The Real Housewives of Auckland finale was almost one hour of pure cat-fighting

If part of you thought you might be sad this show was over, the final episode either just proved you very wrong or very, very right.

After a couple of weeks of frankly boring viewing (though to be fair how could they have followed up that boat episode?) the Real Housewives of Auckland went out with a bang.

If by "a bang" you mean a tonne of insults, screaming, crying, swearing and Anne Batley-Burton chugging back the champers to alleviate her social discomfort.

This week was never going to go smoothly, following on from the "my book launch was better than yours" show down from last week, but it still escalated faster and further than I was prepared for.

You don't want to be on the end of Gilda's death stare from hell.

Maybe if you'd inherited your money?

It was Michelle's birthday this episode, so Julia and Angela went off shopping for a woman they don't actually like.

They spotted a lovely hat box in an antique store which they thought Michelle might like and gave us the moment in which finally, these women were relatable.

"How much?" they asked.

"28,000," the sales woman responded, before adding insult to injury by tacking on: "dollars" (in case they thought she meant self-help books or sex toys).

Angela and Julia try to hide their horror over a $28,000 hat box.

To be clear: That's $28,000 dollars. For an old HAT BOX.

Moving on: Angela kicked off the scheming in a way that only Angela can, saying she would never "scoop as low" as Louise because it's not "ass-eptable", but also "we should go and put a cat amongst the pigeons" (Ie. "do what we're mad at Louise for doing").

It's Michelle's party and everyone will cry whether they want to or not

Moving on: Michelle's reaction to being surprised was amazing. Excitement, annoyance, anger, a cry of "f***", and then - finally - joy.

Michelle reacts perfectly to a nice surprise as she removes her blindfold.

But it didn't last long because soon enough, Louise was trying to talk her way out of the fact she'd been heard slagging off Angela at her beloved book launch.

"If your friends could hear [us whispering] they must have ears like the Six Million Dollar Man," Louise said.

To which Angela responded: "They do. They're from Christchurch."

(I for one, was not aware the people of Christchurch had been gifted superhuman hearing abilities. Good for you, Christchurch.)

Anyway, then Julia thought it was a good idea to jump in - it wasn't - and suddenly the whole thing escalated to the point where Louise took off to get back up, which led to this excellent shot of Gilda sidling into frame like shade itself.

Gilda makes an entrance with a face like thunder.

Long story short, Gilda and Julia finally went at it and Gilda was not pulling any punches, plus she clearly hadn't let go of what happened on the boat that fateful episode.

She answered Julia's cry of "why are you so anti against me?" with: "because you're a f***ing idiot...because of the pattern of the behaviour; you've said some f***ing stupid things".

Which, inevitably ended like this:

Julia messed with the bull and got the horns.

The throw down

Michelle got some lovely gifts from her fellow Housewives and an offer of lunch from Louise who forgot to bring a gift, which really set Angela off and caused her to start another argument.

What that argment was is debatable. She said: "If you hold a mirror up, what do you see? Yourself" and it's still not clear what point she was trying to make.

Finally she and Julia snitched on Louise telling Michelle she had called her a gold digger that would "bleed [her husband] dry" and all hell broke loose.

Michelle and Louise react to the gold digger revelation.

Angela and Julia stood by looking smug which actually seemed to annoy Michelle more than the comment itself.

Angela and Julia looking smug after throwing Louise under the bus.

Soon enough, everyone was attacking everyone else and there was a war of words in which Angela called Gilda "opinionated" (is that a bad thing?) and Gilda fired back calling her a "drunken Chardonnay wh*re" (that's definitely a bad thing).

Meanwhile, Anne just reacted like any of us would've if we were stuck there (bless her).

Anne dealing with this drama is basically all of us.

In the end, nobody won. Because who really wins a mud slinging match on reality TV - other than the producers?

Either way, said producers did a pretty good job of ramping up the drama this episode to leave it in such a way that it really doesn't look like these women will be volunteering to do it all over again in a second season.

At any rate, bonus points for whoever decided to wrap up the show with these amazing sign-offs for the Housewives.