On Wednesday’s episode of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” Teresa Giudice learned that Joe Giudice’s first appeal in his deportation case had been denied.
The Giudice family attorney, Jim Leonard, stopped by the house to discuss the next steps with Teresa. She wanted her brother, Joe Gorga, there to help her “understand everything.”
“I feel like I’m just so numb,” she told Jim as they waited for Joe to arrive. “I feel like I can’t even believe this is happening.
Once Joe got there, Teresa caught him up to speed. Joe asked if the girls knew. Teresa said she told Gia, who was “so upset.” She also told Gabriella so “Gia’s not the only one who has to deal with this.” She hadn’t told the youngest, Audriana, who earlier in the episode cried as she struggled to remember memories of her dad and family vacations while they sorted through old photos together. Tre also hadn’t told Milania, the most sensitive of the bunch.
“You better tell her,” Joe urged. “Don’t let her hear it from somebody else.”
“I don’t want speak too loud,” Jim said as he looked around and lowered his voice, “but he’s in trouble. His immigration lawyers made the arguments to the lower courts, and the courts have denied it very aggressively. I mean, they blew up every single argument. So the next step is the other appeal, the third circuit, and saying, ‘Please, the lower courts have made mistakes.'”
“It could take months,” he went on. “We have to start the whole process all over again. But the problem is, this is his last chance, and you’re not bringing forward new information. So I think the odds are against Joe at this stage. Immigration is the hottest topic on the planet, and I think Joe is caught in the crossfire of that.”
A stunned Teresa sat silently as Joe asked, “What’s his percentage of coming home?”
“It’s not good right now,” Jim confessed, as a still-hopeful Joe asked, “50, 30, 10 percent?”
“Given what we learned this morning,” Jim lamented, “significantly less.”
Teresa’s eyes welled up as her brother leaned in to give her a hug. “I feel helpless,” she said. “I want him to come home. We have four daughters together. I didn’t sign up to do this alone. Joe was calling me, and he’s like, ‘I’m sorry I let you guys down. I’m sorry.'”
“He’s scared,” Jim said, but Teresa said she was “scared, too.”
“Let me ask a serious question here,” Joe interjected, looking at his sister. “Why continue to fight? You’re burying yourself financially.” Teresa said their daughters wanted him to fight. “Yeah, but when there’s no money,” Joe warned, “it’s that much harder. You know that, right? So for your future, your daughters, your everything — to keep going? You have to think now as a business person that he’s not coming home. Sometimes, you have to understand, ‘It’s not going anywhere. I might have to move on.'”
“I understand what my brother’s saying,” Tre later told the camera, “but I’ve been through financial strain before. I had to pay back taxes, I had to pay off all our debts, so how can I put a price tag on my daughters having their daddy home?”
Earlier in the episode, while the ladies were still in Jamaica, the topic of Danielle Staub’s short-lived marriage to Marty Caffrey came up in conversation. Teresa blurted out that the two recently “had sex.” Margaret Josephs didn’t believe it and called Danielle “pathological.”
“I was on the phone with her, and she was like, ‘Hi, sweetheart,'” Tre recalled, asking Margaret, “What’s the point of lying?”
Dolores Catania, who hates Danielle almost as much as Margaret does, interjected, “All her lies doesn’t negate the fact that she slept with him.” Margaret said she believed Danielle “tried to have sex with him as her last-stitch effort to get the house.”
In her confessional, the Marge claimed Danielle and Marty were still living together in Marty’s home. “According to the terms of their divorce,” she said, “she has to buy him out of the house — over $2 million — or get the hell out.”
Melissa Gorga wanted to know if Marty would tell Margaret the truth about the situation. Margaret said he’d tell her husband, Joe, so they called up Mr. Benigno. Unfortunately, he didn’t answer, so the women suggested she “just call Marty.”
“I’m with the girls, and it seems like Danielle is spreading rumors that you and her are banging,” Margaret said to Marty, who replied, “What?! She’s gotta come up with the money on my house, so that’s where her game is.”
“So is that a no?” Jennifer Aydin asked. “I didn’t hear a definite no.” After Margaret hung up, the ladies were in agreement that they thought Marty was lying. “A stiff dick has no conscious,” Dolores noted. “One p—y can pull a freight train.”
As all this was going on, Danielle called Teresa, who was petrified to answer because she thought she would be “in trouble.” She was. Danielle told Tre she was upset she told the girls her business and hung up on her. Teresa was concerned she had hurt Danielle’s feelings, but Margaret cavalierly asked, “Who gives a f–k?”
While the ladies were away, Dolores’ ex-husband, Frank Catania, went to dinner with her boyfriend, David Principe, to discuss the house the former was building for the latter. Frank said he was a bit hesitant to take on the job given the sensitive nature of everyone’s relationship with each other, but David didn’t seem to have an issue.
Dolores has said in the past she wouldn’t be moving into David’s new house without more of a commitment from him, and Frank — being the doting ex-husband that he is — decided to put some unsolicited pressure on the super busy and super successful obstetrician-gynecologist.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Frank asked, “where do you see the two of you going? Because you know Dolores says she’s not gonna move in the house unless she has a commitment.” David sighed and said, “I understand exactly what you’re saying, and she knows my first love is my job. She’s never once given me grief about it. But we’re just taking it step by step. I think once we get the house going, things will be a lot clearer.”
“Listen,” Frank replied, leaning in, “as much as she might not say it, I think she’ll be very disappointed if there’s no commitment.”
David was visibly uncomfortable as he told Frank they hadn’t even picked out tile, “so a ring is like not there yet. You never know. You never know.”
“No matter how much I like David, I don’t feel too optimistic that David and Dolores are on the same page,” Frank later told the camera. “If Dolores doesn’t push the issue, David’s gonna sit in the middle of the fence.”
And just to make sure he instilled the fear of God in David, Frank let him know he’s “beat up all of [Dolores’] ex-boyfriends.”
When Dolores got back from Jamaica, she was giving Frank grief about some of the renovations he was making to their own house, which she owns but they both live in — with David. “Why all of a sudden are you doing this now?” he asked. “Aren’t you moving out?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” she replied. “We’ll see how things go.” That’s when Frank revealed he had “pinpoint asked” David about his plans with Dolores. “He said, ‘A lot’s going on right now. The house is being built. We’ll address that time when it’s done.'”
“I don’t think that’s any answer at all that you got,” Dolores replied, prompting Frank to grill her about her “deadline.”
“Here’s how things like this go with something like this, Frank Catania,” she fired back. “You don’t put a specific deadline, like, ‘Okay, October 25th, I’m going to break up with David because things haven’t changed and I don’t have a ring…’ I think that David wants to be with me. Frank, I gotta be honest with you, I don’t care what anybody says. I’m very, very content. I really am.”
Frank later said in a confessional that it “worries” him when “Dolores makes believe that something doesn’t bother her” when he knows it does. “When I was with Dolores and I used to go out in the boat and I’d be gone for hours, I know it bothered her, but she didn’t address it. Sometimes, Dolores doesn’t want to address things because she may not like what turns out.”
To her face, Frank simply said, “In my book, you’re the best. Don’t compromise.”
“Thank you! I appreciate that. You know I love you. I appreciate everything,” she replied. “I couldn’t ask for a better best friend and life companion.”
UGH, we love them.
“The Real Housewives of New Jersey” airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Bravo.
Got a story or a tip for us? Email TooFab editors at [email protected].
View Photos
Instagram
The Giudice Girls Reunite with Joe in Italy