This week on our favorite program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They packed. They packed with their artistic director, who suggested lube and baby powder for a latex pussy-bow blouse. They packed with their devoted maids, who oohed and aahed and held onto one of the menagerie of dogs while she tried on jeweled pink hats that looked like an infected nostril. They packed all alone, rambling to no one in particular as they shoved their beauty products into one of about 19 cases. The rich ladies were off to Germany. How do we know? Because they all tried to speak German and it ended up coming out more like the Swedish Chef puking in the back of a Lyft.
As everyone is packing clothes for their trip, Kyle is doing a whole different sort of packing: packing up all of the family’s belongings so they can move into their new house. The worst packer of all was Portia. That might be because she is the one selected to wear the Agency T-shirt this week. I feel like they all sit around and draw slips of paper, like the lottery in the famous Shirley Jackson short story, and the one with the black spot ends up having to shill for Dad’s company on national television this week. (Also, how is it that they make child-sized versions of this shirt and I still don’t even have one?)
Erika invites Lisar and Dorit over to her house, mostly to show them a life-size cardboard cutout of her avatar in the Kim Kardashian game. Dorit, of course, is late. Most of the Housewives’ official greeting is, “You look beautiful,†but Dorit’s always seems to be, “So so so so so so sorry I’m late.†I think she could show up 15 minutes early and just be like, “So so so so so so sorry I’m late,†just out of habit. Anyway, I mention this meeting only because at one point Lisar says, “I’m seeing this psychic I really, really love that Cindy Crawford turned me on to.†It is the second most L.A. thing that has ever been said, after “I listened to all of your podcasts and talked to my agent because I had to sit in traffic on the 101 for two hours to get my rescue dog organic vegan food and there’s only one place that sells it right next to the ketogenic diet bakery.â€
The first part of the episode is all about Lisa and dogs because she’s still reeling in grief from losing Pink Dog and Pikachu within days of each other. We are then introduced to another old dog by the name of Lollipop and, seriously, we have to have an intervention for the way Lisa names her dogs. Dorit calls to console Lisa while she’s trying to get ready for an event and Lisa says, “Please, I don’t want to talk about it right now, I’ll just get upset,†and Dorit still finds four different ways to bring it up while still being late at the same time.
Lisa is preparing for the premiere of her movie The Road to Yulin, which is debuting as part of the 2017 Awareness Film Festival, which sounds about as bleak as eating three bowls of gruel in a dungeon with PK, a paper cut you somehow got on your nipple. Shocking no one, this documentary about the dog-meat festival in Yulin, China, is horrible and awful and it makes everyone with a heart and Dorit cry. However, from what little we see of the film, it seems to really glorify the work that Lisa, Ken, and their acolyte Jon have put in to ending this festival.
Finally, after all of that packing, it’s time to go to Germany. My boyfriend, who travels millions of miles a year for work and is such an aviation nerd that he subscribes to several airplane magazines, would like me to point out that Lisa and Kyle are flying in first class and that everyone else is in business. That includes Erika, the woman who organized this trip and owns two private jets. Now that I have made that clear to you, he can sleep soundly at night, mostly likely farting next to Princess Beatrice on an overnight flight to London.
The reason I’m talking about my boyfriend is because, well, nothing happened in Germany. I mean, Erika gets shown around the Presidential Suite and calls and arranges a dinner party, Teddi FaceTimes with her hot husband to make sure he is following the ridiculous calendar that she laid out for him, and Dorit sees a doctor. Dorit thought she was coming down with the flu so she took flu medicine and an antibiotic at the same time and the doctor gives her a look of sad exasperation that Dorit, in her short life, must be accustomed to by now. She isn’t really sick, but mixing the medications made her sick.
They’re really reaching for a story on this trip. They are reaching so hard that we get a whole revival of the “Lisar’s pill bag†story line from last year because Lisar pulled out an anti-nausea medication for Dorit from Lisa’s Big Bag of Pills (coming this spring to QVC). We had to relive it all in its sepia-toned glory because nothing has happened this year.
Maybe that’s because Lisar isn’t as “engaged†as she was last year. Yes, they’re now reaching so hard that they try to make something out of Lisa saying Lisar is a different person and “not engaged.†Lisar thinks that Lisa is implying that she is not fighting with everyone or doing the dirty work anymore. I think that Lisa means that Lisar has not been around as much because, well, she hasn’t. She’s been sick, working, and tending to her children, so she hasn’t nearly been physically as present as she was last year. But we’re turning this whole miscommunication into a plot point? Okay, cool. Guess you got nothing else, right?
Well, they have something about Nanny Kay, Lisa’s grandmother who lived through World War II only to move into Lisa’s guesthouse for 25 years while she opened a restaurant in the Sherman Oaks Mall, which definitely sounds like a place Kim Richards has been thrown out of for shoplifting at least once. For a flash, Kyle doesn’t remember who Nanny Kay is and Lisa tries to make it out like she’s committed some kind of great betrayal. But she is just a little confused, probably because the teensy tiny gloves that she is wearing are cutting off her circulation.
This is the best that we’ve got? Kyle forgot Lisa’s grandmother’s name? Seriously? Last year, we were screaming on a junk boat. Before that, Brandi was literally slapping Lisa in the face. Now we’re sitting around a boring hotel bar and the most exciting thing onscreen is Erika’s jacket. Man, something really needs to happen on this trip, and fast.
What the women didn’t know was that downstairs, at the front desk of Berlin’s Waldorf Astoria, a blonde woman in her best jumpsuit was standing at the front desk with a dog in her purse. “This doesn’t make any sense,†she told the receptionist. “She invited me on this trip the other day when we were at lunch by the pool. I paid for my own ticket and everything.†She pushed her passport toward the woman again, as if she hadn’t read her name the first 13 times.
“I know, ma’am, but we don’t have any record of a reservation for you and the hotel is booked,†she replied.
“But I flew all the way from L.A.,†the woman responded. “What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do with this dog? I brought this dog for Lisa. It’s a rescue dog. His name is Harry Hamlin and he’s not house-trained and I’m going to have to let him poop somewhere.â€
“I’m sorry,†the receptionist said. “The hotel does not allow dogs. Can I recommend …â€
“No, you cannot,†the woman said. She turned around, grabbed her three rolling bags, and walked toward the automatically opening front door with the dog wriggling in the carrying case under her shoulder. Eileen Davidson stood in front of the hotel, wondering just what she was doing here, how she was going to get a cab, and why, oh why, the cold damp Berlin air felt a little bit like curling up on a little patch of moss and falling asleep with her head on the belly of a baby deer.