'Real Housewives of New Jersey' Finale: Bravo's Best Cat Fight

June 17, 2008 — -- A nice family dinner party turned into an all-out catfight on the "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" finale Tuesday night on Bravo.

Big-haired stage mom Teresa Giudice came to blows with resident villain Danielle Staub, in a dramatic, heavily bleeped restaurant scene.

"[Teresa's] a hot little Italian-tempered girl," said fellow New Jersey housewife Dina Manzo after the incident. "All of us Italians maybe have it somewhere."

Giudice was grilling Staub about "Cop Without a Badge," an out-of-print, tell-all book about Staub's arrest on extortion, kidnapping and drug possession charges almost 25 years ago. (She copped a plea and was sentenced to five years' probation.)

In a scene Manzo later called a "hot mess," Giudice flipped a table covered in raw oysters and red wine and unleashed a Christian Bale-style string of expletives after Staub implied Giudice wasn't listening to her.

"I actually put my hand over my mouth," said TVGuide.com staff editor Gina DiNunno. "It was unreal to see these grown women dressed in evening wear flipping tables and having to be restrained by husbands."

The drama escalated as Staub's friend and fellow housewife Jacqueline Laurita came to her defense, angering Laurita's sisters-in-law, Dina and Caroline Manzo.

During the explosive dinner scene, Staub told her castmates the only truths in the book were that she was, in fact, arrested ("at the wrong place at the wrong time") and that she changed her name for her safety. She happened to omit a detail she had earlier divulged to her tween daughters -- as the book states, she worked as a stripper around the time of her arrest.

Bravo's "Housewives" is known for the glitzy lives and bombastic personalities of its title characters, but "Real Housewives of New York" star Bethenny Frankel, author of the best-selling diet book "Naturally Thin," calls Staub "the most infamous" housewife ever.

"I know in my heart of hearts that she's an absolute pathological, damaged lunatic," Frankel told ABC News.

Over the course of the season, Staub, 46, hosted an awkward plastic surgery party at her home and romanced a 26-year-old man, propositioning him mid-meal on a date in one episode, and often overshared intimate details with her daughters.

For Frankel's "The Real Housewives of New York" co-star, the outspoken Jill Zarin, Staub isn't just saucy -- she's a danger to the Jersey housewives, all of whom live in sprawling McMansions in ritzy Franklin Lakes, N.J.

"If I were them, I would get a restraining order," Zarin told ABC News. "I wouldn't come back for another season if she was on. I wouldn't take a chance."