'Real Housewives of Orange County' Recap: Brooks Ayers Is Accused of Forging Medical Records About Cancer

"I just want the truth," Meghan King Edmonds said

Published on September 29, 2015 10:25 AM

The Real Housewives of Orange County is trolling us.

How else to explain Monday’s episode? It followed another harried few days in the Brooks Cancer Controversy – Yes he’s sick! No he’s not! – and was entitled “Broken Records.”

True to its packaging, the episode offered the guise of momentum in order to really give Meghan King Edmonds another opportunity to talk about how upset this all has made her.

Brooks Ayers, beset by mounting rumors about his recent cancer diagnosis, let the RHOC cameras into one of his medical appointments, where the doctor very clearly said that Ayers had a large mass in his abdomen, squeezing and pushing on his organs.

(What the doctor never did say, the truthers will note, is the word “cancer.”)

Ayers also reviewed a recent PET/CT scan, which showed more details of this cancerous mass. He and ex Vicki Gunvalson then sat down with Tamra Judge, Gunvalson’s oldest friend on the show, to help assuage her doubts.

The thought was: Judge could then help quash the rest of the chatter, because none of the other women believe Gunvalson.

Ayers explained to the camera that he was revealing his records now because he wanted to spare Gunvalson from further necessary scorn.

He was very clear about how he felt about the controversy: “The fact that these women are doubting my illness absolutely pisses me off,” he said. Then he added an extra expletive for anyone who was questioning his personal treatment choices.

Unfortunately, as Judge explained, she couldn’t even really believe her own eyes when she read the PET scan because she couldn’t decipher all the terms.

“This is so difficult,” she said.

She asked Ayers and Gunvalson not to stop the revelation with her: “Why don’t you just show everybody, honestly?”

But Gunvalson, invoking their long friendship, wanted Judge to be her warrior, to be convinced by their conversation that Ayers was really sick and to take that conviction to the other women.

Judge seemed to say she would do that – the editing is tricky – but then did the opposite. Sitting down with Shannon Beador and Edmonds, Judge let all her own doubts hang out. Then she let them get twisted into additional conspiracies.

When Edmonds said she had called the imaging company that produced Ayers’ PET scan report, she said they told her they do not do PET scans for patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

This meant, she said, that Ayers had forged the report (which feels a little like she is accusing him of a crime, even if it isn’t one). And of course this must have meant that Ayers and Gunvalson had chosen Judge as the one to see the allegedly faked report specifically because they knew she wouldn’t understand any of it or be able to sniff out its fake-ness.

Beador, literally bowled over in amazement at Edmonds’ research slash almost creepily dogged persistence on this issue, could not help herself when she wondered aloud why Gunvalson didn’t choose her as the first friend to see Ayers’ medical report.

(“No offense,” she handwaved to Judge.)

“I just want the truth,” Edmonds said.

And then Judge, arriving at a newfound place of peace as she prepares to be baptized, said something surprising: “It’s not really my problem.”

Beador, even more surprising given how invested she now is in this whole controversy, agreed. She cited her own pastor: “Let Jesus be the judge.”

Next week: More of the same – the guise of momentum in order to repeat the back-and-forth, as Judge brings Gunvalson’s daughter, Briana, into the mix.

Also entering the mix (because now Jesus is involved, too)? The devil.

As Gunvalson is seen saying of all the chatterous doubts, “Satan loves confusion. This is Satan’s work.”