You might think that the reason why The Real Weave Creatures of Cedars Sinai has been so boring this season is because the women have become bad at their craft of the reality television arts and sciences. You would be wrong. The reason why it has been so boring is that they’re all too good at reality television. Their proficiency will be the downfall of the show.
Lisa Vanderpump, whose fake hair gets bigger and bigger each year so now it looks like something that a Muppet might wear while doing a caricature of a raven-haired Ann-Margret, is never going to let herself look bad on television. She will never pull hair or make false recriminations against someone. She’s just going to show up at the party wearing a choker with a diamond so big that it looks like a headlight on a Harley Davidson and make passive-aggressive “jokes†about the women she doesn’t like. Everyone claims that she’s a master manipulator and they’re right, but it’s of her own self-image.
Kyle Richards has somehow fallen into the weird role of peacemaker now that her sister Kim is gone and she can give her undivided attention to making sure that everyone gets along, even though that is bad for business. It’s like if someone decided to take the games out of Chuck E. Cheese and focus on the food. The pizza made from dried buffalo husks is not the reason we’re there!
Lisa Rinna is a bit tired from her stint last year as the villain and daffy enough that she just wants everyone to like her again. Eileen Davidson is a class act through and through; although she is a little emotionally needy, she isn’t trying to start any dramatic conflagrations. Erika Jayne just wants to do her dance numbers with her homosexual Pussy Posse. Erika Jayne does not fight, she destroys, which doesn’t really make for a whole season of tension.
What I’m saying is, this season is dreadfully boring so far. These women all know how to act, how to dress, how to behave, and how to be civil to one another. This is not New York, where one trip to the Berkshires will yield three episodes of hysterical shrieking or Atlanta, where Porsha Williams could go off the deep end at any moment and start shouting in someone’s face. This is Beverly Hills, where decorum rules and the only thing each woman wants is to not jeopardize her career by making a fool of herself.
Nevertheless, I really do want to spend time with five women and enjoy watching them. Look, Lisa rescued a horse from the Cirque du Soleil of horses. (Who knew such a thing even existed?) Look, Kyle and Lisar went to a rowing class with an instructor so hot he made me put down my piece of blueberry pie for a second and think about exercising. Look, Erika Jayne made us all utter a million duhs when we found out she is doing a video of a song called “Expensive†that is full of female dancers rolling around on the ground and shaking their asses, as if Erika Jayne should make any other kind of video. (She should not.) Look, Lisa Rinna and her daughters made “pasta†out of zucchini and then each had tiny little plates of “pasta†because either they think humans should only eat meals that would fit on one slice of white bread or they were too lazy to shred any more zucchini to make “noodles.â€
These were all fun little distractions, but this isn’t Cool Rich Ladies Doing Fun Things. This is the Real Limo Screamers of Topanga Canyon. We need something in here to shake things up and, sadly, I do not think that Dorit is that person.
Of course, I am not allowed to judge her fully because of the Eileen Davidson Accord of 2013. She still has three episodes left before her official judgment, but I feel like I can talk about her husband PK and her party. Now, PK seems to have quite a bit of money for only managing Boy George’s career, so I can only assume that he’s somehow involved in the sort of shady “entrepreneurship†that so many of the Real Househusbands are. It is also obvious that he has the taste of a 19-year-old soccer hooligan whose idea of what the world should look like comes from hip-hop videos and old issues of Maxim magazine. Who would buy a rose-gold Bentley? That is not a car that any human creature should drive. A rose-gold Bentley is like that $1,700 hamburger or the $100 gold doughnut, these things that are on the menu to get publicity but real people aren’t supposed to buy. Inevitably, some yahoo with something to prove shows up and next thing you know he’s shitting gold flakes for the better part of three days.
I also didn’t understand why PK decided to turn their backyard into a vaguely Asian-themed nightclub. Aren’t there enough vaguely Asian-themed nightclubs in Los Angeles? Why not just host the party at one of them? But no, he has to make a huge display of his Boy George millions by turning his backyard into Buddakan West. For some reason, I think it’s cute when Erika Jayne throws a huge, half-empty party in her backyard, but when PK does it, I just want to point the Champagne-sabering guy you know he hired right at him so he gets a cork to the skull. Maybe it’s because Erika’s party seemed vaguely original and not a knock-off of the bad club in Rome every American gets suckered into paying 20 euros to attend.
The actual party is pretty boring. It is marked, yet again, by Lisa Vanderpump making passive-aggressive “jokes†at Lisa Rinna and Eileen Davidson as she refuses to forgive them for whatever happened last year. God, I don’t even remember what it was and while I think Lisa is justified in holding her grudges, simmering longer than the other women makes her look like a bad sport. I get it, she’s hurt, but taking cheap jabs at her sparring partners is not going to help.
The party is capped off with Lisar apologizing to Lisa for what happened last year. Well, not quite. It is what my boyfriend likes to call a “Housewives’ apology.†They don’t say they’re sorry for the thing that the person is actually mad about, but they feel like they should apologize so they couch it in other terms. The most common Housewives apology is, “I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings, but I’m not sorry for what I said.†Lisar says, “I’m sorry I was so hard on you.†Basically what she’s saying is: “Everything I said was true, but maybe I shouldn’t have been so strident in exposing your manipulations.â€
Lisar doesn’t apologize for any concrete behavior, any actual crime or injustice, she just issues a blanket apology for everything that happened. I can’t say I blame her, though, because I sure don’t remember what any of this was really about anyway. Something about trying to get Lisar to bring up Kyle in her Munchausen’s accusations? It’s not like it really warranted an itemized apology.
So the night wore as the women stomped around on their second light-up dance floor in two weeks, bouncing its beams up Erika’s designer T-shirt and Eileen’s perfect red dress. The two of them circled around each other, Eileen trying to copy Erika’s moves and failing just a bit, but her dance partner was buoyed by her sincerity. Eileen leaned in and yelled into Erika’s ear over the music, “They asked me in an interview if I could do any story line on Y&R what would it be. I told them I want an Erika Jayne story line where I go around the country singing at gay clubs.â€
“Really?†Erika said, both humbled and amazed at her answer. She hugged Eileen close and they rocked back and forth dramatically. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said about me.†She grabbed Eileen’s hand and the two of them twisted and jived as the music washed over them, carrying their joy out of that tacky backyard party, over the stones of J.Lo’s old house, up over the trees, and past the freeway. As their love disintegrated, it morphed out into the world and dissipated. It wasn’t much, but it was enough that by the time it had fully evaporated, just a molecule of that love existed in every human on the planet and, with it, we were all healed.