We really need to talk about Lisa Rinna, but there aren’t enough Hostess Frosted Strawberry Mini Donuts on the face of the Earth to get me through this conversation. The thing about Lisa Rinna is I don’t think that she’s intentionally malicious. I really don’t. I don’t think she’s bright enough to really carry out a well-orchestrated manipulation in the way that someone like say, oh, Lisa Vanderpump or Kenya Moore is. I don’t think that she knows that she’s causing harm or doing evil. But she is.
That’s why we need to talk about Lisar. As soon as she arrives at Kyle and Mauricio’s the Agency Villa and the Agency Suites Brought to You by the Agency, Kyle is sitting in the pool and can’t answer Lisar’s shrill hellos because she is all, “Um, I’m eating guac and chips on a floating table in the pool right now and I’m also pissed at you so find your own room.†The truth doesn’t come out until later that night at the Agency Presents the Agency Opening and the Agency T-Shirt and Gift Bag Giveaway at the Agency Headquarters. (I am the Agency and I approve of this message.)
Eileen, Erika, and Lisar are discussing the problem that everyone is having with Eden, namely that she won’t shut up about Kim and Kyle Richards and their sobriety. Erika says, “You really need to talk to Kyle. I’m not going to get into it, but you need to talk to her.†Normally, I would applaud Erika for delivering the message and trying to stay out of it as much as she can, but she should have delivered that message, oh, I don’t know, the next day over mimosas and badly made omelettes, not in the middle of this huge event that Kyle and her husband are throwing.
Lisar, of course, reacts immediately and pulls Kyle aside and is like, “Um, what’s going on?†That’s when Kyle lets loose about how she heard from Eden that Lisar said that Kim Richards was close to death and that Kyle was her enabler. Lisar does not remember this. I honestly and truly do not think that she remembers saying this. I say things all the time that I totally forget. However, my feelings and opinions are consistent, so if you said to me, “Brian, our friend said you told him that you think Jessica Chastain washes her hair with the blood of demons she kills in hell,†I would respond, “Gee, I don’t remember saying that, but that does sound exactly like something I would say. So, yes, I probably said that.â€
There is this strange thing that Lisar does where she lashes out in anger at people and then doesn’t remember exactly what she said, glazing over the darkness with her façade of goofy sunshine. It’s breaking the wine glass when yelling at Kim Richards, or asking Kim about her arrest at a table full of her friends. I think Lisar doesn’t want to acknowledge the depths of the darkness inside of herself, so when it bubbles up to the surface, she can’t remember it at all.
Lisar admits to everyone that she doesn’t remember, but it’s her subsequent reaction to Kyle (and Lisa Vanderpump, who hustles over there like there’s a sale on pink thongs and miniature ponies) that really misses the mark. She says, “I don’t remember saying that, but if I did, I didn’t mean it with a mean spirit.†She should have said, “I don’t remember saying that, but, well, it’s kinda true and let’s talk about it,†or, “I don’t remember saying that, but if I did, I think differently now that I’ve talked to you and Kim and I should tell Eden that I was incorrect.†In that moment, I wish the women could go to the producers and say, “Can I get a playback on this? Where is the footage?†The Housewives really could use an instant-replay feature just so these things run much more smoothly.
Instead, what Lisar says is, “Take the knife out of my back. I feel so blindsided. Why did Eden do this to me? It’s not okay.†Except we know why Eden did it — and by that, I mean that we know Eden did nothing and Lisar did this to herself. When she says, “If I did it, I’ll cop to it, but I don’t know if I said those words,†we think, “Lisar, we know you did. We saw it.†When Lisar is out standing in the middle of ihe Agency Campus in Agency, Mexico, staring at a statue of the great the Agency founder Maurice Agency and crying into the soft ripples of moonlight on the waves, we know those tears are her own creation, and we don’t really feel bad for her.
The only good advice that anyone has for Lisar or Eden comes from Harry Hamlin and Eden’s (strikingly gorgeous) mother. They both tell these women to leave it alone, to butt out of it. And that is true. This is not their fight. This is something between Kim and Kyle and getting involved has caused them nothing but pain. They both have a lot more going on in their own lives that could be addressed without latching onto someone else’s recovery. But that’s not what Lisa did, and now that she thinks Eden wronged her, she’s going to go after the wrong person yet again.
Such an elaborate and erroneous reaction will look even worse for Lisar once all the women hear her say those words on TV. The reunion is already going to be torture for her, and this is going to look especially embarrassing. Lisa Vanderpump is already salivating at the thought that this scandal might take Lisar down. She’s drinking this all in like it’s the world’s last remaining glass of rosé after the nuclear winter destroyed all the vineyards.
Lisa Vanderpump is definitely the MVP of this episode. I absolutely loved everything about her, from how she licked her electric neon lips over Lisar’s demise to her strange Spanish shampoo ad that she kept repeating around the breakfast table. “Irresistible. Verdad?†Yes. Verdad. The ride back from the party is also horrendously amusing as Lisa and PK, a canker sore on your soul, joke about wife-swapping and everyone teases Lisa about wearing granny panties. We haven’t seen her have this much unrestrained fun in quite some time.
Speaking of bus rides, one of the grossest things of the whole episode happens after Erika spots the iguana. She tells everyone she’s good at spotting animals and PK, a bathroom stall drawing of a penis, says to her, “Are you good at spotting snakes? Are you good at spotting snakes in the grass?†Ugh, it was so disgusting, it made my skin want to jump off my body and fall out the window while smoking a cigarette and saying, “What ever happened to fun?â€
I felt the same way later when we saw PK on the yacht with his shirt off. Now, I could go for one of my usual ornate similes and say that he looked like a gargoyle covered in the shits of pigeons who had only drank red Kool-Aid or the enormous wad of undigested bubble gum that a plumber had to snake out of Sean Spicer’s toilet. But I will not. That is because PK without a shirt on looks exactly like Patrick, the starfish from SpongeBob SquarePants. That is the only thing he looks like.
He isn’t the only awful thing on that boat, though. How awfully basic is Dorit on that boat? She is so basic that she could be used as a programming language. She’ll only jump off the boat for a Birkin? I mean, seriously. And then she’s all, “Tell my children I love them,†like she is going to die by jumping off a boat after seeing a half-dozen people survive the same fall. Then she has to hold up her Birkin for the camera so that we all know her husband leased one for her from Bagz4Rent.co.uk? Ugh.
The most real thing on that boat is Lisa Rinna doing her dance to Erika Jayne’s hit single “Painkillr.†She gets up on the table and dances and gyrates all over the place. (Do they have a camera hidden in my living room? Because I do that same dance at least once a week.) Everyone is very into her performance. I’m surprised that Kyle didn’t pull out the splits and try to draw the focus to herself. But Lisa was up on that table whipping her head around like it was a dough hook in a Kitchenaid stand mixer. Her legs flexed and buckled repeatedly, like she was a human Thigh Master, confusing and amusing everyone, making them forget about her misdeeds as if the flapping of her coverall could erase them from memory. Like the sea salt and the sunshine and that tight drowsiness you get in your forehead after drinking in the sun all day was what she needed to excuse her. Like that music was enough to buoy the boat, keep it all floating, as the twin hulls of the catamaran glided over deep ocean trenches that spewed forth mysterious gas and monsters that have never known the sunshine.