Last night’s episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills ended as it began — with Mauricio making an ass of himself. First, we picked up from last week’s Mauricio-versus-Brandi showdown, which transpired in a very classy restaurant featuring pull-down paper towel dispensers near its terlet stalls. In this scene, Kyle’s wretched husband told Brandi that she deserved to be sued by Adrienne and Paul Maloof because she spake ill of them with an afouled and bitter wench tongue. “Honey, stop it,” Kyle cooed in her beloved’s ear, because she was angry he was getting more attention than her ponytail dance.
So Brandi excused herself to the loo because she hadn’t expected a man in filthy running shoes to bark at her after waiting an hour for hummus, and while she was wiping her eyes with single-ply T.P., Taylor took her absence as a cue to grab a straw boater and a vaudeville cane and weasel her way onto the emotional stage for a wine-fueled installation of the Taylor Show. “Nobody has it harder than me,” we tried not to hear Armstrong tell a patiently nodding Camille. That was sad and gross. But not as gross and sad (grad?) as Kim’s concurrent bonding moment with “Maurice” about how she believes the key to being an economically independent single mother is to not … gossip. Good point, Kim. Way to chime in on that universally relevant issue. And while I’m flexing my sarcasm muscles, Kim — way to have any insight whatsoever into the concept of forgiveness! Remember how Brandi apologized multiple times to you about her meth accusation, to which you responded, “I accept your apology”? Do you remember that? Any recollection at all? Or are the spooky ghosts in your bedroom clouding up your memory as well as your concept of grace, you asshole?
That’s right. I called Kim Richards an asshole. Usually I just condemn her vain, shallow lizard-sister and speak of Kim in the parlance of pity. And to that point, I’ve actually come around to believe, after the aforementioned “ghost/psychic” encounter politely televised for our amusement by our pals at Bravo, that Kim’s gray-matter issues are now beyond the terrain of mental illness and very well may extend into “brain damage” territory. But even if you’re sick, you can still be an asshole. Therefore, Kim, who is sick, is also a huge asshole! And her bedroom is full of grandchild ghosts. [Toasts with water to that very fact.]
Shortly after the restaurant scene, we finally got to see Adrienne and Paul again, who fled to New York after Brandi made her insensitive, cryptic remark in the same way my relatives fled from Eastern Europe after my great grandfather beat up a Cossack. Adrienne and Paul consented to a post-NYC rinky dink get-together in one of Kyle and Mauricio’s rumpus rooms. One of the Richards’s fanciest ferns was dragged into a corner, and fruit salad was doled out with tongs. It was a real hootenanny. During this meeting of the minds, Adrienne and Paul basically said, “We want to put that awful Brandi thing behind us,” and Kyle nodded like a two-faced coward, and Mauricio said, “I’m on your side,” and at no point did anyone ask Adrienne and Paul, “Do you maybe think SUING THE BITCH was a little excessive?” Also, during this scene, a small dog appeared out of nowhere and nestled on Adrienne’s lap.
Across town, Yolanda proved as hard as she could that her skills transcend juice-fasting and daughter-bullying. She also decorates her ex-husband’s home with large unnecessary things purchased with cash that is probably stained with blood. So while Yolanda delegated her decorations to the sweat of others, we also got to hear her expound upon the virtues of money and how cash is important for (in order of priority): 1) supporting horses and 2) private schools for children who might not be attractive enough to model. Then Yolanda tyrannized a Mexican worker into learning English at night, as she did once, oblivious to the fact that this guy may not have had or will ever have the same privileges as her. Let me put it this way — there’s no way that guy picks lemons as a hobby.
Did we cover Kim and the psychic yet? And that line Bravo subtitled about how it’s no wonder she doesn’t want to leave her house, because unborn babies haunt it? Great. And did we all acknowledge how the psychic had to use twelve synonyms for “portal” before Kim could understand the word “door”? Good. Moving on!
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one loudly moaning, “CHRIST, NO,” at my television when Faye Resnick’s Count von Count–as-painted-by–Willem de Kooning face darkened its HD corners. In her testimonial, Kyle yammered about visiting Boca Raton — a place with excellent frozen yogurt, BRENDY’S, but not a fashion destination — and how she found a store with the trashiest cover-ups in macaw brights that she could pair with leggings and a slutty shoe. Well, naturally that led her to the cause of transporting those very duds to her neighborhood, because Kathy Hilton isn’t doing a good enough job of polluting the 90210 taste pool. And how could Kyle open a clothing store without Faye Resnick? She couldn’t. Nobody could. You see, Faye Resnick is not just good at moral corruptitude — she can also pick a window treatment AND take her clothes off before her best friend’s body is cold. Really, a woman of many talents.
