Why oh why are people on reality shows so bad at apologizing? Well, maybe because apologizes are hard to get right sometimes. Still, one surefire way not to have your apology accepted is to never get around to actually saying you're sorry.
I noticed this last night while watching the Real Housewives of New York. Aviva asked Sonja to lunch after calling her a whole bunch of names you just don't call people while the gang was in St. Barth's. If I was Sonja, I would have assumed that the lunch was to apologize for the bad names and get back to some kind of place of near friendship. (It's clear these two aren't going to be good friends, but you can at least hope to regain the proper respect.)
But it didn't happen that way. Aviva started out saying she cared about Sonja but then went into a lecture about things Sonja does that Aviva doesn't agree with. Sonja ended up apologizing (sort of) and perhaps in hopes of getting an apology in return (which we know is never a good thing to do) but watching the two of them together was like a class in "How Not to Apologize." It was actually painful to see.
But isn't that the point of reality TV sometimes? It allows us to see examples of how we all behave at different times in our lives. I mean, who hasn't botched an apology a time or two? Who's been too mad to accept one?
What did you think of the episode?
Related: You Call That an Apology? | How to Apologize | The Non-Apology