Housewives Reunion Asks: 'Who Was Cheating?'

An anticlimactic showdown between Rosie Pierri and Teresa Giudice and an appearance from Joe Giudice were the highlights of the second part of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey’s” reunion aired Sunday night on Bravo.

The most anticipated part of the episode was the appearance of Joe Giudice, the least public and probably most controversial of all the househusbands.

Rumors about the state of the Giudice marriage plagued the entire season to the point where even their kids seemed to be suspicious of his “business activities.”

Of course, the first thing host Andy Cohen asked about was a mysterious phone call Giudice made in Napa, allegedly to a business partner.

“I think it was the groaning that made people suspicious,” Melissa Gorga said after Giudice explained he was talking to two workers at home, one of whom was speaking Spanish.

More important than the recipient of the call was the revelation that Joe had called his wife Melissa “the c word” as she approached him that day.

“Thanks for airing that episode,” Giudice told Cohen. “It cost me a lot of money.”

The Giudices revealed that Joe had bought Teresa quite a few diamonds to make up for it, but he does not excuse his behavior.

“That word isn’t even in my vocabulary,” he said. “I don’t even like hearing it.”

When Laurita was asked for her opinion on the rumors, she originally remained tight-lipped, but then decided she would be “honest.”

“He calls her those names all the time, and she calls him names, and they punch each other,” she said.

She also said Giudice had confided in her many times that Joe was cheating, although Teresa said the same about Laurita’s husband Chris.

“Honey, you walked in on your husband when he had somebody on the desk!”Laurita said.

“Why am I here?” Joe Giudice said.

Last week, Kathy Wakile called Giudice’s mother and father a liar. Giudice fired back that her father had been there for Wakile and her sister Pierri more than their own father. Rosie could then be heard backstage claiming he was going to kill Giudice.

As the second part of the three-part reunion aired, Lauren Manzo, daughter of housewife Caroline Manzo, went to Pierri and calmed her down before she could start a fight on stage.

“Just relax, because you know if you freak out, at the end of the day you’re going to be wrong,” she said. “Think about the way your dad would want you to react.”

When Pierri did join the group, it was to talk about coming out to her niece and nephew.

“In a season of a lot of discord, there was actually some love and tolerance,” Cohen said.

“Which Teresa also tried to destroy,” Wakile said, referring to a comment Giudice made about Wakile’s supposed intolerance of her sister’s sexuality.

“We struggled a lot especially right after my dad passed away,” Pierri said. “I’d just met this girl and she was leading me down a bad path, and my sister saw that.”

She spoke frankly about her struggle with herself and the ultimate acceptance she found both from Wakile and her mother when she finally came out.

The reunion is the only time the housewives are allowed to talk about the nature of being on reality television, and it was a big topic of conversation during this segment.

As Rosie raged back stage, Caroline Manzo was on stage, still trying to talk some sense into Giudice, with seeming sincerity.

“This is 15 minutes of fame!” she said. “You are going to wake up one day and be alone!”

Host Andy Cohen zeroed in on the problem. “Something keeps coming up here, and it’s the idea of Melissa [Gorga] being on the show to hurt you.”

Giudice has said repeatedly that her sister-in-law Gorga and cousin Wakile joined the show without talking to her first, which they deny. Both Laurita and Manzo claimed that Giudice tried to convince them to gang up with her against her family members.

“[When] Melissa and Kathy come into the picture…I am horrible to them,” Manzo said, later saying she apologized to both of them for her behavior.

“When they came on the show, I was hurt, and I told you why I was hurt,” Giudice said.

“And how do you think I felt watching you with my sister Dina?” Manzo said, attempting to get Giudice to admit that she purposefully filmed with Dina Manzo to hurt her.

“Don’t you see the parallel?” she asked.

“No, we were always friends,” Giudice said.

Later, Giudice and Gorga had a showdown over their respective projects. Giudice challenged Gorga to sing on the spot, which she did, and objectively quite well. Giudice responded by mocking Gorga’s song “On Display,” which Giudice also alleged was written about her. Gorga responded by saying that Giudice’s mother cooks all of the food that she tweets.

With things so bad between the Gorgas and Giudices, Melissa admitted that she and her husband put their Montville house on the market because “I don’t want my kids going to school with her kids.”

Despite the fact that they are currently in different elementary schools, Laurita pointed out that they would attend junior high together.

“I see where it’s going and I have one little girl,” she said. “I don’t want [the four Giudice girls] ganging up on her.”

Next week, he will be joined by all of the husbands (except, it would seem, Albert Manzo) for the third part of the reunion and the final episode of season four.

The show airs Sundays at 10 on Bravo.

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