Welcome back, friends! Long time no etcetera. It is I, D.J. Soft Batch, at your service, back to recap season four of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — now with more brunettes and at least one actual witch!
A lot has happened since we last left these demure swans. Brandi got a Realtor boyfriend, Yolanda got Lyme Disease, and Kyle somehow became less likable. Now, for those of you who are new to my RHOBH recaps, I want to tip you off to a couple of things. First of all, I am very thin. Much, much thinner than Taylor Armstrong, who has dieted down to a size “Disappeared on This Show Completely, and With Zero Fanfare.” Secondly, I basically am tasked each week to write over and over again the sentence “Kyle Richards is the worst human in the universe,” because it is something I believe in my heart with more confidence than I’ve ever attributed to the notion that there is indeed a God. So to say that Kyle has worsened between seasons — that she had somehow exacerbated her descent into utter, narcissism-fueled moral decay, could only mean that events transpired this week that involve a pink moto jacket, some hair envy, and a half-assed British accent. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This week began at a photo shoot on behalf of Gigi’s body. Gigi is Yolanda’s teenage daughter, who is closest to her mother when she stays on her diet and follows in Yo’s modeling footsteps. Those things both happened, so they got along. See, ladies? Mother-daughter relationships are actually quite easy to navigate as long as you avoid sugar and circuit-train constantly so you can look nice in a pair of pants Guess wants to sell.
After that touching scene, we got to meet Brandi’s new piece, a real-estate broker she met at Kyle’s White Party last season. Even though Brandi made sure we knew how much sex she and Gap Tooth were having, their relationship seemed oddly transactional. He pressured her into buying a house with no window treatments and told her she had a day to decide. Also, Brandi’s face has clearly endured some rejuvenation achieved beyond “sex in the bathroom” methods, but who am I to judge this best-selling author for how she does or doesn’t look? I mean, if Joan Didion had a nickel for every vaginaplasty she got after one of her books made the Times “Bestseller List,” I’d have enough to remove one of my own ribs for fun.
Soon it was time to check in with Lisa Vanderpump, who rehearsed on-camera for Dancing With the Stars with a man whose name makes no sense in any language. Bleg or Steg or Smog or some such thing. Look, I don’t watch that show unless Cher’s on it, and I can’t watch Cher when my DVR thinks The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has a two-hour premiere it needs to tape, when in fact half of that chunk of time is a STEALTH EPISODE of Vanderpump Rules, which I don’t watch a minute of, unless it’s snuck into my chamomile tea like so much Ricin-Stevia. Jeers, Bravo! Jeers to your coercive programming methods! Let’s call that trick “Vanderpumping,” going forward.
At this point in the episode of the show I chose to watch, Kyle rifled through boxes of the ugliest clothes in colors nature never intended in the back room of her new store, which, if you remember, is called Kyle. That’s the name of her store. Because that’s her name. She is disgusting. As Kyle pawed through glitter shorts and pink jackets and yellow necklaces with gems dangling on them the size of tear-shaped translucent Fleshlights, she joked about how she wants to take all of the things for herself instead of letting hypothetical customers buy the terrible stuff she, daily, inflicts upon their collective eyes. And then she had to remind herself out loud, “the customer comes first!” as though Kyle had ever put another human being before her in the history of time. And what’s the over-under on that bandage on her hand resulting from Kyle’s routine punching of mirrors that predictably remind her she is no longer 13?
Then, a Chamber of Commerce person entered Kyle’s boutique and said, in so many words, “it’s time to introduce an event we can use to structure this episode around.” But first, he invited Kyle to be a part of the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. Kyle, in return, said “derrrr-okay” and then there was talk about a party she would organize that would celebrate what had just happened and also celebrate the fact that Beverly Hills has been around for 100 years. Now, Kyle had a party to plan, and we all said “Ugh, we have to look at Kyle’s house again?” because 80 percent of this show is just watching Kyle’s house in the background of a catering chef doing this or a guest doing that or yoga time, or hair and makeup with Kyle and her daughter in her stupid bathroom, or other dumb things in Kyle’s dumb life.
