Before we get to this week’s episode, I need to apologize to Kim Richards for suggesting that she stole a dress. In the last episode, we were treated to a scene of Kim removing a tag from the hem of a skirt she bought at Bloomingdale’s. Considering she is a convicted shoplifter and such an ado was made about her removing the tag, it was made to look like she lifted the thing. In fact, it is a “b-tag,†a device that stores have started using so people don’t wear dresses once and then return them. Sorry, Kim.
However, I don’t accept full responsibility since that scene was meant to make us falsely believe that Kim stole the dress. I think it’s the producers who really need to apologize. You wouldn’t blame someone who steps on a landmine for the explosion; you would blame the person who put it there in the first place, and this mine seems to have a cerulean blue “Watch What Happens†logo on it.
Also, I must apologize about something else. Since Eden Sassoon is not an official diamond-holding addition to the cast of this season, I decided to prematurely lift the gag order imposed by the Eileen Davidson Accord of 2013. In the last couple of episodes, she came off sort of hip and New Age–y, like the one yoga teacher in any of L.A.’s many canyons that you could possibly stand hanging out with. After closer inspection, she’s more grating than I originally anticipated.
This first hint comes out when she goes shopping with Lisar and says that she felt a disconnect with Kyle at Game Nightmare. Eden looks straight at the camera and says, “I will know her,†looking a little bit too much like Jennifer Jason Leigh from Single White Female for my taste. Then she tries to psychoanalyze why Kyle might not have connected with her. Maybe it was because she was a sober women stepping in to be with Kim? Maybe it was because she symbolizes a lifestyle Kyle doesn’t embrace? Um, no, Eden. It’s probably because she was hosting a party with all of her friends and you were the only new person. No big deal.
Then, when she goes out to lunch with Kyle and Lisar, instead of trying to connect with Kyle, she peppers her with questions about Kim’s sobriety and who in their family is a drinker and what she thinks of Paris’s latest fragrance and if Nikki is still mad at Maurice — sorry, I mean Mauricio — and if she thinks Barron Hilton is cuter than Barron Trump, oh, and how mean was Bette Davis on the set of The Watcher in the Woods. I bet she was a nightmare! Jesus, Eden. If you want to connect with Kyle, how about asking some questions about her own life and trying to get to know her, not crying about your journey with sobriety to try to find a way in.
Meanwhile, Dorit decides to talk to her husband, PK, a soliloquy of belches, about what happened at Game Nightmare and he responds with a string of jokes so lame that even the @DadJokes Twitter account was like, “Sorry, ‘Hey, I just called Uber Broomstick to get your ride home,’ is not funny at all.†Dorit decides to do the adult thing and invite Eileen and Lisar out to lunch to talk (and talk and talk and talk and talk) about all of their past injustices. I mean, Dorit does talk a lot. Dorit talks more often than Mauricio insists on wearing the Agency hats and T-shirts. Dorit spends more time talking than Ken Todd does putting tiny little outfits on hairless dogs. Dorit talks more than PK has back hair, that’s how much Dorit talks.
But Dorit shows up to lunch with Eileen and Lisar wearing the most amazing white capelet, which is the best thing that Dorit has brought to this series thus far, and the three of them burn the Real Housewives sage and smudge the screeching ghost wraiths of their former fights away from this mortal plane and decide to move on with a clean slate. What went on between the three of them was just a silly series of miscommunications, so it really was best to just forget about this.
Speaking of Eileen and Lisar, I was so excited when they showed up on the set of Erika Jayne’s new music video “Xxpen$ive!@#$%^&*() ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.†I was really hoping that they would show up in an original Erika Jayne production because, well, I love a good Erika Jayne video. I am truly embarrassed at how many of the 1,167,822 views (make that 823 … nope, 825 … ugh, now it’s 853) on her “PAINKILLR†music video are actually mine. But, on second thought, having them in it would be a little bit too much “Chic C’est La Vie.†After seeing the two of them do their best aging ‘80s moves, I would like someone (Kandi Burruss?) to write them their very own dance single so that they can have their very own video where they’re done up like Alexis Colby and Krystal Carrington and brawl with each other to percussive dance beats.
Seeing such a wonderful music video is just about the only thing that would give me a worse case of the boners than seeing Erika Jayne’s dancers in their tight swim trunks and without their shirts. I mean, it’s disgusting how conventionally attractive they all are in the blandest possible way. They really are the lowest common gaynominator (denomigaytor?), but I can’t help myself. Since we’re proposing future projects, I would watch every single episode of their potential reality series, especially if they devour Mikey and the set of swimmies he calls lips on camera. That would be my favorite episode ever.
I loved absolutely everything about Erika’s trip to Greece and I could watch about ten more episodes of it, especially because Erika Jayne as an endeavor is completely foolhardy. She thinks going to Greece will introduce her to all these new fans. Um, sorry, darling, but Mykonos in the summer is filled with the same New York and L.A. queens who already worship you. You are just preaching to one very fabulous choir. Also, with a team of ten (including an assistant named Laia, whose parents apparently spell the titles of all of Erika’s songs) and a $50,000-a-week rental property, there is no way that Erika Jayne Enterprises LLC is breaking even on this trip. She could sell as many records as U2 and still not break even on this trip.
The best scene of the whole night, however, is back in L.A. when Lisa Vanderpump, her husband, her son, and 15 of their closest canine friends go to visit her old adoption attorney so that Max could potentially find his birth parents. We see a lot of Lisa, but we rarely see her allow herself to be vulnerable, so when she wells up with tears remembering how she brought her adopted son, Max, back from foster care and introduced him to her biological daughter, Pandora, well, it’s a rare moment of weakness for our old girl. She even tries to get up and walk away, not wanting anyone to see her express some real emotion.
She tells the room that it was a happy occasion, and she doesn’t know why she was crying, but I do. It’s because they are there thinking about Max’s biological parents. Although they can’t take away all the time she took raising him and all the memories they have with each other, something about the proceedings leads to the inevitable thought exercise of what life might have been like had she not adopted him. How would their life have been different? Thinking like that is like having a loss. Change is always a loss. Just entertaining hypotheticals about that is why Lisa started to cry when she thought of that day in the airport, when Ken walked the baby out to her and Pandora, sitting by the idling Mercedes at the lower arrivals section of LAX. She was wearing sunglasses, big thick ones, and a hat, she doesn’t remember exactly why or what it looked like, just that there was a hat. Pandora held on to her hand and the thick sweat of continued contact glued their flesh together.
Finally she saw Ken approaching the other side of the tinted automatic door, holding the baby in his arms like he was trying to score a goal with a squirmy rugby ball. The door opened and the light rushed inside, the pitiless glare of the California sun on a baby she knew was hers even though it didn’t come from her own body. The day and her mind and her life opened up just like that door and she held her arms out, running toward Ken, to scoop up that rugby ball of a baby just as he moved his fat arm toward his squinting eyes in discombobulated jabs, trying to block out the light.