The best reality-TV stories have fans on either side of a debate that can be argued forever. Are you Team Lauren Conrad or Team Speidi? Are you Team Lisa Vanderpump or Team Kyle Richards? Are you Team Carol Baskin Killed Her Husband or Team Carol Baskin Got a Raw Deal? Valid arguments can be made for either side of these debates. The problem with the fight between Christine and Emma is that Christine is so clearly wrong there is not even a debate to be made.
The episode starts with Emma sitting down to dinner with the entire Oppenheim Group, and all of the girls want to hear the story of what happened between Emma and Christine. Emma says that she was out with her boyfriend and they’re leaving someplace when suddenly Christine streaks up with her friend and starts screaming at him and at her about how he and Christine are still together. Emma says she tried to pull away, but Christine blocked her car in and she and her friend started screaming at Emma and banging on her windows, saying she was dating Christine’s boyfriend.
There is so much wrong with this story, but the biggest one is that Christine is yelling at Emma rather than yelling at the boyfriend. If he was two-timing her, why is that Emma’s fault? If Christine was duped, couldn’t Emma be equally duped? And why is she holding this grudge against a woman who did nothing wrong? Why can’t she be mad at the boyfriend? No one is friends with the boyfriend anymore, isn’t that the point? That’s like yelling at the customer in front of you for getting the last croissant at the bakery. It’s not their fault. Yell at the bakery to make more damn croissants already. Or just get a pain au chocolate. They’re better anyway.
The reactions of the people around the table are the same as the reactions of those of us at home. Even Romaine, whose cranium is filled with 98 percent muscle, says, “But she’s married now and has a kid; why should she still care.†Um, yeah. Why should she? Vanessa tells the group that Christine is mad that Jason and Mary are still friends with her, but Mary says they’ve been friends for five years, and this is the first she heard about Christine getting mad; this is totally just an excuse. Mary also says that there was no overlap between Christine dating this dude and Emma dating this dude so Christine is even more in the wrong.
And can we see this guy already? Maybe someone drop his Instagram handle? I need to see what sort of dude enticed these two leggy blondes who look like Robert Palmer backup dancers with lighter hair into back-to-back relationships.
The next day is Emma’s first day in the office, and I like her more and more, but that might just be a side effect of my hatred but admiration for Christine. Hatmiration? Admired? Nope. Neither. Whatever, just workshopping here. Emma says that she was investing in the stock market when she was a teen, and when her grandfather died, she bailed out her family’s food-production company with money she made thanks to Wall Street. That’s all impressive, except when she says she flies back and forth on private because it’s easier. Girl, you could drop the whole real-estate part of your career and have just as much money if you weren’t flying private all the time. I’m with Maya, who flies commercial because she’s cheap. Greta Thunberg hates them both, and she’s probably right.
My only other real problem with Emma isn’t even with Emma; it’s with everyone else. When she rings the bell after she sells that DJ’s house, everyone is like, “How did you do that on your first try? It took us months to figure that out.†Um, guys. It’s a bell. Like the truths in the Constitution, it’s pretty self-evident. It’s like asking someone how they’ve managed to drink out of a new mug for the first time without scalding their cleavage with hot coffee. Even Romaine knows how to ring a bell, and he doesn’t know how to find his butt with two hands and a flashlight.
Vanessa, who is apparently the designated friend to Christine this season, takes her to a listing she has, and it’s the only house we see in this episode. It’s a classic $15 million, six-bedroom BoJack with absolutely nothing to distinguish it from any other perfume counter of a house we have seen this season. However, there are like three T-shirts and two Hermés boxes faux haphazardly stacked on the closet island. Does the stager want us to think that someone actually lives here, or it’s just haunted by the ghost of Simon Cowell?
When Vanessa tells Christine that Emma was at dinner and told them all about their run-in, Christine says, “Ugh, she probably told her side of the story.†What do you think she would do? Tell the story from the perspective of a vacuum cleaner left on the side of the road for someone else to sell at a swap meet? Of course she told her side of the story. Does she want Emma to start wearing Christine’s collection of neon-colored midriff-baring clothes as well?
Christine tells her side of the story, and, well, it’s basically the same story. She saw Emma with the boyfriend, she blocked Emma’s car in, and she’s still mad about it. The only difference is that Christine says she “talked†to Emma instead of yelling at her. Um, no. If you catch your man with someone else, the person who should be getting the talking to and their car blocked in and probably eggs on his front door every day for at least 17 generations better be that fucking cheater of a boyfriend. Why is she blaming the woman for this? She says, “There’s no way she didn’t know.†Well, then there is no way that Christine didn’t know that he was dating someone else. Her logic makes about as much sense as the snarled weave she’s wearing.
There is a wrinkle to the story, though. Christine says that after she broke up with this guy — which I guess she dates to when she discovered him with Emma, but everyone else dates to previous to that — he started dating Heather and then was engaged to Emma two months prior. So why didn’t Heather bring this up at dinner? And if that is true, is Emma married to this dude now? Are we going to find out next episode that it’s really Caleb, the secret triplet that Jason and Brett never told us they had?
While I’m still trying to work this all out, Christine shows up to the office with the baby so that Mary and Chrishell can ignore her even while there is an adorable and surely delicious-smelling baby right there. She sees Emma and hugs her and is like, “Nice to meet you, sweetie,†in a voice so high that only Ariana Grande fans can fully hear it. Nice to meet you? Girl, she already done had hers. We all know you met; stop playing. But it’s hard to make any of us care. This is a fight so lopsided it’s like Connor McGregor taking on a mannequin made out of wet toilet paper. Like at a vegan dinner, if there are no steaks, I’m not interested.