This week on our favorite program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They lounged by a small plunge pool wearing gigantic disco-ball sunglasses and fringed bikinis while a bunch of muggles in one-piece bathing suits stared at them and sipped their margaritas. They sat in a gigantic bird cage and gave liquid hand jobs to a giant ice dildo that came in their cocktails. They left one trip early so that they could go home because they needed extra time to pack for their next vacation. They had incredibly relatable conversations with their daughter about the belly ache she got from eating a $300 piece of beef that she then charged to her mother’s credit card. Oh, these rich women, they did things.
Mostly the rich women were in Las Vegas, continuing the trip that they were on from last week. Before they all go to dinner, everyone convenes in Kyle’s room and everyone wears black, except for Lisa Vanderpump who stands out wearing a shade of magenta usually reserved for plastic penises on the headdresses worn by bachelorettes. Erika Jayne shows up dressed as a Russian prostitute who just got out of dominatrix camp and, well, it is amazing.
Then Adrienne Queen of the Maloofs, a race of mole people that live under the mountain, shows up. What is she doing here? She is the owner of the Palms and they are staying at the Venetian. Remember back in like season two or three that Adrienne’s only story line was that she was mad at Lisa for having her daughter’s engagement party at a competing casino? Now she’s shaking her tatas at Tao with the rest of the ladies? Oh, how low she will stoop just to get her tinsel extensions back on screen.
Then everyone makes fun of St. Camille of Grammer because she’s had the same booty-shaking moves since the last time the whole group went to Las Vegas seven years ago. Um, Camille has had the same exact dance moves since she was on Club MTV with a Julie Brown of the downtown variety. Wubba, wubba, wubba. (Aaaaaaand I lost all the millennials.) I love that she dances the exact same way. I love that Camille shows up and doesn’t really say anything, but just smiles her giddy smiles and tosses her locks from one shoulder to the other and doesn’t say a word. I don’t need Camille to do anything. She’s like a security blanket: She’s something familiar and fuzzy that lets me know, no matter how many times Dorit wears some bullshit strapped across her head, that everything will turn out fine in the end.
Speaking of Dorit, she and Erika dress like a pair of hobos having a pajama party and then go and gamble away a few thousand dollars, which seems like a lot of fun. Teddi is also there. Oh, and we learn that Teddi is an “accountability coach.†Basically, she makes sure that people aren’t cheating on their diets and are working out like they’re supposed to. This sounds like a bullshit job. I know it’s hard to lose weight and get in shape — especially the kind of shape that Teddi’s husband Edwin is in with those abs that look like a cobblestone street covered in manflesh — but come on. She just texts people to eat well and go to the gym? How do I get into this line of work? I’ll even do it for free. Send me your number and every day I’ll text you, “You’re so fat†and BAM, in no time you’ll be an “after†picture. Done.
After gambling, Erika and Dorit totter through a mall with Lisa Vanderpump and they all make up. Erika tells Dorit that everything about Pantygate has been said and she just wants to move forward. Thank God, because if I had to rehash that again, I would bury myself in whatever grave Bugsy Siegel is in right now. Then Lisa Vanderpump got mad that Erika doesn’t text her enough and it was the most like a 13-year-old girl I’ve ever seen anyone wearing a pussy-bow blouse act before. (I did love Erika’s rendition of what it’s like texting with a queen, though, because I have had this exact text message exchange with Erika and I know that it is accurate.)
There is a lot of making up happening this episode. All of the women get on a giant Ferris wheel called the High Roller and, honestly, it looks like the worst thing in the world. This is like the London Eye or similar Ferris wheels that exist in Paris and soon to be in New York City. The difference is, there is nothing to look at in Vegas. There are a bunch of tacky hotels clustered around the strip and then a vast expanse of desert featuring unexciting cacti, the decomposing bodies of small-time criminals, and possibly whatever grave Bugsy Siegel is in right now.
The setting is perfect for the Housewives, though. After all, it’s a confined space where everyone is stuck for an extended period of time and there is a bar handy. Actually, all Housewives trips should just be in these Ferris-wheel bubbles from now on. That will surely save Andy Cohen some coins in the budget. The women decide to take this opportunity to all make up with Lisar, who said that she’s not going to fight this year, she’s just there to have fun.
Her conversation with Kyle about running into Harry on a hiking trail makes sense. They both just sort of kissed and made up and that was the end of that. Her conversation with Dorit is a lot weirder. Dorit spends the entire episode talking about something she needs to get off of her chest. This is ironic because never before have we seen Dorit’s chest shoved toward her chin like it is during this episode. Basically, Dorit wants Lisar to take responsibility for her jab about people doing coke in her bathroom. Eventually, Lisar does that.
Lisar wants Dorit to take responsibility for her actions in the feud, but she refuses to do it. She even denies that her husband PK, an octopus tentacle pretending to be a man, said awful things about Lisar, something that the producers then reminded us all about with some well-placed video replay. Here is my problem with Dorit: She didn’t want to make peace with Lisar, she just wanted Lisar to shoulder all the blame. If Dorit really wants to move past this and get to a good place, she’s going to have to make some concessions. If she holds onto her being completely right and Lisar completely wrong, that’s how we end up with an intractable dispute that will last for an entire season. If you need more proof, see Pantygate. So far, Dorit has only been able to move past her squabbles with castmates because they’re more desperate to get over it than to be right. Eventually, if Dorit plans to have a long career on this show, she’ll have to get there as well.
Finally the High Roller brought our rich ladies back down to the ground and they all got out to make their exit. As Erika sauntered into the hotel, her curly locks swept to one side in a look that Mikey surely described as “executive woman announcing to the factory there won’t be any layoffs after all right before Christmas,†she thought she heard something. Like a blunt tapping, like an tennis ball bouncing on a pane of Plexiglas. She looked around her and didn’t see anything. She trotted a little and caught up with the other women. What she didn’t see was a woman in the transparent bubble next to theirs, the one that just went up in the air for its hour-long spin. Inside it was a figure frantically waving and banging, her hair clustering around her earlobes as she tried to get the group’s attention. But Erika missed it. She missed Eileen Davidson making a racket before quietly resigning herself to a sole vodka tonic as she squinted in the failing Las Vegas light as it blanched some poor creature’s bones out in the distant sand.