of knows that’s not gonna play well when they find out.

After the HD Network party she and Terry go to say goodbye to their house. They pop a bottle of champagne, but having packed all the glasses – or more accurately, paid someone else to pack all the glasses – they drink it straight from the bottle. Is this a crass way to drink champagne? We’ll have to watch the HD Network to find out.

— Jenn’s mother Kristen is out from Oklahoma to meet her much-talked-about boyfriend Ryan for the first time, even though they’ve been together going on two years. Apparently Mom really liked her soon-to-be ex Will, which has kept her away. Then there’s that Oklahoma animus toward divorce, Jenn explains.

“Where I come from divorce is a no-no,” she says.

Later, Jenn, Ryan and Mom meet for dinner. After some awkward moments – Mom insists on referring to Will as a good husband to Jenn and Ryan’s faces – and point-blank asks Ryan if he’ll cheat on Jenn like he did on his ex, Mom gives her blessing.

— The show opens with Shannon visiting Dr. Moon, her natural healer whom we’ve met in seasons past. He tells that she’s suffering from “gravity stress,” which is why her tummy and her face are hanging down a little bit. He asks her her anger level – 9, Shannon shouts.

“He gets any emotional stuff out and de-jams me,” Shannon says of her treatment.

She’s also working on going into business with him, partnering with him to promote his natural colonics. “Let’s turn (poop) into gold,” Shannon tells the camera, because of course she does.

Correction: The name of the streaming app on which Heather’s network is available is Fireside. Due to a reporting error an incorrect name was originally published.

Gina is mad at Shannon. Tamra Judge isn’t mad at anyone, but the others would be mad at her if they knew how she was stirring up trouble.

And Taylor Armstrong wants to get them all around the same table and then hand them each a very sharp knife?

“Let’s carve some pumpkins and try not to stab each other with the carving tools,” Taylor cheerfully says as she invites her castmates to a fall-themed party during Wednesday’s episode on “The Real Housewives of Orange County“.

Worry not. Only the pumpkins get shanked during the episode.

You’ll recall that in recent weeks Shannon has been variable degrees of irate at Heather, Emily and Gina for gossiping about Shannon’s relationship with her boyfriend John.

We have seen Shannon shout that their gossip will be the end of that relationship. We have seen Shannon yell at the producers and crew that if they don’t turn off the cameras and erase the footage her future with John is gone.

Unfortunately, we have also seen her talk about her relationship with John over and over again – this week with Tamra – and tell the world, or at least that portion of which have nothing better to do than watch “Real Housewives,” about her issues with John.

“I’m not going to talk about every argument,” Shannon says – and that’s a good start! “I’m not. I’m not. I love John. But I’ll be honest with you” – uh-oh – “I get really upset with John” – oh no! “when John and I don’t spend a lot of time together.”

John doesn’t spend enough time with her. He’s always leaving her house to go check on his dog or because he’s got to get up early the next day. He thinks Shannon’s house is too chaotic what with her three teenage daughters and all. They’ve never taken a vacation together just the two of them.

“There’s a part of me that says, ‘Is he really in it?’” Shannon continues, as Tamra nods sympathetically, taking it all in for future reference.

“Shannon and John’s not talking about marriage is a big red flag,” Tamra later tells the camera. “They’ve been together three years, and no talk of marriage at their age?”

Meanwhile, Gina has a beef of her own with Shannon. On the previous episode, Shannon said that had she not stepped in with an attorney to help when Gina got busted for DUI, well, Shannon speculates, Gina might have lost custody of her kids.

Tonight, confronted at the pumpkin-carving table, Shannon flat out denies she said any such thing, surely knowing that the producers were gonna drop the receipts – footage of Shannon saying exactly that just four days before – like a truth grenade in her lap.

“Never said it. God strike me dead,” Shannon declares, prompting Tamra to joke to the camera that she might not want to stand so close to Shannon for a bit.

“I didn’t talk about Travis,” she continues, referencing Gina’s boyfriend Travis.

“The penis comment?” Tamra softly says, helpfully nudging Shannon to remember.

“Of course, you’re going to say that,” Shannon sighs. “Don’t say that.”

No need to say it! The videotape reveals exactly what Shannon said, sending the housewives into a tizzy of talk about their boyfriends and husbands and the manhood each has.

