Everyone has an awful co-worker like Kelly Dodd, a fart that a frat boy lit on fire. You know the type: that woman who, no matter what happens, behaves inappropriately. Even when she’s doing her job, or she has a valid gripe with management, the way that she rubs everyone the wrong way makes her an absolutely toxic force. She’s often so good at her job that she’s good for the company and indispensable, but eventually, everyone’s inability to work with her makes her completely ineffective. Someone can only use the word “cunt†so many times before getting herself fired.
Ironically enough, telling everyone you will see them next Tuesday usually leads to positive performance reviews from Andy Cohen and a raise, but I think it’s going to backfire on Kelly Dodd, the middle bar on a sofa bed that you can feel all night long. Just look at her fight with Shannon, Tamra, Heather, and all of human decency at that Benihana knockoff that makes you line your shoes up before you can eat sushi and drink sake until you want to curl up in a ball and spend the rest of the day wondering why the editors inserted that awful gong sound effect every time one of the waitresses bowed.
Where was I? Oh yes, Kelly Dodd, a Fukushima monster with gills in her neck and a radioactive cooch that glows green when she gets angry. Of all the Housewives in history, Kelly Dodd reminds me the most of Brandi Glanville, except she’s not as pretty, a lot stupider, and probably even a little bit more of an alcoholic. (After all, Brandi didn’t have a Swarovski-vajazzled wine-opener crystals installed on her kitchen counter, but that’s only because she probably didn’t know that was an option.) Brandi often griped with her co-stars, but when it came down to real arguments, she devolved into calling everyone parts of the female anatomy and telling them, ever so politely, to fuck off. That’s just what Kelly does, and has done repeatedly when dealing with Shannon.
As I’ve said before, I think Shannon totally set her up at the ’70s party. Kelly thinks so, too. But instead of trying to press her on this and find some sort of justice, she just calls everyone names and bleats out obscenities like she’s a sheep dosed with LSD to try to rid it of its Tourette Syndrome. Not only does she snap back and call Shannon a “cunt,†but she also calls Tamra a “fucking idiot.†Kelly tries to justify this by saying Shannon “did something to me, I didn’t do anything to her.†Well, that would be true if Kelly hadn’t just called her a “cunt.†That is, in fact, something. It would have been true before Kelly likened Shannon to one of Georgia O’Keefe’s masterworks, but it is no longer true afterwards.
The whole fight is precipitated when Tamra tells Kelly that Shannon’s friend Nina had called her a prostitute at the ’70s party. That is not exactly what happened. Nina actually said that Kelly “sucks dick to pay her bills.†This might sound like a simple semantic difference, but it is not. Saying that someone “sucks dick to pay her bills†does not mean that this person has an ad on Backpage.com, works with a pimp, or has exchanged cash for a girlfriend experience that includes half-hearted fellatio. (After all, what says girlfriend experience more than a lackluster BJ?) Nina is insinuating that Kelly doesn’t work and lets her husband take care of her financially and, in exchange for that relationship, she must perform oral sex on occasion.
Whether you like it or not, we’ve all sucked dick to pay the bills at one point. Every time you put out after a fancy dinner, you sucked dick to pay the bills. Every time you do something you know is stupid, but you do it anyway because your boss told you to and you want to keep your job, you sucked dick to pay the bills. Every time you let your girlfriend make the plans for vacation, even though you hate going to the Hamptons and can’t stand another week of competing with SoulCycle devotees in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Long Island Expressway, but you’re doing it because she really likes it, you are sucking dick to pay the bills. There is no shame in any of this.
Let’s get this straight: Heather Dubrow sucks dick to pay the bills. So do Meghan King Edmonds, Shannon Beador, and Kelly Dodd. Vicki Gunvalson would if she could, but she’s waiting for some rando off of Craigslist who wants to buy her a washing machine to make out with her. Actually, Vicki would gladly let someone suck her dick and pay his bills. What do you think Brooks was all about? Tamra Barney, on the other hand, would cut your dick off and then charge you to sew it back on. That’s why she’s the best. What I’m saying is: We all do it, and Nina, who says that she doesn’t, is a liar. Sucking dick to pay the bills is nothing like prostitution, and Kelly needs to understand that before flying off the handle.
While Kelly Dodd, a queef you don’t smell until you take off your yoga pants, is the worst, Meghan is a pretty close second. Not only does she change her mind 17 million times about whether or not she wanted to see Vicki at her “I’m About to Get Pregnant†party, we had to have a party to celebrate her pregnancy. It’s like she’s the only person in the whole world with a womb that needs tending to, and we all need to bow down and pray to it like it’s some sort of primordial fertility goddess. I can’t wait until her pregnancy “journey†is at an end so we can go back to talking about things other than the ingredients in her oven, as Dr. Tim so elegiacally quacked about, the state of her baby maker.
Although Meghan is annoying and ruled by her hormones, she’s still not that awful co-worker that everyone has that no one wants to work with. That is Kelly Dodd, the hunk of mucus stuck on your upper lip after you get knocked over by a wave. When Kelly spazzes out, Heather absolutely does the right thing by getting up, telling her that she’s behaving in a low manner that is not befitting to a group of grown women, and that it needs to stop. However, it was wrong for Heather to tell Kelly to leave. First of all, this is not her party to kick anyone out of, as Kelly said. Secondly, if you are so offended by what someone is doing, then remove yourself from the situation, not have that someone ejected like she’s a Russian sprinter trying to run the 100-meter hurdles after she’s been caught doping.
I also love how Heather freaked out on Vicki in the aftermath, saying that she hasn’t really apologized for what she did with Brooks. That is what everyone else wanted to say, but no one has had the courage to do it. All it took was Heather getting incensed to finally lay her proverbial cards out on the very low Japanese-style table.
What I didn’t love were Heather’s fake Botox crocodile tears in the car on the way home, her face clenched and tight as if she was frozen in time the moment right before a life-altering sneeze. She’s sobbing to Terry on the phone saying that Kelly called other people names. That’s not something that makes you weep. That’s something that makes you angry and disgusted and never want to talk to that person again. That’s something that makes you want to reevaluate your life and decide to take a role co-hosting The Doctors and starting an affair with the dreamy Dr. Travis Stork rather than appealing on a base reality show. That’s something that makes you stare out of the window of the Suburban on your way home, the streetlights zapping by in even bursts, washing their light over your face with a soothing regularity that spins fantasies of improvement — of warm fall days unbesmirched by stress or familial pressure, finally going to the gym as many times as you promise, never letting the chef make the kids lunches again and putting that little dose of love into their organic, cruelty-free ham sandwiches. That’s something that opens up the sky and lets stardust rain down on you like magical talcum powder, dusting your aura with sparkles and dreams before you close the door and the night closes in with its dry heat, lurching you back into the marinade of your inescapable mistakes.