On this episode of our favorite show Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They excessively vacuumed their carpets and upholstery, hoping that would get rid of the dog hair, ennui, and other crushing pains of dealing with a very horrible scandal in a very public way. It didn’t work on any account. They invited their daughters and their gorgeous reality TV boyfriends over to try on their old dresses and give almost convincing runway model points in their oil-stained garage. They plopped their tiny dogs on enormous Hermés orange boxes underneath the Christmas tree and handled their $950 crystal candlesticks and then sat their guests down for salad and sandwiches at TV trays in a den that looked like a high-end version of Archie and Edith Bunker’s living room, without a young Rob Reiner and his sideburns around to sully the joint.
My favorite scene of the week was the reconciliation that Kathy and Kyle had talking about their differences and why they didn’t talk for the better part of a decade. As for the stuff about Mauricio leaving Kathy’s husband Rick’s real estate agency to start his own agency, creatively titled The Agency, that I totally get. It’s hard to mix family and business and money and to steal someone’s house like Kyle definitely did to Kim. As for all of the stuff about the TV show American Woman that Kyle created based on their mother, I think Kathy just needs to get over it.
I watched every single episode of the series (recapped it even!), and I didn’t think much of it was really true, just based on what I know about the Richards family based on my years of viewing RHOBH. I get what Kathy was saying about the show and wanting to preserve their mother’s memory, but I think that Kyle did a great job burnishing Big Kathy’s image, if anything at all. I mean, who doesn’t want noted vegan Alicia Silverstone to play them in the TV show about their life. If she can grow a mustache and wear a short suit, I would love her to be cast in Everybody Loves a Dame: The Brian Moylan Story.
What I loved though was seeing them in a good place, both sad that they lost so much time together over such petty squabbles. (Well, if The Agency is big as I think it is, those are actually $1 million squabbles, but who am I to count other people’s coins?) That’s what you need your siblings for, to sit around and trash your mother’s ability to cook but also delight in her failures, stew together in your own memories, refining each other’s like the knobs on an Etch-a-Sketch creating a line that never ends but always, somehow, bends back to where it came before.
Other than that, like a game of pickleball with your neighbor’s Paw Patrol-addled tot, we don’t have much to contend with. There was that stunning altercation at Lisa’s Lip Kit Launch Party where Erika went out of her way to bark at Sutton (not Ms. Jayne’s finest moment), but I assume we’ll get much more into that next week when we get to Kathy’s big party and Erika and Sutton’s big confrontation.
The big fight this episode was between Dorit and Garcelle at the aforementioned lip party. I mean, it wasn’t much of a product launch since it was just the eight Housewives and an unusually involved party planner in Crystal’s back yard. She says that in “normal times,†she has two to three parties a week at her house. Two to three parties a week? Who is this woman? The ghost of Michael Alig? How is the grass in her backyard not as pounded down with all of those pairs of Beverly Hills heels clacking all over it all the time? I love to hang out, but that is too much. Sometimes you just need to go to lunch at The Wing and pick on the décor like a normal person.
She did do a great job on Lisa’s party, or at least supervised well as someone else did it. The whole backyard was Instagram-ready, and what is a launch party if it is not an event for content creation. If all the women post some good images on their social channels, isn’t that the same as having hundreds of people come by the lip kit? (Also, “lip kit†is right up there on the disgusting phrases list for me along with “baby bumpâ€, “bikini bodyâ€, and “vegan dessert.â€) The inflatable lips in the pool were an especially nice touch, as was Dorti’s gorgeous Gaultier dress that was all ruffles, buckles, straps, swirls, nude cut outs, and not one damn conspicuous label in sight. If Dorit could dress like this all of the time, I might not hate her.
But hate Dorit I do. I can’t help it. It just comes naturally, like the urge to poop as soon as you enter a bookstore. That is also how I feel about this issue she has with Garcelle taking jabs at her. She doesn’t have that many examples of what she’s talking about. She brings up when she asked if Dorit needed a timer to tell her when to stop speaking, when she accused her of never being able to see Sutton’s side while she was fighting with Crystal, and when she said at the Christmas dinner at Kyle’s that she took a totally different stance on the Erika situation in private with the group than she did in front of Erika.
I do not think these are jabs or barbs or any other name that you might have for a fandom for a female pop star. This is Garcelle calling Dorit on her shit. Yes, Dorit talks too damn much. Yes, she was saying something totally different to Erika’s face than she said behind her back. Garcelle pointing these things out to her is not her trying to start something with Dorit, it’s her trying to keep Dorit honest.
What this is certainly not is bullying. Like getting on a boat, visiting a psychic, or renewing one’s vows, using the word “bully†is something a Housewife should never do. It is, as Garcelle says, a very loaded word, and I have never once seen any Housewife bully a fellow castmate. Oh wait. Sorry. I forgot about how Dorinda Medley treated Tinsley Mortimer on the last season of RHONY. That was actual bullying. Other than that, it’s just women being kind of rude to each other.
I don’t think what Garcelle was doing was rude, though. She was trying to point out faults in Dorit’s arguments or behavior but doing it in a sort of gentle way. Yes, I’m with the ladies that the best course of action is to be direct, but I don’t think Garcelle feels comfortable enough with the group to be direct to their faces. She did that last year, and it didn’t end well for poor Denise Richards. Oh, yeah. She got bullied too. That I can buy. And while Dorit says she would like Garcelle to just say to her face that she talks too much, when Kyle does it, she always ignores and then gets mad at Kyle. So it seems like no matter how it is brought up, Dorit is going to get her nose bent out of shape, which is ironic because she has never had a nose job. No way. Not her. She is very direct about not having had a nose job and she wants to keep it that way. Capiche? (Dorit speaks Italian.)
As for Dorit bringing up what happened between Garcelle and Erika in Behind the Target, California, that seemed like a blow lower than David Foster’s nutsack when he walks naked across his mansion. Actually, what it seemed like is the favorite tactic of the Get Along Gang: bringing up old shit. For several seasons now this show has been about taking one topic and then beating it into a bloody stump that not even a Saw movie would like. Dorit tried to go back to an old well, and Garcelle shut it down quite vehemently with a “fuck you with that.â€
I get where Garcelle is coming from. First of all, she felt bad about how that happened and apologized to Erika and was probably a bit embarrassed about how it all went down. Secondly, it had nothing to do with Dorit and their relationship. What happened between Garcelle and Erika is not applicable, and if Dorit is reaching that far for examples of Garcelle being a “bully,†then maybe she should tighten those buckles on her dress and keep her arms and legs inside the ride until it comes to a complete stop. And, finally, it is old shit. It is decided and judged and everyone has moved on. Dragging us back to that poisoned well is going to make us do nothing but throw up in Crystal’s backyard, but considering she throws about 160 parties back there, it probably wouldn’t be the first time someone decided to compost her roses with some upchucked rosé.