I cannot begin to explain Kelly Killoren Bensimon because I cannot begin to comprehend Kelly Killoren Bensimon. Here is a woman who is so stressed by her TikTok real estate empire and running in traffic for the better part of a decade that her brain has ceased to function. She’s like an AI model trained on old Victoria’s Secret catalogs and 100 malfunctioning Teddy Ruxpins stitched together in a neural network. It’s not that Kelly doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You can see her repeat the same phrases — about “the fans,†about being “real,†about being “an action verb†— so you know that there is a loop, that there is some reasoning.
The problem is that Kelly’s never-ending solipsistic monologues have an audience of one and everyone else has no idea what is going on. It’s like a David Lynch movie about a Sports Illustrated bikini photoshoot gone bad. (“Johan face. Johan face.â€) As people try to prod at the surfaces of Kelly’s putrid thought bubbles, they don’t learn anything; they just get more and more bubbles until they crowd the night sky, colliding into each other, popping en masse, and soaking all of us in acid rain.
Though it’s not nearly as bad or nearly as shocking, it is like Scary Island all over again. At Kristen’s neon party, we see some of the same behavior. Kelly gets so annoyed that the women leave the table; she’s spinning out a line of inconsistent gibberish that seems to make sense to her, and she is upset when no one understands her. And then attacking everyone who tries to discuss things with her as behaving like they are teenagers. It seems as if Kelly may have been promised a redemption arc, but she better put an Indian Jones movie on because I think this might be the Raiders of the Lost Arc.
It starts early in the day with Kristen, who seems to be Kelly’s key target, much like Bethenny Frankel was the first time around. When Kelly and Kristen are talking by the pool, Kelly tells her that she needs to open up more with the women. Kristen is upset that Kelly keeps repeating that nugget, and Kelly says, “I know what the fans feel.†Okay, first, Kelly is using “fan†as an insult, implying that the women on the show should not be fans of the show. Then Kelly keeps saying that she knows what the fans want. Wait, but if Kristen is a fan, shouldn’t she know what the fans want by reason of some property that I have since forgotten from Intro to Logic?
Dorinda, who is about to go tape up Sonja’s boobs just like Sonja taped up her whole head with a pink bathing suit earlier in the morning, says that she thinks Kelly is jealous of Kristen, who has been blending in more with the group. And it does seem true. Kelly was fine when Kristen was on the outs and Kelly was lumped in with the OGs. Now that alliances are shifting, Kelly is once again alone. But I can’t tell if she behaves like she does because she’s alone or if she’s alone because of the way she behaves. Maybe a bit of both.
This is manifesting itself in two major ways. The first is that Kelly’s hair has become a sentient canine that is barking at her cast mates. No, that’s not one of the ways; that’s just Kelly being bonkers. The first is her continued persecution of Kristen on behalf of some imaginary fan base that Kelly seems to understand. The second is by continuously saying that Dorinda called her a cunt when she actually didn’t.
Well, she kind of did. Dorinda described the way Kelly was treating Kristen as “cunty.†Dorinda, much like myself, lived in England for many years. Here you can just throw the word “cunt†around like it’s day-old bread and we’re hungry pigeons. But there is a key distinction between Kelly saying something “cunty†and her being a “cunt.†It’s the same distinction as doing something “shitty†and being a “piece of shit.†One describes behavior; the other describes identity. Kelly, however, insists she heard the word without the Y at the end, but when we review the footage, it is quite the opposite.
There’s a brief interlude where we don’t have to discuss this. Everyone goes on a yacht that Sonja is “hosting†for the group. (Never get hosting confused with paying for.) We see the ladies diving in the water, Luann and Dorinda going for a ride on a hot dog, a.k.a. banana boat, and there are sex puns for days, Sonja Morgan flailing around in the on-board hot tub, and Ramona, auditioning for my job, saying, “You look like a trapped mermaid if someone was trying to catch you.â€
At lunch we’re back to Kelly Incorporated, where the stock always goes down. Kelly tells the group that she is critical of Kristen because she is a beautiful girl and she wants her to be perceived well. Dorinda says that she will be and probably doesn’t need advice on how to be well-received. Also, it’s not like Kelly is in a position to talk about how she is perceived by the fans or how she comes off on the show. Kelly was on one more season than Kristen and is known as a complete lunatic because of a trio of the best episodes ever produced in the franchise. Kristen is, honestly, mostly forgotten. Which would you rather have from a fan base? But even as she says this, she accuses Luann of “fanning out†and wanting her autograph. How can Kelly hold fans both so in contempt and so in esteem at the same time?
