As the president and founder of the Real Housewives Institute, I hereby issue the following executive order, which we shall call the Eden Sassoon Amendment to the Eileen Davidson Accord of 2013. It states that all “friends of the Housewives†that are not made full cast members shall receive three appearances on the show before being judged. Originally, I thought we could just call Eden Sassoon cool and not wait the customary five-episode grace period that a full-fledged cast member earns. I was wrong.
That is because, ladies and gentlemen who love gentlemen, Eden Sassoon is a bit of a crazy person. I’m not even talking about her relations to other sober people, which we’ll get to in a minute. We’re talking about whatever happened with the dude she was dating for three weeks who dumped her. First of all, she made him quit smoking because she would not date a smoker. Okay, that sounds reasonable. Then she gets all grossed out when he eats a cheeseburger, like she’s never seen a Carl’s Jr. ad in her life. Then, when he reaches for his nicotine gum after his big burger, she’s like, “Oh, isn’t that weird, just like you would reach for a cigarette after a meal.†Yeah, Eden, it is. That’s because the gum is a replacement for the cigarettes until he weans himself off the gum and other related smoking-esque behavior until he can fully quit. I went through two bags of Dum Dums lollipops a week while trying to quit. Don’t scoff at him for whatever gets the job done.
After totally missing the point of nicotine gum and giving this guy a hard time, he calls her “type A,†which, well, obviously. Eden takes tons of offense to this, like he just called her a “frozen-faced slag†or something. She takes pride in being a strong, powerful, outspoken woman. Why would she care so much that this dude called her type A? Even Lisa Vanderpump, a woman who has multiple tiny ponies in her backyard, stared at this story with her mouth agape, thinking, “Yeah, this bitch is nuts.â€
Her behavior the rest of the episode is pretty bonkers too. Her stance on sobriety is, um, odd. She’s one of those sober people who thinks that everyone has a problem and is always trying to convince them that they do. “I like to poke others to awaken them to the life I have now,†she says. On the one hand, this comes from a place of pride that she’s gotten sober and gotten her life in order, and I think that anyone who can find their truth and fight addiction is a superstrong person. On the other hand, anyone who has been through recovery should know that there is no “waking people up†to getting sober. The only way a person will get and stay sober is if she can wake herself up.
But the worst thing, the absolute worst, is Eden forcing Lisa Vanderpump and her lesbian crush Erika Jayne to kiss her on the lips when she leaves the party at Dorit’s house for her husband PK — a kiss on the lips from an overly friendly woman you don’t really know. Eden is pushing too hard, too fast. She’s like one of those players on Survivor who is in an alliance with everyone in her tribe on the first day and ends up getting her torch snuffed first.
Just as I reversed course on Eden, I almost reversed course on Dorit at the beginning of the episode. She actually seemed kind of cool and fun when she went rollerblading with Eileen and Lisar. (Here is my customary rollerblading joke: What is the worst part of rollerblading? Having to tell your mother you’re gay.) I loved that Dorit showed up and was a good sport, while still kind of complaining about it. She was willing to do everything they asked of her, but she did not want to wear one of those gross bike helmets that look like a New Balance sneaker. “I have to look ugly, too?†she asks, semi-mockingly.
Eileen doesn’t look ugly. Eileen shows up wearing what I am imagining are purple suede roller skates, which would look absolutely amazing with one of her vintage denim jumpsuits. Oh my God, I loved them so much that I would put one right on my shelf, Eileen foot smell and all. Also, I decided that “Rollerblading in the Valley†should be the name of Eileen and Lisar’s ‘80s dance track, for which they should make an amazing music video. Please, someone make this happen for me.
Unfortunately, all of that new admiration for Dorit evaporated when I saw that she had a glamour shot of her, Boy George, and PK, a piñata full of toenail clippings, standing on the stairs. Why did they have a professional photographer take that shot? What could that possibly be from? Was that their Christmas card? Was it a cover shoot for Nostalgia Act Managers Monthly? Is this what they do on rainy Saturdays after Boy George has told all of his meanest Elton John jokes?
I wasn’t very impressed with her party for her husband, either. (Though I was quite taken with Cory the party planner, who looks like he graduated from being one of Erika’s dancers.) I mean, sure, a Boy George acoustic cover of “Karma Chameleon†is always welcome, but if you’re going to go through all the trouble of having a whole band and that giant pipe and drape in the living room, why have him only play one song? Was that all the production company could afford?
