This week on our favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They renovated their houses and dealt with rat-poop problems in their kitchens. They won the blue ribbon at a riding event attended by their friends in ridiculous outfits. They wailed about the indignity of choosing to have a male baby and how it was born blue in the face. They worked on their memoirs with their co-authors who were more annoying than a million monkeys pounding on a million tiny drums while you’re trying to sleep off a New Year’s Eve hangover.
Speaking of which, who is this queen whom Erika Jayne got to write her book? He’s like an evil spirit that was created when Tennessee Williams jerked off into the Atlantic Ocean. She says, “I read some of his pieces and I liked his voice. He’s smart and funny and I reached out with him to co-author my book.†I don’t know what voice she’s talking about, but to me, his voice sounds gayer than her artistic director Mikey blowing Lance Bass and the ghost of Jim Nabors at the same time on the sofa at Ricky Martin’s Fire Island rental. They’re sitting on the couch in Erika’s office talking about her father and how he denied her to her face, and he’s like, “Gosh, that must have been so hard on you.†I wanted to reach out and slap that dummy right upside his curly head. That’s not the kind of insightful question that a journalist should ask his subject. It’s the kind of stupid pop psychology you would hear at a coffee klatch in the lobotomy ward at Bellevue.
Erika seems like she’s working very hard on this book and it’s going to be very exciting and revealing. She calls up her mother, Renee, who shows her all of these old pictures and report cards from dance school and all of these other incredibly interesting documents that are sure to be in the glossy center of the book along with pictures of Erika and the weird girl bands she sang with in her 20s. I would buy this book. But I don’t know why she’s paying this guy a salary. He doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, other than spending Erika’s hard-earned money on Lanvin lapel pins and Alexander McQueen culottes when he should have been paying to have his makeup done so that his nose didn’t look more red than the rest of his face. Had he just spent two weeks in Italy sunning himself with rich Romans pretending to be poor by not wearing shoes? Jesus. The nerve of this guy!
Who else can we talk shit about? How about Kyle Richards, who is going on vacation to get away from her home renovation? Now, there is nothing wrong with renovating one’s home. However, what Kyle is doing is not only as imaginative as cutting out the shoulders on all of her shirtsleeves, but also as unrelatable. The changes that Kyle is making to her house are: new floors, a fireplace in her bathroom, and changing the shape of her pool. Seriously? For most Americans, home improvement means getting rid of a termite infestation or fixing a leaky roof or maybe adding an additional room over the garage so that you can stuff your teenage children in there to pretend like they’re not doing drugs and having sex. When Kyle looked at her house, the two things she thought were, “Ugh, my pool is so ugly it needs a face lift. Also, even though I live in one of the most reliably warm climates on Earth, I think I need a fireplace next to my bathtub.â€
Mostly, though, the person we have to pick on is Dorit. Oh, Dorit, a woman who showed up to her own birthday party looking like she used Pennzoil to style her hair. Lisa Vanderpump threw the party at Villa Blanca and all the white people sat around a white table and talked about how much they love Dorit. Even Lisa Rinna got up and made a little speech, at Lisa’s insistence, about how she and Dorit used to be in a good place but look at them now! Dorit also invited Erika to her party, even though the two were mortal enemies last season. It’s like we’re all moving on.
During dinner, Dorit’s husband, PK, a beef stew made with water-buffalo meat, says, “I have something for you,†and gets up from the table. I thought for sure he was going to present her with a gift they can’t afford, but instead he brought out their son, Jagger, dressed in a little white tux with his hair slicked down. It was pretty adorable. Jagger sits on Dorit’s lap, and as Erika waves at him from across the table, he shouts, “Bad guy!†He calls all the women “bad guy!†and Dorit tries to gloss it over by saying he’s obsessed with superheroes and “bad guys,†but I’m not believing any of it.
The other reason we need to make fun of Dorit is because she shows up to Teddi’s horse show dressed in open-toed wedges, a tight dress, and a giant hat like she is going to sit in the VIP bleachers at Pimlico. Um, no, girl. This is a dirty field outside of San Diego. Flip flops are too dressy for most places in San Diego and you’re going to show up looking like I Have a Rich Boyfriend Barbie? There’s a reason why cowboys wear cowboy boots and that’s because they’re out around dusty horses and stuff all the time. And she’s the one making fun of the other women’s fashions!
But the biggest reason we have to make fun of Dorit is her Hermès china. This is my problem with Dorit: She doesn’t have any real style or real taste of her own, she just thinks she can buy it. That’s why she has a Birkin collection. Yes, Birkins are nice, but it’s the kind of handbag that a woman like Dorit is supposed to have. Who needs more than one? Why not go and find an equally expensive bag that really expresses your sense of style? It’s just like her $19,000 Hermès china. She needed plates that read, “I am very, very, very rich. (Just please don’t ask where the money is coming from.)†She didn’t find something that looked good in her house or had some sentimental value; she just got the china that would make her look wealthy. That is more basic than eating a cupcake after having your birthday party at SoulCycle.
It’s not like she even needed the china to have Teddi and her hottie husband over for dinner anyway. They’re eating outside. They could have used fancy paper plates and made it like a barbecue theme. She could have gotten some really cute Moroccan-inspired dishes to go with the “Moroccan†dish she made for dinner. But no, she had to run out and buy Hermès flatware and then hide the bill from her husband like she’s some 1950s sitcom housewife.
Even worse than that is how her husband, PK, the congealed mass on a biscuit after a losing game of Ookie Cookie, behaves at that dinner. Dorit and Lisar are trying to put their “did you do coke in the bathroom†past behind them and then this jerk goes and brings up how much he hates Lisar at dinner. This is after Teddi had lunch with Lisar and found her perfectly lovely. Yes, this is going to be Dorit’s big problem on the show. No matter what she does, her husband is going to insert himself and drive the action where he thinks it should go.
His comments are going to go really badly for Dorit. Not only is Teddi going to feel like she’s being played, but when the other women find out, it’s going to ruin the delicate détente that she has with Lisar. That’s bad for the audience too. The last thing any of us want to litigate is whether or not Dorit and her guests were getting all up in the booger sugar at their last party.
As Dorit, Teddi, and their respective husbands — one beautiful and one scarier than a maggot-infested jack-o’-lantern — ate dinner, there was a strange rattling at the gate at the end of the precipitously sloping driveway at Surely Rented Manor. A woman with a bottle of chilled white wine sweating in her grasp was rattling the gate, her car idling at the curb. “Hello?†she shouted. “The invitation said 9 p.m.!†But no one could hear. They were all outside huddled around the table far out of earshot. “Hello?†Eileen Davidson shouted once again. But no one answered. “Another five minutes,†she said to herself, as she swatted away a few hovering gnats that went skittering in different directions, polluting the night sky.