The next scene focused on Lisa and Kyle’s shaky friendship. Kyle mentioned that she had invited the staff of Sur (who double as the cast of Vanderpump Rules) to cater her event, and Lisa, who was lit in such a way that it looked like she was only eyes and hair, asked Kyle if she was inviting Yolanda. And that was a thing because during last season’s reunion, Kyle and Yolanda both called each other liars after Kyle accused Yo of talking shit about Lisa in Paris and Yo denied it.
And while Lisa and Kyle chatted in Kyle’s kitchen, Yolanda slicked back her Adam Curry beach hair in a high-end West Elm equivalent and told Brandi what kind of furniture to buy for her new house. Brandi asked Yo about the upcoming event at Kyle’s place, and Yolanda was like “Screw Kyle, I’m not going to her dumb party, she called me a liar.” Brandi responded that Yolanda should instead attend the party to celebrate the centennial of Beverly Hills (?!?) and Yolanda, in what was my favorite monologue of the season so far, replied thusly:
“Honey, I’ve been sick for nine months. I’m just getting my mojo back. Do I really go and stand at somebody’s house for some party that doesn’t have good intentions with me?”
Yolanda also had the decency to look tired when she delivered the above aside, and her face moved and seemed natural for a woman her age. I like Yolanda when she’s not reminding her daughter that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.
Meanwhile, Lisa and Kyle, whose faces also seemed to have endured some significant plumping and tightening since last time, talked about the tabloids and how there were rumors going around about Mauricio cheating on Kyle with a younger woman, and how messed up that was. That was a cue for Maurice to enter with a giant “WASSSSSUP!” and Lord, what a clod. Mauricio took little Portia’s hand in the kitchen, and Lisa made a joke about how Mauricio and Kyle’s daughter was clearly the “younger woman” the tabloids were talking about, and that pissed off Kyle, who doesn’t like it when people talk or joke about things grounded in truth. Another thing Kyle doesn’t like is when Lisa makes pointed jokes that say something about the person she’s joking about. Those jokes are mean, she thinks, and sometimes they are at her expense, or come too quickly for her to process as insults. You see, Kyle prefers her skewering of others to come in the form of terrible impressions, like the “Yolanda” she debuted later in the episode, or in what she considers wildly funny pranks, like pretending Lisa and Ken are dressed too formally for a party, when in fact she herself had yet to change out of jeans into her party clothes. Good one, Kyle! If you were black, I’d encourage you to try out for SNL!
Across town, we got to catch up with Kim, whose pitbull puppy is gleefully destroying her home. Hooray for Kingsley! He is my favorite cast member so far, and I feel like he and Kim are well-paired. Chaos and fragility, under the roof of a home haunted by the ghosts of how young Kim’s children used to be — to say nothing of that rock creature Ken she dated a while ago — are all things too painful for Kingsley’s stuffed gorilla to bear witness to. It was a kindness for the dog to gouge out that poor creature’s eyes.
Meanwhile, at Kyle’s, Mauricio and a team of twelve strong men zipped his wife into a terrible yellow dress too tight in the back that answered the question nobody asked: “What if the Bee Girl from the Blind Melon video grew up and wanted to wear a party dress?”
After this came some SUR business featuring the young staff of Lisa’s restaurant, but I refuse to pay attention to anyone on this show who has not dealt with menopause personally, and I resent Vanderpump Rules having been foisted upon me. That said, I will always be fascinated by Scheana, a young woman whose name does not exist, and whose face can only be described as the face of a person who participates in pornography with great frequency, and which looks oddly empty without, well, a dick in or near it.
As the Chamber of Commerce/100th Birthday Party for Beverly Hills kicked off, we met the gorgeous Bobbe Joy, a makeup entrepreneur, and a person in the background who looked like if Larry “Bud” Melman were a lesbian.
We also learned that Yolanda was en route, which was odd because she said she wasn’t going, and then she amended that she wasn’t going to go to Kyle’s party unless Kyle had called her to apologize. And that clearly didn’t happen because we didn’t see footage of it happening, and if we saw footage of Martin talking about his role in an erotic Charlie’s Angels ripoff, we know the producers had time in the episode to burn.