It’s almost as tasteful as the scene moments earlier when the pumpkin-carving consultant asked them to cut a hole in the bottoms of their pumpkins, which sent them chattering about carving – well, maybe that part of the pumpkin’s anatomy is best left unspecified.

“I didn’t say they were ladies,” Taylor apologized to the pumpkin expert. “I just said they were women.”

Shannon and Gina agree to move on, though apparently that doesn’t apply to what they say in the privacy of their homes for future broadcast to millions.

“If you can say things that are that (bleepin’) hurtful, and then not even remember you said it, you need to check yourself into rehab,” Gina tells the camera later.

Here’s what else went down on Wednesday night:

— Heather and Terry Dubrow finalize the sale of their house for $55 million.

“Fifty-five million isn’t (bleep) you money; it’s (bleep) everybody you’ve known money,” Terry says.

“The fact that I had the perfect bottle of Dom Perignon chilling? Best moment ever,” Heather says. “It’s the 2012. You know I don’t like the ’10. The ’10 wasn’t good.”

At $280 a bottle at the liquor store, the 2012 Dom had better be good. She just sold her house for enough money to buy 196,429 bottles of it.

— Emily has decided to learn to ride a motorcycle so she invites Gina to meet her at the Harley-Davidson store to shop for helmets. When she finds one she likes she can barely get it on.

“It says it’s an extra large,” Emily mutters as Gina laughs so hard she announces she might pee her pants. “Do I have an extra-large head?”

— Tamra is worried about her love life with husband Eddie Judge.

“I have to ask you,” she tells him as they work out at the gym. “There’s no porn, there’s no lingerie, there’s no sex toys. Are we just getting stale?”

Eddie allows that maybe some new lingerie might spice things up. And then he goes someplace weird even for this couple.

“You want me to come in like Conan?” he says without specifying whether that’s The Warrior or O’Brien. “In a leather vest, with a sword, and just go, ‘C’mon, baby?’”

Tamra is direct: “No. That doesn’t do it for me.”

Lingerie it is, then.

But she is aware that maybe, just maybe, it’s gonna have an impact on the fiesta she’s planned to celebrate National Taco Day at a beachside restaurant in Huntington Beach.

“I pretty much told all of them to (bleep) off,” she admits to boyfriend John, the subject of the housewifery gossip that led to Shannon’s anger at Heather Dubrow, Gina Kirschenheiter, Emily Simpson, yet somehow not Tamra Judge two weeks ago.

“They just need to shut the (bleep) up,” John replies, underscoring how bleeping perfect these two are for each other.

And sure enough, Heather, Gina, and Emily all are no-shows when – after Shannon repeatedly tries to quit the show because they insist on showing the reality of what she is saying – the fiesta begins.

I can barely concentrate on the start of the party, though, because Shannon, who never passes up the chance to debut a new costume, is wearing the teeniest tiniest sombrero atop her cabeza. I found a similar one online and then debated whether at $13.99 I should get one of these fine fascinators for one of my cats, or three for all three of ’em.

Earlier, Heather and Emily tried, and failed miserably, to make peace with Shannon. Gina, meanwhile, just ghosted, choosing instead to accompany Emily to the California Innocence Project’s gala, which attorney Emily volunteers for, in San Diego.

“So, I’m obviously going to go to a philanthropic event with Emily where I can feel good versus tacos with some nutball who’s screaming at me,” Gina says with logic not even a lawyer like Emily could poke a hole in.

Heather came in person and insisted that she had not broken the Housewife Code that secrets placed in the Housewife Vault shall remain un-gossiped.

Emily called via FaceTime to say that she wanted a sit-down in person. When Shannon decided to just get into it, Emily got so flustered it took her 10 tries to actually hang up on Shannon. This makes Emily decide to skip the party entirely instead of arriving late after the San Diego wingding.

“And you know what, tacos are my favorite food,” Emily says. “So you know if I’m going to miss that it’s because I’m (ticked off).”

The problem, as Shannon sees it, is that her castmates keep sharing Shannon’s concerns about her relationship with John.

The problem as Tamra, Gina, Emily and Heather see it is that Shannon keeps on telling them stuff about her relationship with John and then forgetting what she told them because she tends to call and talk about her relationship when she’s had a relaxing beverage or three.

