The High(and Low)Lights

So Bravo manages to squeeze some more out of our season as well as another little dose of the 7-hour Reunion Special. I failed to blog the finale as well as the first 2 Reunion Specials, so while I intend to keep this short, I will touch on the high(low)lights of those episodes too.

So let’s go in reverse chronological order and start with Gloria’s review of the catfight, which kicked the season off. Funnily enough, Gloria’s retort about me being from Australia was exactly what I had said when we filmed that scene when Alex and I were reading the NY Post column. Honestly the “and it shows” was not meant to come across as badly as it did, but lesson learned and we’ve all moved on. What was very funny though was Gloria’s surprise that Alex and I have separate last names. I’ve always found it amusing that while we are continually lambasted as co-dependent that this is the first time that someone has referenced the fact that Alex kept her last name when we married back in May 2000. When I met Alex in May 1999 we fell in love very rapidly and when 5 months later we decided to get married, I wasn’t the least concerned that she wished to remain a McCord. Let’s face it that’s who she is and I never felt that by her not taking my last name she loved me any less or was showing less commitment to our union. She’s certainly not my possession but is an equal partner in our marriage and I think it’s right that she kept the name with which she’d come to be identified.

Alex and I were both so glad that the scene we filmed with her college buddy Rod, his husband Lindel and their adorable son Hugh finally made it to air. When we film for four months or so, so much is taped it really is a crapshoot over what will make the final cut. Equal marriage rights is much in the news lately and so in a way it was great timing that we were able to address this and that my interview statements about men marrying men and women marrying women were included too. As someone who grew up in a single parent home I can say it would have great to have had two loving parents (but am very thankful that I had one) and it annoys me that this equal rights issue gets pulled off on tangents to be equated with bigamy and other silly comparisons. Anyway off my soap box now and Rod no you can’t have my shoes! ;-)

I’ll skip forward now to the bit from the RS couches where again Andy Cohen asked the question about my sexuality. My late maternal Grandmother (b.1909) certainly would call me ‘Gay,’ but how she hated how that common meaning of that word had changed throughout the latter part of the 20th century. That being said, my sexual preference has never been anything other than a love for members of the OPPOSITE sex and so I am, along with my predilection for flamboyant and colorful clothes and an urban metrosexual outlook on life, decidedly heterosexual. So guys, can we put this conjecture to rest - please?

So back to the Reunion Specials. I really don’t have much to add as obviously I sat this one out this year. Bobby and I turned up about half an hour before taping ended and we came across a scene of 6 very exhausted women and Andy Cohen grayer than I’d ever seen him before. I wonder if a lot of that grayness had grown throughout the taping! ;-) The only comment I will make about the two RS’s was that Alex really rose above all the shouting and harping and when she spoke she was on point and always managed to make her comment without dragging others down. To me that is a real lesson in communication skills, something she has in abundance.

And lastly, until next season, the finale. Who would have guessed when the season kicked off back in mid-February that the finale montage would have been Ramona and me dancing. Certainly not I. Here’s what I wrote about that scene:

And as the credits roll we finally get to realize exactly who Ramona is. As she stands their speaking gibberish to me, it dawns on me; Shazbot, she's an Orkan! Instantly I am taken back to the late seventies and remember someone else who came from a distant planet; the planet Ork, where people aged in reverse 'chronical age' order. So this is her obsession with aging - she's trying to maintain her 50 year old looks and desperately trying to reverse the de-aging process that is unique to Orkans. So Ramona is a 21st century Mork and so I suppose I better be a modern day Mindy, so like Mindy, I take kindly to this confused intergalactic traveler and comfort her in the only way I know how - by joining her in dancing the weird Orkan dance I first learned some 30 years ago. Na-Nu Na-Nu

This season was a long one with 15 episodes airing over a three and a half month period. It’s been fun, challenging and rewarding and Alex, the boys and I can rest for a few months while everyone and Bravo decides if we’ll be back for another season next year. Thanks for watching, as without you doing so there wouldn’t be a show.

Enjoy the rest of 2009 and may it bring you peace and happiness.