Is Teresa Trying to Out-Danielle Danielle?

Goodness gracious, Teresa’s burning bridges faster than she can spend money these days. I wonder if she knew they were going to photograph both her and Melissa in similar dresses? Oooh, look, they matched the ampersand in the logo to Melissa’s dress, not Teresa’s! Someone’s bias is showing…

Let’s all take a moment right now, though, and offer up a prayer to your favorite deity, asking that we never have to see Teresa on a pole.

R’Amen, and may your toast always be garlicked.

From Starcasm –

Teresa Guidice lost her arch nemesis Danielle Staub from the cast of Real Housewives of New Jersey, but the show’s producers used their magic to pull not one, but three antagonistic rabbits out of their hats to make up for it. The rub is they’re all related to Teresa (brother Joe Giudice, and his wife Melissa are joining the show, along with Teresa’s cousin Kathy Wakile), and Teresa had to find out from the media and Bravo, not the family members themselves that they were on the show. Throw that in with the stress of spending money like it’s growing on trees planted in your over-sized, ornate house and then finding out that your husband had been lying about the state of your finances, forging your name on legal docs, filing for bankruptcy behind your back, and committing fraud, it’s really a wonder Teresa isn’t in a mental institution somewhere. Fame is a powerful drug.

And Teresa just can’t help taking more hits of it. Considering that, the “bright side” is that all this drama gives Teresa a reason to flip a table, or Andy Cohen, in a blind rage. But the bad parts, of course, are emotional turmoil, rifts within a family, and various unresolved traumas. The worst part is probably the fact that their children have to witness all this nastiness between the adults in their lives. As Teresa told E! Online in her own words “It’s really sad. I cry a lot.”

The public first caught a glimpse of the drama in Teresa’s family when nemesis Danielle Staub riled Teresa up during last season’s Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion byasking Teresa “Did you acknowledge your nephew?” We later found out she was referring to the baby son her husband Joe had with his wife Melissa Gorga, and even if Teresa hadn’t yet “acknowledged” him, she soon would at a hellacious christening ceremony.

According to their Facebook pages, the sisters-in-law have been also been in a bitter tiff over cookies, and Cookiegate will play out as a storyline. According to Melissa’s post, Christmas 2009 Melissa brought some cookies from an Italian to Teresa’s house, and she told Melissa that she threw them out because she thought they were from the A & P Supermarket, and because she didn’t like them. She went on:

“I should have said, ” Well they are better then the NOTHING THAT YOU BRING TO MY HOUSE EVERY EASTER!! How can someone be so rude, and always want to attack someone else, what could it be, HMMMMM! I think I might know but I wont go there. I think some people need to come back to plant earth, Oh I forgot, she also let everyone know Last night, AND I QUOTE ” I AM A CELEBRITY” I’ve been quiet for so long but now you’ve pushed me right over the edge! RIGHT OVER IT!!

Later, on the show, Melissa brings MORE cookies to Teresa’s house for Christmas, and from the promos, we hear Teresa say affectedly “I LOVE those cookies!”

Melissa, who is just as spoiled as Teresa (maybe more so, but she admits it) and lives in a 15,000 sq. ft. ostentatious mansion, continues to not mince words about her sister-in-law: “That bitch will never miss a party, especially if someone else is paying for it.”

But Teresa claims that Melissa is just copying her! She gossiped about her sis-in-law in her newest cookbook Fabulicious: “Do I wish my baby sister-in-law didn’t copy everything I do down to the shoes I wear and the chairs on my front porch? Of course!   “But you know what they say:  “You can’t pick your family.” Because, as we all know, cookbooks aren’t for recipes and cooking tips, they’re for dishing dirt on our enemies and family (In her previous cookbook, Skinny Italian, Teresa gabbed about Danielle Staub.)

According to Teresa, she didn’t even know that her sister-in-law and cousin Kathy were going to be on the show at all until she (likely) heard from the media, and then from Bravo.

