In the decade since the Real Housewives Institute was founded, we have catalogued many beautiful and wondrous things, from Countess Luann riding a camel to Shane Keough in a bathing suit. However, we have never seen anything as beautiful and wondrous as the sunglasses that Mx. Erika Jaynerardi wears during this episode of The Real Dog Catchers of Topanga Canyon. They are gold-rimmed, flat, reflective circles that are not happy to just be sunglasses. The gold around them tries to grab out from the edges as if it is weaseling toward the very eyeballs of our wonderful heroine. They are amazing and look more expensive than every single article of clothing that I own and I own a pair of $800 Alexander McQueen culottes.
They are absolutely stupendous and I would swim across oceans, walk through fires, and dine on countless dinners at the Kemsleys in order to possess them. Erika looks totally amazing in them and her latest set of chinoiserie pajamas. She looks like the whitewashed female villain in a very elaborate kung-fu movie, who at any moment might pounce and strangle someone with her prehensile blonde hair without ever taking her sunglasses off. That is because Erika does not take those glasses off. She wears them in Hong Kong Charlie’s, or whatever the vaguely racist name of that boutique is. She wears them at the animal rescue. She wears them in the lobby of the hotel to hide jet lag, a hangover, and the blurry-eyed regret of cussing out Eileen in last week’s episode for absolutely nothing.
Thank god this is the tail end of the Hong Kong trip. Lisa Rinna takes off to go shill her dusters on QVC and the rest of the women finally do some dog-related charity. By that I mean they go to the ASPCA. Um, just like green screens, they have those in California, too, so visiting one half a world away seems a little bit beside the point, Yulin Dog Festival or no. Not much happens there. Lisa visits with a dog named Lazzie, which is the first openly lesbian dog to play Lassie, and Eileen falls in love with a dog they wouldn’t let her take home. Kyle becomes fascinated with a very exotic breed of dog that they don’t have in the United States called a “mongrel.â€
Much more happens when the group goes shopping at a two-floor boutique where Eileen Davidson tries to do some retail therapy. “This bracelet is for when Erika yelled at me,†she tells us. “This purse is for grown women screaming in a public place. This blouse is for everyone forgetting every single thing that they’ve ever said. This ring is if I ever have to hear the phrase ‘own it’ again in my life. And this gown is for me selling out everything that I hold dear so that I could be on a reality television program and continue to outfit my house in tiny little Victoria lamp shades for my sconces.â€
The weirdest incident is when Eden decides that she is going to buy a friendship ring for Erika because she said she likes it. Erika looks down her nose (and through her sunnies) at Eden and tells her not to do it, but Eden does it anyway because she said the rose-quartz stone would soothe her spirit or some other bullshit she read on the back of a bottle of $43 bubble bath. Curious as to how much she spent, Erika asks the clerk how much the ring cost. Because of the language barrier, they initially thought Eden spent $1,700 on the ring, not $170. When she finds out, Erika laughs and tells Eden to buy her a better gift.
I love when Erika is fake mean like that. There is a little hint of truth in her bitchiness, but she really doesn’t care. Her brattiness is not like a gourmet all-you-can-eat buffet. It’s fast-casual. It’s like the Ruby Tuesday of shade. She says this as everyone leaves without Eden. The group abandons Eden because she couldn’t stop looking at lacquer boxes. I think that is a fitting place for Eden, just forever roaming a store called Tune in Tokyo, waiting for everyone to come back to retrieve her while no one notices that she’s missing.
With that, everyone goes back to the States. Erika and Eileen have a reconciliation lunch where Erika just turns to Eileen and right to her face apologizes and it was such a sweet and wonderful moment that it made my eyes a little bit misty. She tells Eileen she was stressed out and she misheard what Eileen said and overreacted and didn’t mean anything by it. This is, perhaps, the first honest and sincere apology ever in this franchise that was not first prompted with an “you owe me/her an apology.†Erika knew she was wrong and fixed it and it was perfect and Eileen swatted it away with the back of one hand and then they moved on to starring on The Young and the Restless together.
