The first words we hear in this week’s episode of Real Housewives come from Lydia, who’s plonked on the couch at home calling for her long-suffering housekeeper.

“Jo-hanna … Jo-hanna … Jo-hannnnaaaaa … Jooooo-haaaaannnnnnaa….”

“Yes Lydia?”

“Come come.”

Johanna does what she’s told, but she makes sure to shoot Lydia one of her now-legendary side-eyes:

Lydia’s commissioned a portrait of her beloved, permanently stressed dog Figaro. In preparation for the sitting, Lydia gets her pet all clean — by showering with him.

Last week’s recap: ‘How about you all go f**k yourselves’

“Fig loves showering with me because he knows that he’s going to get a back scratch and his ears cleaned … I mean, who wouldn’t?”

Imagine if you will a nude Lydia Schiavello, cleaning out the ear canals of a wet and terrified greyhound. Picture it. Sit with the image for a while. Then head to your local community centre to inquire about possible support groups.

Lydia’s commissioned her friend Leanne to paint the portrait. She’s an accomplished ‘animal artist’, who’s even painted Barnaby Joyce’s number one enemy, Johnny Depp’s dog. Unfortunately for Figaro, she also seems to be as bonkers as Lydia:

Lydia expects Figaro to sit perfectly still while getting his portrait painted, forgetting that he’s a dog and he’d prefer to focus on activities like licking his own genitals or teaching himself to dial Kid’s Helpline so he can be rescued from this cruel and unusual torture.

Across town, Gamble’s shopping with stepson Luke and having a post-wedding debrief. She admits she’s still a little hurt at Gina’s decision to scarper off to her room the night before the wedding to watch herself on Celebrity Apprentice.

“I was a bit upset … I feel like our friendship’s a bit fractured at the moment. Maybe it’s a bit one-sided,” she sighs.

“I think Gina’s got quite a large ego … her public profile might be going a little bit to her head.”

Luke, bless him, tells it like it is:

“You have terrible choice in friends. I don’t like any of your new friends. They’re just … a violent pack of bitches.”

Let’s just see how Gina’s large ego is faring — she and assistant Josh (who, she insists, does not have the IQ of a sausage dog despite harsh editing suggesting otherwise) head to the Chemist Warehouse lab to get to work on her fragrance. White coats are donned, test tubes abound — it’s basically a budget version of the Pond’s Institute.

You can tell the producers are keen to work the ‘Gina’s up herself’ angle this season, as she’s shown in a piece to camera talking about how her adoring fans send her all manner of gift-laden fan mail. Even a Gina Liano doll:

The Chemist Warehouse execs run Gina through a number of samples, and she instantly takes to one in particular:

“I’m very happy with the D,” she says. Good for you, Gina.

The execs tell Gina they’ve run a few focus groups to test the market for the fragrance. She approves of this, as she participated in a few herself back in her uni days.

“I remember a workshop with Optus — it was just before mobile phones came out — and I remember saying, ‘Why don’t you just give people the mobile phone, put them on a plan, cos they’ll use it?’ And — voilà.”

Wait. WAIT. WAIT. Did Real Housewife Gina Liano just take credit for the invention of the modern mobile phone? Ego, what ego?

The female exec rather overeggs the pudding when it comes to selling Gina on their proposed fragrance name, ‘Gina by Gina Liano’.

“Let’s be honest Gina, you’re a single-name celebrity now. You are a star like Kylie, Madonna. You have to work very hard to get to that level,” she gushes.

Surprise surprise, Gina is BLOODY LOVING IT:

We’re at Susie’s house next, and as part of her role as President of the Country Women’s Association Toorak branch (yes, apparently this is a thing), she’s having Jackie, Chyka and daughter Chessie over for a lesson in etiquette and table manners.

Her special guest for the afternoon is etiquette expert Joan Martin. Make no mistake, this woman is absolutely bloody terrifying; the sort of gal who’ll think nothing of stopping dinner to deliver a stern lecture if table napkins are improperly ironed.

Upon arrival, Jackie apparently thinks she’s heading to schoolies week: “Darling I’m ready to drink some cocktails and rip it up to some R&B!”

Jackie and Chessie are off to a bad start — no sooner have they sat down than they’re taking selfies at the table with their phones. Within seconds, Joan barks them into submission.

“You NEVER cut a bread roll with a knife. That’s NOT DONE.” This seems very important to Joan.

“Keep your glass ALWAYS on your right-hand side.” This also seems very important to Joan.

