Alright. Following last week's promise to myself, I refrained from watching the latest episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey until it was safely ensconced in my Tivo, to protect myself from the deal-breaking double-whammy humiliation of watching both The Real Housewives of New Jersey and the ads that make this monstrosity possible.

A fair chunk of this week's new episode was devoted to Teresa, second from left above, who dragged her would-be child-model daughter around to photographers and agents. Everything you need to know about Teresa, for now and forever, is summarized by America's preeminent Real Housewives chronicler, Gawker's Richard Lawson:

Teresa does not have a forehead. Teresa's forehead went out for a pack of cigarettes one summer day in 1986 and never came home. Teresa's forehead ran away with the circus while its Georgia onion farmer parents watched, all dusty and sad. Teresa's forehead went to Hamilton, maybe? Or was it Middlebury? Anyway, I don't know. They just lost touch. You know, time. Years. These things happen.

As I've mentioned before, trashy rich folks who willingly put their lives on TV are one of the only groups left available for guilt-free mockery, and personally, I think Teresa does indeed have a forehead, but insists on hiding the majority of it under her pulled-down-too-far wig. I think she thinks it looks pretty that way.

But the show's splashiest moments involved no one but Danielle (above center), who spent the episode getting shot in the face (with needles, not bullets, but the season's just getting started...) and dragging her friends into ridiculous manufactured drama ("How can I ever break up with my boyfriend, who's 20 years my junior, sweats profusely, and continues to stop by for his daily blowjob?") But the show really came to life with the teasers for next week's show, which hinted at the dark secrets in Danielle's past (coke! stripping! would-be kidnapping?!).

Once more, Gawker's Richard Lawson gets to the bottom of it, in his must-read post The Real Stripping Coke Fiend of New Jersey:

Last night, the promo for next week's Real Housewives of New Jersey said the secret to Danielle Staub's shady past could be found in an out-of-print book called Cop Without a Badge. Well, that's been tracked down and a "coke whore" named Beverly Merrill bears an awful close resemblance.

Read the whole thing—including telling book excerpts!—here.

This is gonna be good, by which I mean awful.