So Kyle went shopping for mannequins for her new store with Faye, and in the process, Faye talked a lot of shit about how unacceptable Brandi is for talking shit about people. Kyle also struck a “silly” pose next to some of the more ribald mannequins because Kyle is a loathsome former child actor who will bark on her hind legs for the attention of a camera lens or a high-status pair of eyeballs. She is a shallow and childish monster, and I hope Brandi stops making nice to this ersatz wretch and her garbage husband tout de suite.
In other recurring-character news, we got to dine with another “friend of the Housewives,” Marisa Zanuck, who, I’m sorry commenters, still looks too much to me like Alex McCord for me to feel completely at ease with her face. Marisa’s shtick on the show so far is that she wants more money and she has a hot husband she’s not very psyched about fucking. Oh, and that she might be, according to her description of her “perfect guy,” attracted to her brother? Or am I a pervert for inferring that? Anyhoosiers starring Gene Hackman, I’d take Marisa’s piece off her hands in two shakes of the cool studs that jangled off her leather jacket when she removed it upon Brandi’s arrival to show off her breastplate. Mr. Z can come to me!
Brandi also used the obligatory cast member/supplementary character meal to set the stage for next week’s follies. Apparently Brandi will soon be hosting a Las Vegas event wherein women pay her to show them how to strip or some such rubbish noodles, and in the process, everybody gets their “sexy” back. And I think “sexy,” in this instance, means “natural lubrication.”
Look, everybody has to make money. I personally avoid “the pole” at any cost, which includes ironic stripping, any kind of burlesque performance, fitness classes, and good old-fashioned shimmying my bare banzongas to get a stranger’s pecker feisty. But, again — we all have to feed our families, and some of us are being sued, apparently. And, if the previews for next week’s episode are to be believed, at least during Brandi’s Vegas Lady Sex Estrogen Lube Cabaret, we’ll get to meet Suzanne Somers. Do you know Somers injects estrogen directly into her vagina? I mean, of all the wacky things to discover decades after Three’s Company was canceled. Can you imagine the hilarious misunderstandings that procedure could have led to? Mr. Roper could have mixed up a syringe with a turkey baster … the mind boggles.
Finally, the big event last night’s episode led up to (with the help of some crafty voice-over added in post-“See you at the Art Opening, right?” “You bet!”) was a gallery event featuring the paintings of somebody who looked like if Guy Fieri hired a lesbian stylist to really take down his “zazz.” But the point of this man’s event had less to do with his slovenly attire and wrap-around shade-headband and more to do with his terrible art.
Regardless, Yolanda bought one of his canvasses for a little more than half of what he sold it for. As she overpaid, Paris Hilton made her first appearance on the series, because the news blackout around her worthless brand has caused her to become desperate for any kind of coverage at all. So Paris showed up wearing a dress that looked like a Lisa Frank folder’s used maxi pad and told her aunt Kyle that she’s going to be singing a concert in a foreign country, where she’ll be “closing for Jennifer Lopez.” Does that mean she turns out the light after the show, or does she merely blow the roadies? Kyle did some humble-bragging about how she hates it when she learns about her family’s goings on by interacting with TMZ reporters, and a nation of stage mothers had another shot to take a good, hard look at what a child’s life in show business can one day turn out to be.
I should also mention that Kyle, in a sweaty effort to seem “bohemian” at an art opening, wore an insane headband around her forehead, like she was going for an auto-asphyxiation thrill at home, then decided “Oh, fuck it, I’ll just move it up my head half a foot, and crimp whatever hair falls beneath its grasp.”
Meanwhile, Marisa Zanuck bitched about her hunky husbo some more, which allegedly ticked off Brandi (that whole rigmarole about Marisa’s man being more into her than she was to him seemed a little canned ham). And Ken and Lisa cavorted with friends and, for the most part, blanked their enemies. Which is to say that both Vanderpumps threw Kyle and Mauricio some serious shade toward the end of the night.
You see, in hopes of belatedly buying Ken’s approval of the despicable way he treated Brandi, Mauricio randomly handed Ken a bottle of gin. What? Okay. “I don’t like it,” quipped Ken, before his wife, a vision in green, sashayed over to finish off the deep freeze. “What’s going on?” Mauricio stuttered in her shadow, and Lisa responded in a not-at-all-phony way. “Quite a lot, but nothing I care to get into,” said she, icily. And while Mauricio claimed later to his trash-wife that Lisa’s behavior exhibited to him a kind of “grudge-carrying,” in fact, Dame Vanderpump was merely illustrating a forthright loyalty to her pal Brandi that it would serve Kyle well to one day learn from. Dream on, sweet chariot.
What did you guys think of last night’s episode? What did I miss? Please tell me what your favorite bits and pieces were, and next week we can all explore Suzanne Somers’s magical vagina of youth together! Until then, mes amies!