On this episode of our favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women all did things, but this time most of them did those things in Hawaii because they were there for a wedding. They showed off their impressive Hawaiian real estate bought with their ex-husband’s money. They said that the best cure for a sore throat is some “good tea,†but let me tell you, sister, some good tea can cure just about anything. They cried that their businesses reminding people to exercise are doing far too well. They all showed impossible restraint by not making one single “getting lei’d†joke, though they did mime milking a prostate in a shuttle on the way to their hotel.
Most of this episode is in Hawaii, but one thing there made me the absolute happiest: Mauricio, or Maurice, as Kim Richards used to call him. We get to see a flashback to 2010 of he and Kyle talking about having another child, and he looked so handsome and young and fresh-faced. Remember how cut he was diving into their pool in his Speedo way back in season one? But Mauricio in a bathing suit now is even better. He still has a great body, but not perfect like in the past. That’s because he’s not only ten years older, he also has a big important job now. Mauricio doesn’t have a dad bod, he has a CEO bod, and there is nothing that gets my short and curlies twitching like a rich old man. (You should see how they get around Tom Girardi.)
Mauricio’s best scene, though, is the one at dinner, where he’s clearly stoned, rambling on, making crazy faces, and generally entertaining the whole table. It’s cute how they can’t say he’s actually stoned because, well, that is still illegal in Hawaii, but he’s totally stoned, right? Who else do you think got stoned with him? Not Kyle, for sure. Can you imagine how anxious a stoned Kyle would be? It would be like giving a Chihuahua a double shot of espresso. I would say Edwin, but I don’t think he would do that to his body. My guess is Dorit. She seems especially mellow at dinner, and Mo keeps making strange faces in her direction. But who knows. Maybe it’s no one. Maybe it’s just him. Anyway, he is one snack I wouldn’t mind having the munchies with.
We have to talk about the other big event of the episode, which is that Lisa Vanderpump went to a polygraph specialist who has been on every reality show imaginable and took a lie-detector test. Jeez Louise just let out an exhaustive sigh that just shook the gorgeous palm-front chuppah at St. Camile of Grammer-Meyer’s wedding. This whole thing is more extra than all the gum departments in all the Walmarts in all the states that banned abortion this week.
First of all, John Sessa is not allowed to be on this show. If the only person that Lisa can talk to during her packing montage is her dog, then Lisa should only be able to talk to her dog when she does all of her filming. She has about 19 of them. Just let her pick one or several. Secondly, this is such a horrible idea because she fed the guy these questions. If the other women had given this test, maybe they could have included questions about Lisa’s past behavior, about all of the things she’s reportedly done (make Brandi take the tabloids, have Lisar say “Munchausen’s,†etc.), and we might have gotten some real answers.
Then there are the questions that are just opinions or oblique ways of her roasting everyone else in the cast. “Do you think you’ll ever forget the hateful accusations made by your close friends?†I mean, come on. “Do you believe these women who have accused you of selling a story to Radar Online are your true friends?†Was anyone even wondering that? Now we know that Lisa isn’t lying about thinking they’re not her true friends. I’m sure that will go over like a dog turd in the bean dip. It’s as if Lisa thinks hearing these statements out of the mouth of a man who has testified in court will somehow make her look more sympathetic.
The worst question, however, is one planted by John Sessa. “Do you think Dorit’s face has changed as much in the past year as her accent?†In her interview, she says, “She’s had a head transplant.†It’s my job to make fun of these people. Stop knocking the proverbial dicks out of my mouth. Anyway, in a short span of time Lisa has gone from being so close to Dorit to making cracks about her appearance? Great! Then she says, “Don’t ask me if Erika’s tucking it under because there are some things I can’t lie about.†Sure, Erika is standing against Lisa in this fight, but she really has little to do with this whole particular issue. Now Lisa is making what seem to be slightly transphobic jokes at her expense? Can’t wait to see how this goes over with Billie Lee at the next SUR Pride party.