“She drinks the truth serum and it brings out the truth,” Gina says to the camera.

“You know how after you get a DUI sometimes you have to get a Breathalyzer installed on your car before you can start it?” Emily asks. “She needs that on her cellphone.”

Eventually, guests including Tamra, Jenn Pedranti, Taylor Armstrong, and their respective mates and dates, arrive at the fiesta, and the party gets festive. How could it not with that tiny sombrero? (Note to Shannon: The same company makes a tiny green top hat for St. Patrick’s Day.)

“None for her,” Eddie Judge tells the bartender of the proffered tequila. “My wife’s clothes come off when she drinks tequila.”

Good luck with that, Eddie.

“This is going to be bad,” Tamra announces. “Here comes Tequila Tammy!”

The tequila flows as fast as the guests can throw it back, so much so that the producers slip into Blur-O-Vision to make sure no one misses the point of the party.

Eventually, Señor Noodlez, the taco caterer, steps out from behind the grill, announces he thinks the guests all need a tequila shot and wipes out a Super Soaker squirt gun loaded with tequila and fills Taylor’s open mouth from several feet away.

Tequila Tammy wrestles the squirt gun away from Señor Noodlez and mayhem ensues. She chases Taylor around the table until Taylor slips and falls. She sprays tequila shots indiscriminately across the table and blasts Shannon in the face.

Then, in a momentary fit of sanity, if not sobriety, she realizes she’s maybe loving this tequila gun a little too much and throws it over the wall and onto the beach.

Elsewhere in this week’s episode:

— I’m not sure how Jenn got cast as the new housewife this season. She’s entirely too nice. In a few sweet scenes at her house, we see her interacting with her 9-year-old son Dominic, Latino by birth, who came to live and eventually was adopted by her family when he was 11 months old. As she talks with him about their lives and his background, there’s a lot of love on display.

— Jenn and her kids are also seen bottle-feeding baby kittens they’re fostering until they’re old enough and big enough to be adopted. She uses that as a way to talk about adoption and forever homes with Dom, too.

— Heather and Terry Dubrow, meanwhile, are seen signing escrow papers as they continue with plans to sell their Orange County chateau-like mansion for $55 million in order to buy a Century City penthouse apartment for $14 million. As one does.

Here’s the thing about these super-pricey pads: they tend to look like fancy hotels, cold, fussy, sterile. Heather gushes about how the new apartment is the first home in the United States designed by fashion designer Roberto Cavalli. Terry is wowed by the fact that the place is made of a combination of stone and suede. I wonder whether the toilet has a paper strip across it that reads Sanitized For Your Protection.

— “This isn’t goodbye to Orange County,” Heather tells the camera of her impending move to Century City. “I’m just seeing someone else for a moment.” I don’t know. Maybe call your divorce attorney to be safe, Orange County.

It’s a dress-up party, see, with each woman picking the name of another to come as to the shindig.

Tamra Judge gets Heather Dubrow and shows up in a brunette wig and a sweater with Fancy Pants in large letters on the back.

“Heather Dubrow here!” she announces as she arrives at the party with a dead-on impersonation of Heather’s prancy walk and golden money gun that shoots bills, presumably fake, but who knows, at the pull of a trigger. “I’ll take this chair because I look like a princess!”

Heather is not impressed: “I wouldn’t buy a money gun, it’s déclassé,” she sniffs, using the Fancy Pants word for “tacky.”

Gina Kirschenheiter gets Emily Simpson and spares no detail in her attempt to recreate her BFF in body and spirit.

“I had to grow a booty in one week,” Gina says of the costumery necessary to capture the curviness of Emily. “It’s like Spanx with booty pads.”

Emily is mostly pleased with Gina’s results.

“I am so impressed,” she says to the camera. “Except with the boobs. She might have needed to add a little more there.”

The others all eventually show up, too. Emily is Shannon Storms Beador. Shannon is Gina. Taylor Armstrong is Tamra. Heather is Jenn Pedranti. And Jenn is Taylor.

“I’m dead,” says Taylor, who you may remember is the woman in the infamous Woman Yelling at a Cat meme. “Jenn even took the time to get a Smudge the cat.”