I love Erika and Eileen’s mutual admiration society. It is so adorable how excited and nervous Erika is to be on the show and how excited Eileen is to share her professional life with someone whom she obviously adores. Erika is really good too. I don’t think she’s ever going to win an Oscar, but she has enough stage presence and attitude to certainly pull off a soap opera villain. If Naomi Campbell can do it on Empire, nothing is stopping Erika Jayne.
Kyle is filming her scripted show, too, and she is staying up all night doing it. Mauricio even shows up to support her and you know that it is very important to him because he arrives on camera without wearing a The Agency hat, a The Agency T-shirt, or a platinum grill that has The Agency spelled out in in diamonds. He was probably wearing The Agency briefs, but his pants were a little bit too high for us to see the waistband. Oh, and don’t worry, he has The Agency T-shirt back on a few scenes later when Kyle absolutely butchers a gorgeous pantsuit with a pair of blunt scissors because she has nothing else to wear.
Meanwhile, over at Surely Rented Manor, PK, an anal wart wearing a backwards Kangol hat, uses the house phone to call up his wife and tell her to meet him in the bar. He then decides that they should drink Red Bull and vodka in the middle of the afternoon at home. That is not what Red Bull and vodka is for. Red Bull and vodka is for making sure Kate Moss doesn’t throw things from her purse at the rabble when she’s taking an easyJet to Ibiza. Red Bull and vodka is for the dusty journey to Burning Man when you’re trying to figure out whether anyone will want to barter anything for your dirty Uggs. Red Bull and vodka is for when you need to cram for the Psych 101 class that you blew off all semester so that you could smoke weed with Greg down the hall in the middle of the afternoon. Red Bull and vodka is never meant for a house.
Anyway, the two of them decide that Lisa Rinna is “dangerous†because she is like two different people at any given time. Whatever. These two are the stupidest, most disgusting things I have ever seen and I just want them to get off my television screen as fast as possible. I would rather watch Kevin Lee and Lisa’s hunky staff farmer Tim engage in Turkish oil wrestling than watch these two drink Red Bull and vodkas on a Wednesday afternoon.
Also, what the hell is going on with Dorit’s hair when she’s getting ready for Lisa’s Diamonds and Rosé party? The dress code is “pink, diamonds, and wedge heels.†Putting gold leaf in her hair is absolutely none of those things. It looks like she ran out halfway through, so just her skull is covered in gold leaf that is so patchy it looks like a twink trying to grow a beard. She looks like Viserys Targaryen after he got a vat of molten gold poured on his head or an old Destro GI Joe figure that you found in your mother’s basement that had half of his gold skull chipped away due to abuse and old age.
Dorit isn’t the only one to ignore the theme completely, though. Lisa Rinna wears a weird Studio 54 gold dress, like she thought she was dressing for Erika’s birthday party at the beginning of the season. Eileen is wearing the most unfortunate white dress I have ever seen in my life, like something you would make out of toilet paper at a bridal shower. St. Camille of Grammer shows up in teal, which, whatever, everything is forgiven because she blessed us with her divine and holy light. Erika looks amazing with pink hair, obviously, and Kyle would have looked great in that pantsuit if it didn’t make her look like the one girl Monchhichi.
All the women piled into their respective limos and drove off to their final confrontations at Villa Rosa, a Birkin bag turned inside out and inflated large enough for humans to live in. They steeled themselves, clenching their pelvic floor muscles under their dresses in a Kegel exercise that will never end. As they filed in, one by one, to the Diamonds and Rosé party, they were complete unaware of the real Diamonds and Rosé, the mini ponies stooped out back oblivious to everyone. They had bows in their hair and pretty tutus around their waists and they had no idea what any of it meant. The humans gathered around the outdoor furniture in predetermined clumps and they just walked around their little pen, looking for more grass to eat and staring off into the distance, where the hill became a cliff and the cliff became a gully and the gully became a stream trickling with the winter rains dragging a weird ribbon of blossoming green popping up through the crackling brown detritus of summers that ended long ago.