Luann takes Kelly aside to try to explain to her how not to get on Dorinda’s bad side and how to deal with the rest of the cast because she seems like she’s struggling. Again, Kelly deflects, saying she’s having a great time, but she’s worried that Kristen is going to “lose everything, all of her endorsements.†Kelly, maybe you should worry about closing some more real estate deals and less about Pop of Color LLC. And if Kelly knows how to get all of these endorsements, then why is she pretending like she actually bought all of that swag she saddled the group with?
That night, Kristen throws a neon-themed party, but Ramona and Luann are pissed off because there aren’t going to be any guys there. How is Kristen supposed to know men to invite? Is she just supposed to go to the port and hand out packets of ones to anyone with some muscle tone? Anyway, Kristen looks amazing in a shimmery green dress with a matching Lucite box as a purse. Luann is giving major Below Deck chief stew vibes in a Party City white wig and a gorgeous pink sequin dress. Oh, wait. Is that pants? It’s pants! Sorry, a gorgeous pink sequin body suit.
As dinner starts, Dorinda wants to talk about threesomes and there is not a topic of conversation on earth that I would rather engage in. Luann, who has been around more blocks than the inventor of Legos, starts telling a menage-adjacent story from her 20s in New York, and I know this will be even hotter than her Playgirl cover. That’s when Kelly says, “Ding, ding, ding!†on her glass and tries to make a toast right in the middle of her story! They all glare at her and tell her not to interrupt, but the story, alas, is gone. Luann, please go on a podcast and tell us what you were going to say because I would like to listen to it on repeat for about 7 hours. Thank you.
Now we’re back on the Kelly hamster wheel. It’s so frustrating because she can’t have a conversation and is also bogarting the conversation like she’s Woody Harrelson with the last joint in this timeline. Kelly goes back to Dorinda calling her the C-word even though Dorinda both explained that’s not what she meant and apologized multiple times. Luann is fed up and tries to tell Kelly that if she wants to be friends with Dorinda, it won’t take words but will take actions. Kelly says, “I’m an action verb. I do what I say I’m going to do.†While the first part may be true, we know the second part isn’t, or else Luann would be telling a new threesome story about how she broke into the new offensive line of the New York Rangers.
Then Kelly and Kristen get into it again. I literally watch unhinged women on television as a career. This is what I dedicated my life to doing. (You’re welcome.) And even still, Kelly bores me. Because there’s no movement, there’s no drift. She just sticks to the same weird points over and over. We can’t understand them or her psychology, so she just ends up confusing us. And now it seems as though Scary Island was not a fluke. This is who Kelly is (at least on a reality television program cast trip).
Kristen accuses Kelly of putting up walls, and Kelly says the same thing back to Kristen. Wait, isn’t she the one who talked all about her marriage last night at dinner? Isn’t that pretty revealing? Meanwhile, Kelly is dropping info bombs at dinner. She’s moving, she’s going to get engaged, she’s selling her family home. She’s chastising Kristen for not opening up, but, as Kristen points out, when she asked Kelly who she was dating, she said, “It’s complicated,†and closed up.
Kelly later says that Kristen is a new friend and she’s not going to open up to her right away. Um, yeah. Exactly. That’s why Kristen was waiting too, but she yelled at her for it. It’s not that what Kelly says and what Kelly does are in opposition, it’s that what Kelly says and then what Kelly says are in opposition. It’s like Kelly thinks that the other women should do things and behave in ways that are beneath her, so she tells them not to do things that she then engages in herself.
Dinner ends early because no one wants to talk to Kelly anymore, and some of the ladies get in their swimsuits and get in the pool. Kristen says to Kelly, “Did what I said about the wall resonate with you at all?†Kristen?! What are you doing? You just navigated your way to the other side of a minefield, and now, what? You’re going back because you forgot your umbrella? Leave it alone!
Kelly tells Kristen that she wants to focus on her friendship with Dorinda, which is now somehow repaired because Dorinda said she apologized even though she apologized four times that day. That means Kelly is not interested in Kristen’s friendship. Kelly says she wants to talk to people who can give her real advice on what is going on in her life. But what is going on in her life? What advice does she need? She still hasn’t told us — the fans — while chastising Kristen for the same thing.
I can’t take it anymore. I can’t. It’s short-circuiting my brain. I don’t have Stockholm Syndrome; I have St. Barth’s Syndrome, where I begin to think Kelly makes sense. I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t process it anymore. I just want to be like Luann, clutching my cigarette, flirting with the bartender, and hiding behind a pole, hoping that no one sees me as I slink with the mosquitos, the moth, and the dew settling on the grass back to an ice cold bed.