This week on our favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They lay in their vestibules, howling at the moon in the hope that their tiny puppies named Sue will join in and then call the communicating. They have face masks that are imbued not just with jewels and gemstones and gold, but also with reiki energy as if it is some kind of witches potion that can be poured on the diaphanous skins of rich women and make them into better people. They crawl along the floor in beige leather pants cleaning up after their dogs while their husbands spank their asses with a broom as we are now viewing some very, very, very nice pornography.
But mostly, the rich women spend a million dollars digging out their basements so that their husbands can have a golf simulator when they could probably just get a Nintendo Switch for like $300. Heck, you could probably pay Kim Richards $50 to steal one for you from the Thousand Oaks Target. Okay, this isn’t the rich women, it’s just Crystal, and this whole scene is absolutely bonkers. Sure, she got the price down to $500K, but who really wants a finished basement, I’m sorry, “lower level.†No one ever uses these things because no one wants to hang out in the dank where there aren’t any lights. Okay, fine, I can see someone in the entertainment biz having a screening room in the basement because who cares if you’re watching a movie, but the rest of it is just insane. No one will pay half a million more for that house because you can play fake golf in the basement. Sorry, that’s insane.
It’s about as insane as the story that Erika tells Kyle when they meet for the reiki facials. (And God bless Kathy Hilton for saying she tunes out as soon as the facialist starts talking about her third eye or her chakras because seriously.) Erika says that her husband Tom’s house got broken into and that he confronted the burglar and then ended up in the hospital for surgery. Then her son was somehow involved, and while he was driving home, it was snowing and his car flipped over five times. She knew about all of this at Garcelle’s Haitian dinner but didn’t bring it up, just like she didn’t bring up her divorce from Tom. This is nuts to me. Who hasn’t been at some event where there was something that you couldn’t or didn’t want to talk about, but you end up looking distracted or not with it. Erika was just head-on ignoring it to a level that is almost admirable.
Anyway, the story itself seems totally nuts, but, like Kyle and Dorit, I want to buy it. After all, the house was broken into around the time this was filmed, or at least, someone reported to the police that it was. Also, there are places not far from Pasadena where it could have been snowing in January, so maybe he did have an accident in the snow. Just as Erika told them the car flipped five times, Kyle and Dorit up it to six in the retelling. Maybe this is just a case of exaggeration telephone and her son skidded out in the snow, and that got amped up and up and up until it was as big as Brandi Glanville’s lips, and now here we are, with Erika’s son flying Tom to the moon because he tried to beat up Jesse James when he ransacked his mansion.
There must be some germs of truth in this story. Why would Erika make this up out of whole cloth? It’s not like she needs to invent a storyline this season. But, just like her last story about Tom’s accident, there are just so many questions. How did the son know he was robbed? Why did he show up and not the rest of Tom’s family? If Erika is getting a divorce, why was the son so quick to respond? And did she hear all of this from her son or some other source? This is like when Katie Maloney fell through a skylight while doing a Monopoly photoshoot, I have more questions than Ariana Grande has ex-fiancés, and none of them are being answered. There might be very reasonable answers to these questions, or there may not be, but, sister, you can’t just drop a whopper of a story like that and walk away.
When Kyle and Dorit recount this story to their husbands, they’re about as skeptical as just about everyone in the audience, but I was very distracted because PK can’t eat a piece of perfectly roasted salmon without mayonnaise or tartar sauce because he is basically Tiny Tim’s crutch if it got stuck in a septic tank. Though the story seems unbelievable, both Kyle and Dorit ask why Erika would lie about this. PK, a neck in search of a head to disappoint, says he thinks Erika was in a controlling marriage, and she’s still being controlled. He says Tom told her to say this, and she went along with it. But why would Tom make up this story unless to say that a bunch of very valuable assets got taken in the robbery? I guess that’s plausible. I don’t know, the whole thing seems odd, and I don’t think we’re going to get any good answers until at least the reunion and probably after that.
