Tamra Judge has been heavily criticized throughout The Real Housewives of Orange County Season 18.
Her actions have caused many of her co-stars to change their opinion of her.
As a result, she’s faced an uphill battle with viewers who believe she’s been too critical of her fellow cast members.
We already knew last season that she wasn’t fond of Jennifer Pedranti’s fiance, Ryan Boyajian, so it wasn’t surprising that she went after him again to bring up the FBI drama.
The drama went into overdrive during this week’s episode when Shannon Beador told Jennifer that Tamra had a friend run a background check on Ryan last season.
Understandably, Jennifer was upset and confronted Tamra before storming out of her hotel room and calling her “trash.”
In a first look at next week’s installment, we pick up moments after Jennifer left the room.
We see Jennifer returning as Heather tries to mediate a conversation between the two sides.
Heather tries to mediate between Jennifer and Tamra
Heather points out that the text message exchange was from two years ago, so she feels nothing new has warranted this argument.
Heather pointed out that Shannon had a hand in the background check, which she feels Jennifer is negating.
“All of it,” Tamra clarified, but Jennifer wasn’t interested in talking to either of the women and walked out while yelling at Tamra to “be careful.”
“Your mouth’s gotten you in trouble before.”
Tamra then opened up to Heather about how she met someone at the gym who was surprised that Ryan would show his face “after he was named in a lawsuit about selling timeshares in another country.”
“They weren’t building them, and they were collecting the HOA money beforehand,” Tamra claimed.
Tamra then declared that “people went to jail for it” and that Shannon freaked out when she heard about it because “Lesley Beador’s ex-husband is named in this lawsuit.”
For those uninitiated, Lesley is Shannon Beador’s ex-husband, David Beador’s wife.
Shannon seemingly reached out to Tamra for the background check
Tamra asserted that Shannon asked her if she knew anyone to look into the lawsuit, but she says Shannon conveniently left that part of the text exchange out to Jennifer.
“It would incriminate Shannon,” Tamra reasoned.
“Shannon was equally as concerned as I was that Ryan’s a shady motherf***er.”
It’s undoubtedly a significant turning point because it seems Shannon purposefully showed Jennifer a small part of the exchange to set up the argument with Tamra.
It will be interesting to see whether Shannon opens up about it in the coming episodes because Jennifer could feel like she’s been used as a pawn in the feud between the two women.
Another issue is that if Tamra’s version of events checks out, why did producers save this scene for the next episode?
Tamra is no saint, but the show has left her looking like she’s done something else to a co-star when it could have been resolved in the same episode.
The Real Housewives of Orange County airs on Bravo on Thursdays at 9/8c. Stream Seasons 1-18 on Peacock.