This whole lie detector also comes up at dinner in Hawaii because Kyle says that her daughter Alexia’s good friend had her house burglarized while it was under construction and she was at the polygraph office asking the contractors questions the same time Lisa Vanderpump was. I was initially shocked not by how crazy this story is, but by how many people in the Housewives milieu are being burglarized. Then I thought about the story, and it is as cockamamie as a dog eating your homework, an email getting stuck in a spam filter, or someone hacking your computer to post on Ashley Madison. If someone related to the show told her about this stunt, she should have just let us know, but this excuse is more convoluted than all of the strands of pasta sitting in a giant bowl made out of a Parmesan cheese husk.
All of the ladies think the lie detector is an absolutely insane idea because, well, it is. They think that this is the only way that Lisa can take control of the situation and make herself look good because she’s stopped talking to just about everyone else and needs to do something to stay on the show. Kyle really gets to the heart of it, though, when she says, “If she handed me that paper, would it change my mind? No.†That’s because, as I’ve said before, this isn’t really about the Radar Online story, something that Lisa fails to understand. I’m willing to concede that she didn’t plant that story (though I think if she didn’t, then someone in her camp did), but even if she is exonerated on this one count, there are many others she has yet to be satisfyingly tried for.
I’ll concede one other thing, and it’s that often Lisa makes great television. The stunt with the polygraph is Housewivery at its finest. It’s something that only one of the greats could have pulled off. (You know if someone ever accused Kenya Moore of a lie that big, she would not only have taken a lie detector, she would have pulled out the polygraph at a dinner party with all of the women attending just to gag them.) Even at the wedding in Hawaii, all of the women are sitting around with only Lisa and Dorit’s seven pairs of sunglasses to talk about. Mauricio can’t even remember who’s getting married (that must be some good weed!), but he sure knows all the ins and outs of this saga.
Now that we’ve gotten all of that unpleasantness out of the way, let us check in with Denise Richards, our one bastion of light and hope in this otherwise dark and stormy world. Denise is hanging out with her ex-boyfriend and former co-star Patrick Muldoon, who also used to shag Lisar. (What does that make them? Eskimo sisters? Kissing cousins? Typical ’90s starlets?) They’re talking about how they’ve gotten older and Denise says that her ex-husband aged her a few years. Then she launches into a story about how Charlie Sheen showed up for Thanksgiving with a hooker. He left the hooker in the car in the driveway to go ask if it was okay for him to bring her in the house, which is the most Charlie Sheen thing ever to happen. Denise’s response was, “Fine. I’ll fix a fucking plate.â€
Guys, Denise is just the best (and I say that without her ever having paid me to do anything). Any of these other women would have been so bent out of shape by this kind of behavior and probably tried to blame or shame the woman. But not our Denise. No, she sets a plate, invites her in, and says, “Even a hooker deserves Thanksgiving dinner.†This is just the best story.
Sadly, Denise didn’t get to make the wedding. She was up in Middletown, Connecticut, just down Route 9 from the hometowns of Countess Luann (née LuAnn) de Lesseps D’Agostino, Kim Zolciak Berman, and Dame Brian Moylan of the Bristol Brass Moylans. She was filming a Christmas movie with Patrick Muldoon in a small suburban bedroom. There were no tricks or green screens. There was no CGI or makeup effects. It was just a bunk bed in a normal home in a normal town. But somehow, when she looked out the white blinds over the window, they had made it snow outside.
It didn’t matter to Denise that it was probably some PA up on the roof shaking out a box of pencil shavings spray-painted white. To her it was magic. It was the Christmas spirit. She thought about the women, melting at that very moment under the Hawaiian sun. She could smell the sunblock and flop sweat coming off of so many of the guests. But she never wanted that. She wanted this. Just this tiny little perfect thing, this one little window, where, even if it wasn’t real, she could believe that everything was good.