This week on The Agency Presents Rich Women Doing Thing in the Agency Hats, the rich women do things while wearing the Agency hats. They decorate apartments, they interpret their children’s sign language, they lunch as a verb in empty restaurants, and they all, every last one of them to a number, struggle to walk down a driveway in high heels. That is what the rich women did and, once again, we were plunged back into that boring time at the beginning of the season when there were no story lines.
Now, I wouldn’t have a huge problem with this if the rich women doing things were Erika Jaynerardi and (ugh, I hate to admit this) Kyle Richards. I would like an entire show of Kyle and Erika just having fun and being utterly ridiculous. Can’t we bring back The Simple Life and instead of Paris and Nicole it’s about Kyle and Erika and they have to get a job at a Sonic in Kentucky or something? I would watch that every single day for hours and then I would rewind each episode, watch it again, and record it on VHS for posterity, pausing at the commercials so I would never have to stop seeing Kyle and Erika being wonderful and kooky and just so damn lovable.
How is it that Kyle, who is at the center of this real-estate infomercial, ended up looking so good this season? I don’t mean just figuratively, I mean literally too. Her dark-red lipstick, cute white shirt, and artfully curled hair when she is shopping with close-to-death sister Kim is potentially the most beautiful she’s ever looked on the show. And that dress she wears to Lisar’s award ceremony is absolutely flawless too. I don’t know how she convinced the editors to take her from a spotlight-hogging narcissist and general personality monster to the most likable and relatable character on the show, but she has accomplished that mission.
Even when Kyle went to the set of her new scripted TV Land comedy, I thought, “This is just like an everyday woman going to work. She can have it all.” But that is not at all what it is like. Kyle’s life is not all of our lives. It’s not the life I necessarily want. But for 42 minutes (without commercials) each week, it is the life that I want. I want to go and pet vintage beach towels and silently calculate the ways I could get away with stealing some ’70s sunglasses without the wardrobe supervisor noticing. I want to joke about fake cocaine being made out of baby laxative like I never did a line off a baby grand piano with Robert Downey Jr. in 1986. I want to show up to a volunteering gig 45 minutes late in my friend’s rose-gold Bentley because my other friend was trapped in her estate because she couldn’t get the gate to open. Reality stars: They are nothing at all like us and that is just the way I want it.
I even agreed with Kyle when she was at Lisar’s awards banquet and she told Eden she was stupid for carrying on a long-distance phone-sex relationship with Joe, the English former model she met on Instagram. Kyle’s advice is absolutely correct, and she delivers it in a way that is both scathing and caring at the same time. It is brilliant. However, I wouldn’t have taken that advice because, like Eden, I do all sorts of stupid things with hot guys over the internet. There’s some gay in Dublin whom I regularly send dick pics just so he’ll keep telling me dirty sex stories. I mean, if Jesus didn’t want us to do these things then he never would have told Jim Bellino to invent the internet.
Even Lisa Vanderpump somehow makes buying her 24-year-old son a fully furnished condo look totally relatable. I would absolutely spend $1,500 on a blue velvet sofa that was marked down from $5,000. I would also buy that gorgeous white coffee table and a rug that is so desirable even a Pomeranian with alopecia wants to call it home.
It all seems absolutely quaint and affordable, especially when you compare it to the fully furnished house Lisa bought for her daughter. I guess this is how wealth perpetuates itself and income inequality grows. I would probably think this was awful if I understood more about it, but I never took economics in college because I was busy taking a seminar about post-colonial interpretations of Elizabeth Bishop and doing an independent study in MDMA at area nightclubs. Now I’m Googling how to get bong water out of velvet so that I can come to Max’s rescue when the inevitable happens.
What other rich women did things? Oh, let’s talk about Dorit and Jagger, her son who is having a very hard time speaking. The only humanizing thing about Dorit is her children and I would totally make a joke about how maybe Jagger would be speaking by now if his mother didn’t have an accent that sounded like drunk Hugh Jackman trying to audition for a musical remake of Nell. But I won’t, because Jagger is adorable and I worry about him. It is so wonderful when he tries to tell Eden about his shirt and pants with a dinosaur on them and Eden translates his own tiny brand of sign language. I hope that Dorit gets her wish and she gets to hear his words soon. I hope we all do. And that is the sound that cynicism makes when it dies.