Near the pool, Lisa and Kyle conferred about Yolanda’s impending entrance, and Kyle said once more how messed up it was for Yolanda to have called her a liar. In an extra flourish of ersatz Grapes of Wrath melodrama, Kyle said the following thing to Lisa about what she believes is the truth: that Yolanda lied, and she hadn’t. “I know. Kim knows. Yolanda Knows. And God knows.” And somewhere, God did that thing where he waved his hands in front of his face really quickly so he could be like “No no no no no no! Leave me out of this! I’m not here! Good-bye! Look over there! Benghazi!” Or something like it.
Around this time, our first new cast member arrived at Kyle’s party. She is a British person named Carlton, and if you’ve seen any promotional materials for this season, you already know that she is a witch. Apparently, Andy Cohen took Ryan Murphy’s gayest, witchiest, Stevie Nicks–iest season of American Horror Story: Coven as a challenge, and hired a spell-caster of his own to enchant his own audience of hags and high-earning homosexuals with cast member Carlton. Witchipoo has intense cheekbones, children with pickup artist names (Destiny, Mystery and Cross), and no sense of humor. I like her!
Then, Brandi arrived in perfect prom hair alongside Yolanda, whose dress was Victoria Beckham (Kim’s, we learned, was designed by her mom — and we know this because … the show is now sponsored by … dresses?). “Rabble, rabble, rabble” said Kyle to herself in the presence of Yolanda, and then it was time for the second new cast member to arrive. Joyce is from Puerto Rico, used to be a pageant queen, has hair that looks like a wig, and is married to a German who has produced quality movies, such as everybody’s favorite family, good time holiday blockbuster, Capote.
There was chatter about how Kyle and Yolanda should talk but not now, but maybe at some point, and it was around this point of the show when I felt an overwhelming sense of relief that I would not see Adrienne Maloof at all. Did you guys feel that? It felt like a giant exhale. No more bickering with Paul, no more shoe talk, no more of that face and those extensions and that sour attitude. A fresh breath of air, I say! Good riddance.
So at this point, Carlton met Joyce, and Joyce’s German husband said something about having once being naked, which offended Carlton because she has an active imagination (which I bet is helpful with her spell-casting), and didn’t want to picture that man’s parts “flapping,” which is a verb she evoked twice. If she had said it three times, would Mister Joyce’s clothes have disappeared? We will never know. Witchcraft is frustrating.
In the kitchen, Brandi puttered around picking at snacks and spilling things on her dress, when Scheana, who used to have recreational sex outside of marital bonds with Brandi’s terrible ex-husband, appeared. The ladies both managed to mutter a polite acknowledgement of one another’s presence, when Brandi gleefully exclaimed with horror, “Oh my God, what’s wrong with your teeth?”
Scheana responded that her front teeth had been knocked out after what was surely a face-fucking-related incident. “That sucks,” Brandi observed. And she was right.
Meanwhile, Lisa stroked Kyle’s head and hair after Kyle did an aforementioned dreadful impression of Yolanda that sounded like an 8-year-old trying to imitate Tom Jones. And during that time, Yolanda seemed within earshot of Kyle, which may have been editing, but remember — talking shit about people while they are feet away at parties she hosts is Kyle’s thing. When Brandi showed up in a cast the night she met the gang, Kyle snickered in the corner, trying to hold court. Remember? The takeaway: Kyle Richards is an awful person, and Lisa Vanderpump can stroke my head anytime.
After that, SUR employees chatted with each other in the kitchen for an extended period of time, and I soon realized that I was watching a different show than the one I had chosen to enjoy. Blerp Boop. I see what you did there, Bravo. And usually that’s cool, but not when I miss Cher.
So! Did I miss anything from tonight’s ending-less episode? Do you guys like the two new girls? And what are you looking forward to this season? Please let me know in the below comments. And to keep up with other stuff I do and who I am, please follow me on Twitter and subscribe to my weekly podcast on iTunes — or buy the app/download directly here. Thank you, welcome back, and God Bless America.