Even though no one was asking for it, Lydia McLaughlin is back on Real Housewives of Orange County. After having no story line her first time around, other than calling out Slade Smiley for skinny shaming her, Lydia is really doing the most to be relevant this season. Even though she did not keep in touch with any cast members when she left the show and she didn’t watch it, she thinks that she is an authority on the cast dynamic.
Lydia would not stop talking about Vicki Gunvalson when she first met Shannon Beador at Tamra Judge’s granddaughter’s birthday party- which clearly irritated them both. She hasn’t even interacted with Meghan Edmonds at this point in the season, but Meghan, Shannon, and Tamra all shared their opinions on Lydia’s behavior during the second episode of the season. Spoiler alert: they all think she’s a shit stirrer.
To play devil’s advocate, let’s say that Lydia was actually coming from a good place and that she just wants harmony between Vicki and the rest of the cast, she still lacks social tact. Who talks about a person that someone cannot stand the first time they met? That’s really not a good strategy for achieving peace among the group.
Shannon’s anger resurfaced while watching the episode since she tweeted, “Tamra asked Lydia multiple times to stop talking about Vicki #youcantseeeverything #potstirring? #RHOC.” This is something that Lydia denied during her Watch What Happens Live appearance saying that if it wasn’t shown in the episode, it didn’t happen. Let’s remember that excuse whenever Lydia cites something that didn’t make an episode to justify her behavior. Tamra even tweeted Lydia directly and said, “that’s not true. Do You remember telling us all the stuff Vicki said about David [Beador] and Eddie [Judge] ?”
Meghan tweeted, “I don’t understand what Lydia is doing by talking to Shannon about Vicki. They just met!” Tamra responded to that by saying, “I asked her to stop 4 times, that we didn’t want to hear what vicki was saying.”
Meghan tweeted what we were all thinking: “Lydia seems like she’s trying to make things worse. But Shannon should have just walked away.” Sure, but that wouldn’t have made for good TV. Nevertheless, Shannon admitted, “You are correct. But as weird as it may sound, I thought that would be rude. Just thought we were going to have a nice family afternoon.”