Of course, Dorit is positively Dorit at the party. Dorit is always rehashing the past. As my friends would say when I try to retell old stories, “Why you gotta bring up old shit?†Why, indeed? It’s like when Erika showed up looking (pain)killer in her black-and-neon dress and Dorit said, “Oh, you look so much better than last time when you wore that scroungy T-shirt.†Dorit, why you gotta bring up old shit?
Then she tells Lisa about Lisar and her bag of pills at Eden’s house. It was a funny moment, which Dorit started by saying she wanted to put vodka in her smoothie. Lisar countered by saying she has, in the past, put a Xanax in her smoothie. Then she pulled out the giant bag of pills she keeps in her purse. Now, calling it a bag of pills is a bit of a misnomer. It was more like a bag of vitamins. Sure, there was probably a Xanny and a sleeping pill or two mixed in there, but it was mostly multivitamins and amino acids and other things that they trick you into buying from Herbalife. Also, every mom has that pill bottle in her purse, right? My mother still carries around an Advil bottle with three kinds of pain relievers, an antihistamine, cold medication, a few antacids, and just about every other over-the-counter medication you could possibly need in an emergency. That’s what moms do. I bet Lisar’s pill bag is a lot like that.
Anyway, Dorit brings it up to Lisa Vanderpump and is like, “Lisar brought out a whole bag of pills!†Lisa is obviously concerned and Dorit, instead of seeing how she miscommunicated the story, tells Lisa to “take the pole out of your ass.†The problem isn’t with Lisa’s interpretation, though. A “bag of pills†sounds like something an addict would have, which is what Dorit wanted. She wanted that reaction. If she really wanted to tell a joke, she should have described it as “a bag of vitamins,†which would have lessened the severity of the situation. This is like Pantygate all over again, where Dorit takes something out of context, talks about it to all the other women, and it totally gets blown out of proportion. Dorit must have started stuffing her bra at a young age, because she’s a master of making mountains out of molehills.
On to a much better performance. I loved absolutely everything about Erika Jayne’s performance at XLSior, a club that was named by the same person who names all of Erika’s singles and most people who appear on reality television shows. I loved her dominatrix-Elsa-from-Frozen outfit; I loved her clomping up that ladder on a cliff; I even loved Mikey’s prayer for “throbbing cocks†in that sea of shirtlessness and GHB where she performed. Oh, I also loved that guest appearance by the bear who tried to crawl up in front of Kyle when the performance started. Get down, queen! Can’t you see Kyle Richards is at work?
But most of all, I loved Erika’s body-ody-ody Instagram photoshoot with Kyle after her performance. I like this easy, breezy, beautiful CoverGirl Kyle on this trip, eating a bowl of pasta at 5:30 in the morning as the sun comes up and they have to pack and move out by eight. Still, Erika lures her into putting on her monokini (which sounds a bit like a tropical disease) and doing some hair tossing on the lanai. At first, you could tell Kyle was scared, peeling off her wrap like she was Norma Jean about to do her first topless shoot. But you could tell that Erika’s enthusiasm and the Greek zephyrs tickling her intimate parts charged her up.
They sat there and worked their angles and posed H2T, as Tyra Banks has told us so many times. Kyle perked and twisted, making her body — already looking lovely — look even better thanks to the lighting and the contortion. That’s the great thing about photographs: If you know what you’re doing, you can turn your illusion into reality. That’s all Erika Jayne really is: a spirit given flesh through some carefully curated Instagram posts and heavily edited YouTube videos. Once they had the shot, it was time to call it a wrap. Erika YAAAAAASSSSSSSS-ed her way inside in her gladiator boots while Kyle sucked in her tummy and bent down to pick up her tiny spa robe. She looked off the cliff for the final time, looking out at the azure water of the Mediterranean and its tiny waves, like a kick line rising in the wind. She thought about everything underneath them, the creatures and the seaweed and the stingrays and the jellyfish and the buried, barnacled hulls of sunken ships, their secrets lost but growing stronger with each passing tide. She went to put her wrap on her arms and then changed her mind. She slung it over her shoulder and walked confidently toward the house, as the wind picked up and carried her hair away from her body, as if it was going to release from her head altogether.