One thing’s for sure, it’s going to be a wild ride of a season!
Teresa claims that she used to have a wonderful relationship with her brother, but cousin Kathy says that the two siblings have a lot of unresolved issues that go way back. Kathy notes on the show “It’s about not communicating what you’re truly feeling when you put those emotions away and you don’t discuss them.”

Here’s Teresa and her brother Joe when they were young and not sparring on television:

From the Life and Style interview with Joe and Melissa Gorga –

Teresa Giudice and sister-in-law Melissa Gorga‘s on screen fight during the May 16 premiere of The Real Housewives of New Jersey has been called one of the worst fights in TV history, but the feud is even worse off screen! New Housewives cast members, Teresa’s brother Joe and wife Melissa, sat down with Life & Style for an exclusive interview and photo shoot to reveal what really went down that shocking night and the history of their family drama.

“I was so upset,” Melissa tells Life & Style about the brawl at her son’s christening. “Teresa’s never given us any respect. She was being fake, just acting nice for the cameras.”

In fact, screen time may have been Teresa’s main motivation for attending the family affair at all. “My sister didn’t even want to be there,” Joe tells Life & Style. “She’d just signed her Housewives contract that morning or the day before because she was mad that we were on the show.” Melissa, Joe and their three children live in a 15,000-square-foot custom-built mansion in Montville, N.J. “I think when Joe and I started making a lot of money is when she really lost it,” Melissa says. “She was used to being the biggest and the best, and then when I came in, she felt threatened. She doesn’t want anyone to one up her. Teresa’s fine with you as long as you’re one step below.”

Things got so bad, the Gorgas found themselves ushered into corners during Housewives tapings, barred from book signings and 300-person premiere parties and their daughter excluded from birthday parties. But the most hurtful was when his sister tried turning their parents against Joe and his wife. “Teresa would tell our parents ‘Melissa this,’ ‘Melissa that’ or ‘Joey didn’t do this,’ and my parents have never been the same,” Joe confides. “Her husband talks about me to them all the time, too.”

Still, they both hope someday the family fighting will end. “Things couldn’t get any worse, so I’m hoping it only gets better post-show. Maybe we can become a family again,” Melissa tells Life & Style. Joe adds,” I have wonderful kids, a beautiful house, the whole package– but I don’t have my family. I’m crying out for my family.”

Interesting. So Teresa was trying to play hardball with the new contract. I’m having trouble remembering if there was any footage of Teresa prior to the christening when they were getting ready at the house. There wasn’t, was there? It was all Melissa/Kathy, no? Oh, another interesting thought – that would explain why Teresa had to scramble to get her hairdresser to do her hair, too. Teresa hadn’t booked her yet since she was still toying with the producers. Ah ha!

Elsewhere on Life and Style (which, let’s face it, might as well change it’s name to Bravo Mag), we hear from a “source” that Teresa got a little/a lot of Danielle on her when she went all berserk on her at the last reunion show –

When Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New Jersey returns on May 16, stay-at-home mom Teresa Giudice is forced to step in as the breadwinner when financial troubles hit. But that’s not all that’s changed! Behind the scenes, “Teresa has taken the place of fired villain Danielle Staub,” an insider reveals toLife & Style. In fact, the insider says Teresa’s acting like such a diva that the entire cast has turned against her — even former best friends Caroline Manzo and Jacqueline Laurita.

After she and husband Joe filed for bankruptcy, Teresa formed a plan to become the most valuable star on Housewives. “She says Jacqueline’s boring and Caroline’s old,” another insider tells Life & Style. “She thinks they can’t do the show without her.”

Stirring the pot even more, in the foreword of Teresa’s second book Fabulicious!, she takes a public dig at Caroline, criticizing her cooking and the fact that she does her grown sons’ laundry. “On this book tour, Teresa plans to take the feud further, attacking Caroline while she’s not there to defend herself,” says the second insider. The insider says Caroline and Jacqueline feel she’s become so intolerable, “they don’t know how much more they can take. This isn’t the woman Teresa used to be.”

Whoo, that last bit of sentence sounded exactly like something Caroline would say.