There has been a lot of weird back and forth going on with Brooks having cancer on Real Housewives of Orange County, but nothing has revealed the truth... yet. One thing is true, though, and that's the fact that Brooks' impact on Vicki and her relationship with daughter Briana has been negative since the two got together. It was obvious that their relationship had become strained when Vicki visited Briana in Oklahoma this season on the show, but when Tamra and Briana got together for lunch on RHOC , Briana made it clear that she and Brooks would never have a relationship.
The conversation is rather moot at this point, since Vicki and Brooks are no longer an item in the present, but on the show, they're still going strong. The women on the show, with the exception of Vicki, range from skeptical to non-believers when it comes to Brooks' cancer diagnosis. Vicki stands by the fact that Brooks has cancer. Maybe she doesn't know the truth. Maybe if Brooks is fooling everyone, Vicki is just one of those being tricked. Who knows. What we do know is that Briana errs towards the side of skeptical, and I can't really blame her.
Briana's relationship with Brooks has been tenuous since the first day. Last season, Brooks did (or didn't) say something to Briana's husband that offended her to the core. (That's just the latest of things Briana doesn't like about Brooks; it's been seasons of Briana not liking Brooks.) But at her lunch with Tamra, Briana made it clear that she will never have a relationship with Brooks.
Briana and Tamra set up a time to sit down so Tamra could talk Briana into maybe giving Brooks a chance (per Vicki's request). That clearly didn't happen, since Tamra is not the biggest fan of Brooks at the moment. Briana tells Tamra that she has made a point of never being around Brooks. She doesn't bring him up to her mother, and doesn't want to see him for the rest of her life. Briana also says that, contradictory to what Vicki said, Brooks isn't close to any of her mother's family.
The biggest shocker is probably that Briana says that after grilling Brooks on his past pancreatic cancer, he finally admitted that he had pancreatitis — which is inflammation of the pancreas.
In the grand scheme of things, Briana just wants to make sure her mother doesn't suffer from her relationship with Brooks. To me, it doesn't seem like Vicki is suffering, but maybe there's something that's happening behind-the-scenes that we don't see. Briana has always been skeptical of Brooks' motives with her mother, so it makes sense that she is protective of her mother.
But the biggest takeaway from this interaction between Tamra and Briana is that Briana's relationship with her mother is very strained because of Brooks. We've seen Briana and Vicki go through a lot in the ten seasons together, and it's tough to see someone like Brooks hurt their relationship. Hopefully, these two have been able to move past it now that Brooks is no longer in the Vicki's life.
Images: Vicki Gunvalson/Instagram