Since I am no longer cynical, here is a sincere congratulation to Lisa Rinna for her award for charity work with Project Angel Food. So often we see these women raising money or going to galas, but it’s not very often that we see them doing the very hard work of volunteering. Anyone that can get Erika Jayne to chop chiles and talk about how the only thing she can make is a grilled cheese sandwich is a winner in my book. (Imagine Erika and her No. 1 Gay Mikey sitting around her house and she asks him if he wants anything for lunch. He would probably reply, “Lunch? We don’t eat lunch. We eat diamonds, bitch!” And then he throws a handful of glitter into the air and they just laugh and take a chopper to get sushi in Malibu.)
The best part about Lisar’s whole award ceremony is when she rides in the limo and asks her daughter Amelia about her favorite part of being a model in the Tommy Hershfurlger show. Amelia says, “When I got to talk to Gigi and she taught me how to walk. She told me to just walk like I’m going down the street to get some food. And that’s how Gigi taught me how to walk.”
That is amazing because, first of all, it confirms what we all believe: Walking in a fashion show isn’t that hard. Second of all, you know that was some serious shade from Gigi as retaliation for mom Yolanda Bananas Foster against Amelia’s mom, who is her sworn enemy. You know that advice is a total lie. Gigi Hadid does not know what it is like to walk down the street “for food.” She has never walked down a street in her life. She has tendonitis of the thumb from pressing the Uber button on her phone so often. Also, she is a model. She is contractually forbidden from talking about eating in public and wearing Keds. You know she stifled a laugh and turned around and told Kendall Jenner, “I just told that bitch to walk like she’s going to Burger King. I have to call my mom. She’s gonna die.”
Notice how I’m not talking about Eden and Lisar and Kim Richards’s sobriety because it is stupid. Also, Lisar still refuses to admit that she actually said those things, so trying to parse what it all means and everyone’s reactions to what happened in Mexico is totally pointless. I’d much rather talk about Erika protecting the medically infirm of the greater Los Angeles area from accidentally consuming her weave than I would address any aspect of this ridiculous and intractable fight.
The only rich woman left to talk about is Eileen Davidson, who was absent from this week’s proceedings. She begged out of food prep because of the stomach ailment that beset her in Mexico and she skipped out on Lisar’s awards dinner. She called up her old friend and told her she couldn’t make it. “What’s wrong?” Lisar asked.
“Oh, well, my stomach is not great and I think I have, um, a touch of, um, pink eye or something,” Eileen said. She stayed on the phone for a few more moments nodding and consoling her friend as her husband, Vince, walked into the room. She offered Lisar congratulations before hanging up. She was sitting in an overstuffed armchair with her head propped up on one arm and her legs slung over the arm.
“Pink eye?” Vince asked her as he walked by her toward the kitchen and absentmindedly stroked his hand on her head. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” Eileen said. “It’s fine.” She started to page through the Coldwater Creek catalogue in her lap, as much to hear the snap of the pages as to look at the casual knitwear. “I just needed a few days off from all of that and I already used food poisoning in Mexico, so I went with the only other excuse I could think of. I figure pink eye gives me at least a week.”
Vince had fixed himself a Skinny Cow “ice cream” cup from the freezer and was digging at its solid insides with a spoon. “Well, as long as you’re not contagious,” he said. He bent down and kissed her head on his way out of the room with a studied familiarity that she loved. She tossed her catalogue on the nearby coffee table and stared out the window for a minute. What would she do in the quiet? What would she do with this time? This seems like enough, she thought, pulling her feet underneath herself, the warmth of her body heat blossoming around her lower digits. This is enough. She turned to the side and laid her head down on the arm of the chair, curling up like a cat on a comforter. This is enough. She closed her eyes and let the Pinot Grigio sunlight filter through her eyelids in something like blackness but a few shades too light. This is enough, she thought over and over as she fell into something between sleep and memory, something that was full and rewarding, something that was as solitary and peaceful as drowning.