Jersey ‘Housewives’ remain divided

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

In the first episode of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” sophomore season, incendiary cast member Danielle Staub hangs out with her priest, pedicurist and daughters — but not any of the soapy Bravo reality series’ other housewives. It seems the rift between Staub and her fellow leading ladies is now larger than a Garden State hairdo.

“I think in the first season, it caught me off guard,” said Staub. “I thought at least one of them was truly being a friend to me, whereas as this season pans out, I realize that’s not the case.”

Staub adds that this season, which premieres Monday at 10 p.m., she’s “not going to be anyone’s patsy. I think the world will be just as interested in me as a single person as they will be in them as a group.”

Staub, a single 47-year-old mother of two daughters, continues to be on one side of the Jersey barrier opposite sisters Dina and Caroline Manzo, their sister-in-law Jacqueline Laurita and family friend Teresa Giudice, who infamously savaged a table at a restaurant in last season’s finale when the women confronted Staub about her suspected criminal past.

“I don’t have any regrets,” acknowledged Giudice. “As you saw throughout the show, she did a lot of things to me, and I kept my mouth shut, so it was like a buildup, and then finally, I couldn’t take her no more. She did a lot of things off the scene and on the scene that you guys saw that got me to that boiling point, and then I was just done with her.”

Last year’s table-flipping finale drew more than 4.6 million viewers. The polarizing suburban drama served as a shot of Botox for Bravo’s aging “Real Housewives” franchise. Viewers were drawn to the less aspirational, more genuine antics of the Jersey gals over the tanned original Orange County brood, hot-to-trot New York City ladies and sassy Atlanta denizens.

Other equally unapologetic Jersey-set reality series have since followed suit, including MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” Style’s “Jerseylicious” and Oxygen’s upcoming “Jersey Couture,” which stars an Italian-American family who run a dress shop. “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” cast and crew, however, dismiss any comparisons to other made-in-Jersey reality TV shows.