But now comes my favorite part of every recap, and it is the clown on Dorit section of the proceedings. This episode was the big launch party for her Doriting Down the Aisle Wedding Gowns by Dorit and Alene Two Point Oh! She starts off by inviting every woman by sending them a single rose and a mirrored invitation delivered by a very handsome man named Rhino, and I would like to know if he has an Instagram. I’m asking for a friend (That friend is my dick). The only person in this episode hotter than Rhino is maybe Keith, the 49-year-old kickboxer (with no kids and a set of abs that could put Cadbury out of business) that a matchmaker wants to set Garcelle up with. Now, I want to let that man destroy my life, body, credit, and Uber rating, but there’s got to be a catch. How is a man that hot still single? Is he a Trader Joe’s checkout clerk? Does he run a QAnon Reddit page? Does he believe that the toilet paper should go under the roll rather than over? It has to be something.
Anyway, Dorit is talking a big game about her six dresses (did anyone peep that in her sketches for the gowns the woman wearing the dress was a Bratz doll version of Dorit?) and the party she’s going to throw to launch them. “If I’m putting my name on something, you better believe that it’s my work, it’s my creativity, it’s my design,†she says. Yes. That is her work, creativity, and design dot dot dot in a Buca di Beppo in the valley.
Dorit goes on and on about how great of a party she throws but then the party is planned by Nick, her very hunky party planner. I mean, that’s like me saying I’m an excellent clothing designer because I bought a Thom Browne suit. (Also, if you knew how much Vulture paid me you’d know I’m as close to buying a Thom Browne suit as Kylie Jenner is to finishing college.) Then she unleashes the theme of the party on us. It’s a wedding theme…for a launch of bridal wear. Florals for spring. Groundbreaking.
Then, even worse, the party is at her house. She’s talking about how, in better times, she would have splashed out on a huge party and had brides on ladders 50 feet in the air with some clouds or something. Instead, it’s just the cast, and they’re all at an overpriced mansion in Encino. This is what drives me crazy about Dorit. She just can’t let anything settle on earth. It has to be the biggest, the richest, the fanciest, when really it’s just a party at her house with a caterer and a bunch of white roses. But here is a woman who hired a sound system and a microphone to talk about her dresses in her own living room. That’s like hiring Wong Kar-Wai to direct your OnlyFans.
There are many great outfits at the party, though, most of them not on the brides. Can we get a minute to appreciate Erika’s doorknocker ponytail, which is a hunk of hair connected to a ring that is wrapped into a bun? It is one of the most genius things I’ve ever seen on television, and I watched Joe Millionaire. Kyle also looks amazing in a black ensemble and her hair done up, and Kathy Hilton arrived with “her architect.†That is how you know people are rich. They don’t have a cleaner, decorator, or Pilates instructor; they have an architect that they can drag to functions shockingly close to where they film Cobra Kai.
The fight that Garcelle and Dorit have at the party is completely incomprehensible. While all the ladies are standing around, Executive Producer Kyle C Richards asks Garcelle about a quote she made in an interview, saying all the ladies were coming for her. When Dorit questions it, Garcelle says that Dorit is the one coming after her. Dorit is mad that Garcelle won’t say her issues with Dorit to her face or something? I don’t know. Dorit says she’s mad that Garcelle doesn’t say anything in the group but talks big when they’re not around to make herself sound more interesting or something? I don’t know.
The problem seems to be that Garcelle doesn’t feel like she fits in, so she doesn’t think she can raise her concerns in the group because no one has her back. That’s also why she can’t just tell Dorit to shut up. She feels so insecure in the group dynamic that she’s always trying to make friends with these women who will inevitably freeze her out. Maybe that’s why she makes these “digs†at Dorit; she’s afraid if she really lets her opinion known, she’ll be shunned. As for telling Dorit that she talks too much to her face, that didn’t work out well for Kyle, her friend of several years. Dorit says she wants Garcelle to confront her, but Dorit really doesn’t want that at all. She is, of course, setting Garcelle up to fail when she should be worrying about 1400 pearls skittering off her $35,000 dress and ruining the floors of an Encino house that she and her husband can’t really afford.