“I think I need a shot,” Jackie mutters under her breath, and proceeds to power through all the champers she can. That’s our girl.

Joan is really riding Jackie hard - for an etiquette expert, she seems a little rude.

“Don’t EVER put your fork down like that,” she tells her. “I don’t think that looked very nice at all,” she says when Jackie tries to eat.

Only one thing cracks Joan’s steely veneer: When Jackie casually mentions that she attended deportment school when she was younger.

Next we’re with Pettifleur, who’s taking her son Nathan to buy him a piano. In a series built so often on confected feuds, Pettifleur’s strained relations with her family members have seemed the most real — we’re still suffering PTSD symptoms from viewing her intense confrontation with her estranged sister a few episodes back, and now she’s preparing to spend $135,000 on a piano in a bid to spend more time with her son, who’s fled the family home to live with his girlfriend.

She can’t leave well enough alone though — at the store, she tells him she thinks he’s settling down with girlfriend Emily too soon and should come back home.

“Why are you questioning me on this? I’m very adamant: I want to marry her, I’m going to have a house with her, I’m going to start a family with her, and that’s what it’s going to be,” he says.

At that moment, Emily arrives, and Nathan says that he and his girlfriend are off to lunch.

“Can I come too?” Pettifleur asks, in devastating Simpsons style.

Her son laughs in her face. “Not today.”

With that, they’re off, and Pettifleur’s left standing next to the piano she just shelled out $135,000 for in a misguided and very expensive attempt to get closer to her son. We can be a bit hard on Pettifleur at times, but this is genuinely heartbreaking to watch, and fits with our long-held parenting motto ‘Children: just get a dog instead’.

Speaking of kids and their general unpleasantness, next we’re at Jackie and Ben’s where they’re having a mini trial-run at parenthood: babysitting their young nephew and goddaughter.

It’s chaos. “I’m actually, like, exhausted,” Jackie says, approximately 30 seconds after the kids walk through the door.

As the kids run rings around them, Jackie reaches for that parental godsend: WINE.

For this week’s group party scene, Chyka hosts the girls for a glamorous dinner at one of her many swanky venues — and she’s laid out a spectacular Middle Eastern spread:

Over dinner, Chyka reveals the thinking behind the theme. She and Bruce are putting on a wedding for a royal family in Dubai, and the other Housewives are all invited along.

Cue much excitement from the girls as they each open their invitations — all except Lydia, who doesn’t seem to know where Dubai is.

“Dubai is … United States of Emirates. United States, yeah. United … United Emirates, yeah. Arab. It’s an Arab … Arabian.”

Sitting down to dinner, Pettifleur positions herself next to Jackie, who it turns out she has beef with. Pettifleur has misplaced her son’s birth certificate and rather than, say, ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR IT, she expects Jackie to use her psychic abilities to sniff it out like some truffle pig of the spirit world.

Why, great gatekeeper to the spirit realm, won’t you harness your energies to help Pettifleur find a misplaced document she could easily get reissued from the office of Births, Deaths and Marriages?

“Jackie picks and chooses who she gives a reading to. Does she feel I might be too much of strength that she won’t be able to penetrate? Or is she just mean?”

Jackie’s not having it.

“I haven’t spoken to you in three weeks, I’m not going to give you a psychic reading, and at the end of the day, maybe you should remember where you put it when you were drunk. NEXT,” she spits.

“You say you’re educated, get an education. Shine away — bye Felicia.”

Pettifleur doesn’t mince words herself: “Jackie, you’re all fart, no s**t, I can tell you that.”

We’re not entirely sure what this colourful phrase means, but it certainly paints a picture.

Finally this week, we’re back at Lydia’s for the grand unveiling of Figaro’s portrait. Lydia can’t wait to see it: “It’s probably one of the cutest things I’ve done in a long time,” she says humbly.

Taking her first look at the painting, Lydia’s so overwhelmed she can’t even let out one of her trademark ‘Wow’s.

“Oh my god, I just … oh my god. It was just, oh my god.”

Yep, that’s our reaction too.

NEXT WEEK: The girls head to Dubai for camel rides, cocktails and CATFIGHTS. Pettifleur appears to have some sort of spectacular breakdown at dinner (that desert heat’s a bitch).

Real Housewives of Melbourne screens 8:30pm Sundays on Foxtel’s Arena Channel — check back right after each episode airs for our full recap. In the meantime, chat all things Housewives with our recapper — and incoming Country Women’s Association Toorak Branch President — Nick Bond on Twitter at @bondnickbond.