This week on our favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women … wait, what’s wrong with Crystal? Is she okay? Why are her veins bulging? Why is her head spinning? Why is Annemarie being nice to her? Is she dying? Is it cancer? Is it dengue fever? They get that in Spain now because of global warming. Phew, it’s just high blood pressure. Okay, that’s cool. That seems like no big deal.
Yes, the episode starts with Crystal kicking off outside a chapel, where she thinks she will die. Luckily, Kyle called 911, and we had our on-site nurse anesthetist and self-appointed throat GOAT, Annemarie, so everything was just hunky-dory. (“Who is Dory, and why is she hunky?†Kathy Hilton asks from the future reunion.) In classic Crystal fashion, this was the most low-key medical emergency we’ve seen in Housewives history. Remember Victoria Denise Gunvalson Jr. in Iceland? She had to be wheeled out of the hotel on a gurney with a towel over her head and got a casserole when she returned home, and that was just for jet lag.
Meanwhile, they send Crystal off with Gavin, one of the PAs, while the rest of the women enter a chapel that Erika has already spent 30 minutes in, because she didn’t want to sit on the side of the road watching Crystal spiral. They give Crystal some medication, send her back to the villa with a sphygmomanometer, and tell her to watch her salt intake or something. The whole thing is anticlimactic. Although she expresses gratitude that her old foe Annemarie was there to take care of her, she hasn’t said it to her face yet. Please don’t. The last thing we need is that woman thinking she did anything right.
Other than the Crystal emergency, this episode was a little bit dull, to be perfectly honest. It was sort of like going to a dinner party where someone tried to combine two wildly different sets of friends, and neither of them managed to mesh quite well. Maybe that’s because that is exactly what happened in the episode.
After Crystal was medevaced to the nearest medical facility, we saw all of the women in the chapel, and no one really cared about being there. Sutton and Kyle did have a sweet moment in which Sutton talked about her father’s suicide and how it affected her, and Kyle did the same about her friend Lorene, who recently killed herself. Sutton says that her friend dreamed about her father recently, and he said that he was tired. Kyle says a psychic told her that Lorene said she’s unsure what happened to her. I’m glad that we have all of these mediums talking to our dead relatives so that we’ll have a little story line on our reality-television programs.
That was followed by lunch, during which Garcelle said the one thing that the women have been waiting for her to say since the day she was cast: “I don’t think any of you are racist.†Whoooo! Deep sighs of relief from all around the table, especially from Dorit and her evil twin, Karen Kemsley. Dorit does miss the point of what Garcelle is trying to say about their recent difficulties. She tells Garcelle that if she ever does anything that might offend her or trigger her, she should let her know. No, Dorit! The whole point is you’re supposed to figure out what you might not want to say around people of color. Do the work yourself. We know she hires lots of people of color to do everything around the house, but this is not something that you can farm out to a BIPOC on Taskrabbit.
After lunch, Sutton tries to keep everyone sticking to an itinerary, but as they walk past a bunch of cute local shops, the shopping is stronger than she is. Kyle and Dorit go into an antique-fan store, where they have a three-minute Supermarket Sweep, during which Kyle buys five rings, including one that doesn’t even fit. It’s probably for Morgan’s pinkie toe. I swear, once all of those girls are out of the house, Kyle is going to be a five-alarm hoarder. Meanwhile, Dorit picks out seven antique fans, which cost €353 collectively. Should she really be dropping that much dosh on fans when her husband still owes the IRS $1 million? This seemed a little bit like a RuPaul’s Drag Race quick-shopping challenge, and it was way more fun than when they just swan around Gucci for an hour, picking up a bunch of shit they could have just snagged on Rodeo Drive.
That night at dinner, Sutton invited over her friend Trevor, who worked with her in Merce Cunningham’s studio, and his Avengers team of really smart friends that we’re calling the Erudites thanks to the editors who gave us that nice chyron. That’s because Erika Jayne was getting her glam on, and she said that Sutton described the pack that way; she even spells it out, following empathy, which is the second $1 word starting with E that Erika learned this season.
She does great with the assemblage of Sutton’s friends, who are all chic, attractive, and worldly, including one who is a prize-winning architect. This is high-end. I mean, this end is even higher than Denise Richards at Kyle’s weed dinner — that’s how high the end is. As they’re bringing up all sorts of topics, whether it be esoteric designers or lesser-known rappers like Beanie Sigel, Erika knows who all of them are. It’s a little bit of a read that no one at the table believes that Erika would know these things. It’s like she’s smart, but she’s been hiding it under an amazing lime-green alligator-print dress this whole time. The highlight, however, is not her being smart; it’s her being a little messy. When the subject of Merce’s ashes comes up, Erika slurs, “Merce is in the purse,†and if someone does not make a Housewives-themed Dr. Seuss book called Merce in the Purse, then I’m going to have to do it myself.
One of the other highlights of the dinner was a paella-making class put on by Storm, the villa’s hot chef, and Servais, an equally hot chef about 25 years his senior who also happens to be Storm’s daddy. Oh, I mean father. The only time we can use daddy on this show is when Annemarie is talking about her husband the same way that Mike Pence calls his wife “Mother.â€Â As soon as Garcelle sees Servais, she changes her romantic allegiance and tries to date the dad. Who does she think she is? Brynn Whitfield’s tagline?
The dinner is sweet, and we learn a lot about Sutton in her earlier days, being a Goody Two-shoes at the dance company (not shocking) and being so poor that she had to live in Brooklyn (mildly shocking). Also, Sutton is wearing this periwinkle-lilac-lavender chiffon gown with ruffles on the shoulders and three horizontal straps across the bust, and it is perhaps the most beautiful and flattering thing she has ever worn on the show. Get it made in a million colorways. But it’s mostly just Housewives at one end of the table, Erudites at the other, and Erika drunk-shouting insightful questions from one end of the table to the other. At the end of it, Erika and the rest of the women totter toward their rooms, and the Erudites get into a car and go back to Barcelona, completely unaware of why there were television cameras there or that they had just filmed an entirely trashy reality show.
The next morning, as Sutton thinks about Merce getting out of the purse, she has a bit of a breakdown while getting her glam on. Kyle comes to comfort her, and Sutton tells us that this isn’t just about Merce — it’s about her father’s suicide; it’s about her divorce being finalized; it’s about her ex-husband moving to London; it’s about her children leaving the nest; it’s about her being alone without this relic, without this memento of her past filling up the ziplock bag of her heart. It’s about Sutton getting rid of all the men in her life, wishing them good-bye and being happy for the freedom but also feeling unclear about what life will be like now that no men are part of it anymore. Once she gets rid of Merce, all she will know is the company and love of women. Kyle knows exactly what that feels like, and for the first time all trip, Kyle cracks a smile.