Tamra, meanwhile, isn’t nearly as impressed with Taylor’s version of her.

“That does not look like me at all,” she complains. “She could have worn a Cut Fitness hat. She could have (chest) prosthetics. She could have worn a sign that says (jerk face). I’m a little disappointed.”

Last to arrive, and thank God and the show producers for resurrecting her, is Vikki Gunvalson, the self-proclaimed OG of the OC, who’d been bumped from the show a few years ago, but now has fallen back in favor.

Why is Vikki the greatest of housewives? She arrives at the party pulling a large bucket in which is an already tapped keg of beer. (She also arrives as herself – baller move.)

“Whoo! Where’s the party?” Vikki shouts. (Vikki’s normal speaking voice remains a shout, of course.) “Who wants to give me a keg stand?”

I’m going out on a limb now to say this will be the only 61-year-old woman you will see doing a keg stand on your TV this year.

Next Vikki pressures her old pal Shannon into following suit.

“I’m not a keg-stander person,” Shannon says. “I’m going to vomit.”

To her credit, she doesn’t, but neither does she manage to actually drink much from the tap as the women hold her aloft.

“I can’t do that thing where you can, like, open your throat and down stuff,” Shannon says, and fortunately for all of us does not elaborate.

As the drinks continue to flow, the evening disintegrates in the usual ways. First, with lots and lots of dirty talk. (If “The Real Housewives of Orange County” was an ordinary workplace their HR department would have its hands full.)

“I’m slutty Heather!” Tamra decrees at one point, and pulls her skirt above her waist to prance around the patio. “I love being Heather da Ho. Heather da Ho is the way to go.”

As Heather, excuse me, Tamra shakes her be-thonged behind at the camera, the real Heather is greatly displeased.

“Well apparently dressing up like Heather Dubrow doesn’t mean you behave like Heather Dubrow,” she says in voice that if it were any colder Vikki would chip off a few pieces and put them in her drink.

Tamra, who cohosted this classy soiree, pulls out a card game called Do or Drink, a sort of boozy, dirty version of Truth or Dare. In rapid order we are treated – though perhaps that’s not the right word – to the following Do’s:

Vikki accepts the challenge to act out a sex position. Heather correctly guesses that Taylor has had a threesome – or as Heather would say, a ménage à trois – which means Taylor, not Heather, has to down three shots. Gina has to “motorboat” the person to her right; which turns out to be Jenn dressed as Tamra, though it doesn’t look any kind of a boating activity I’ve ever seen.

Vikki next accepts the challenge of a strip tease with a shot for every item of clothing. We only see her toss her shirt and bare her bra, but maybe they’re saving the rest for the Snyder Cut. Taylor draws a card that requires her to apply her tongue to part of Emily.

“When I heard game night I thought like Monopoly or Twister,” Emily tells the camera. “I didn’t not envision my (thingamajig) getting licked. But you know what, I’m not mad about it.”

Taylor, who earlier this season told her castmates she’s bisexual, wasn’t mad about it either.

“If there’s a (thingamajig), I’ll lick it,” she says in her confessional.

If you thought this evening would end with everyone hugging everyone else and telling each other what a lovely time they’d had, well, you’d probably never seen the show before.

The swizzle stick that breaks this party’s back is the not-very-interesting ongoing storyline about Shannon’s relationship with boyfriend John and the fact that the other women have all been talking about it behind her back.

Shannon pulls Heather aside to grill her about what she had or hadn’t said, and also what other people had or hadn’t. Tamra and Gina and Emily have their own whisper fest a table away.

Shannon is upset that some of the others might be saying her relationship with John isn’t good, even though Shannon herself is the source of their information. Girl, don’t go on national TV to complain about a fight with your boyfriend and then get mad that he might hear about it from others.

“I’m out!” Shannon declares in a voice that isn’t sure whether to be angry or tearful. She tries to walk out the door, but the women follow.

“I’m out!” she tells the producers in a little tent outside Jenn’s house as the cameras continue to roll.

“I’m out!” she says at least three times in the trailer for next week’s episode.

She’s never really out though. It’s like she’s Michael Corleone in “The Godfather III”: Just when she thought she was out, they pull her back in.

Until next week … I’m out!