This week, on our favorite television program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They invited everyone on a trip to St. Lucia, the only country named after a woman — but only because Ireland is named after a goddess (named Meghan King Edmonds) — and brought them gift bags in neon, translucent Telfar purses. Did you know I used to hang with Telfar back in the day? Yes! He was good friends with my friend DJ Michael Magnan, and we all used to hang out at Slurp on Tuesday nights at the Cock with Linda Simpson, who is sort of like the Kathy Hilton of drag. Oh, what a time we had as poor young gays. Oh! Yes! The rich women. What else did they do? They refused to climb stairs to their villas, they were unsure whether or not to eat the candy that exploded all over their luggage, and they unpacked all of their 90 La Mer bottles for a four-day stay. Really, these rich women are stretching this season thin. Can we get some vacation shenanigans happening so there’s something fun to talk about?
Mostly the rich women had awkward conversations with their partners. Let’s start with Boz and Keely, who sit down with Boz’s daughter, Leal, who asks Keely all of the questions that both Boz and the fans want to know: Is he going to move in before they get married? Is he coming to Beverly Hills, or are they moving to San Diego? Does he want one kid or a bunch? If he were going to be one of the Sex and the City girls, who is he going to be and why is it Miranda? This was a nice, simple chat, and I’m glad that we’re progressing on Boz’s relationship without having to get into the baby talk again. No, not “goo goo, ga ga, pee pee, poo poo” baby talk — like, talk about this baby that Boz is going to have.
The next chat is between Dorit and PK — a colorless, odorless, noxious gas that somehow still manages to be as dark as a mildew manifestation and as stinky as halibut farts — for which they meet at a restaurant to discuss getting a divorce. He is so over this thing he is defying gravity. PK, a pint of lager poured from Elphaba’s tit, says they need to get to a place where they’re friends again, because they really lost that. When she point-blank asks him if he wants a divorce, he tells her that in six months they might be friends again and everything is good with the kids, and they decide they’re better not married. Okay, but what is the alternative? If they’re friends and good with the kids, could they still decide to get back together? It seems not. PK, a Shirley Temple made with kombucha and menses, doesn’t offer a positive outcome, no road map for them getting back together.
This meeting seemed less about whether or not they were going to get divorced — he seems to have made his mind up already — and more about whether or not they are going to do it amicably. And by amicably, I mean whether or not Dorit is going to follow the timetable and orders set out by PK, a sea urchin whose stingers are rusted hypodermic needles from a methadone clinic. She brings up the 18-page email he sent, and he said that it was a summary of all the terrible ways she has treated him and what will happen if they don’t settle this amicably. This all seems like a threat; it all seems like negotiation tactics. Dorit shouldn’t be cowed by this man (who is more of a cow than a man); she shouldn’t go along with everything he wants just because it will be easier. She should come out fighting, take control of the situation, and get everything that she possibly can, which is most likely half of their joint debt and all of the pre-poured Red Bull–and–vodkas he has stored in their fridge.
The final conversation is between Kyle and Mauricio, who comes to her house and stirs his coffee so noisily it’s like he is trying to get her to fall into the Sunken Place so that he can take over her body and mind. Kyle asks how his trip was, and he says that it was “lots of spas, lots of sound healing, lots of spiritual healing.” I will ask Google Translate to tell us what all that means in the language he is currently speaking, which is Newly Divorced Hot Rich Dad. According to the app, spas means fucking young women whose names he doesn’t remember, sound healing means taking MDMA at raves on the beach, and spiritual healing is ketamine. Sure. Right. Got it. Mo says he loved being without his family so that he could just run around and make decisions at the last minute. What does Google Translate say that means? Oh, that means choosing which of the three women he made out with that night whom he’s going to take back to his hotel suite. There really is an app for everything.
Mo apologizes for hurting Kyle when she saw the pictures, but he rightfully doesn’t apologize for his behavior because he has done nothing wrong. They’re separated, they’re allowed to do whatever they want, and he was well within his rights. Kyle knows this, too, and she keeps saying that the pictures were a turning point and that she’s finally going to allow herself to move on with her life. Well, if she has turned, it’s a full 360, because she has turned right back to where she started.
Where are we with the world’s slowest-moving divorce? No one has filed. If Kyle’s dating anyone, then we don’t know about it, unless it’s Morgan and she’s still keeping that in Mo’s vacated half of the closet. As revelatory as I continue to find these conversations, it’s as if we’re in some holding pattern, like we’re a broken-down Isuzu stuck in the muck and the spinning tires are just flinging mud all over everyone as we all sit here and wait for that stupid truck to just totally sink to the bottom.
The rest of the episode is everyone arriving at St. Lucia and setting up a Dorit-Sutton-Erika showdown that we’re going to see in the next episode. At the start of this episode, we get Boz, Dorit, and Erika talking about all of this at Erika’s house and Garcelle and Sutton having a similar conversation at Sutton’s. Erika brings it all back to her, saying that Sutton and Garcelle “gave me no breaks when I was going through the worst period of my life,” but now Sutton wants all of this sympathy because Dorit made a crack about her drinking. I think this is the root of the ladies’ (and my) problem with Sutton this season. She says there are different rules for Kyle than everyone else, and it seems as though she wants those rules to apply to her as well. She wants to be able to attack, attack, attack, but whenever anyone comes at her, then it’s somehow out of bounds. Why? Well, the only reason she has given us is because her wallet is thicker than everyone else’s, and I’m sorry, but that’s not a real reason.
During these conversations, Garcelle brings up how when she had dinner with Dorit, she asked Dorit if she would be friends with Sutton if Sutton gave her a Kelly bag. Dorit, of course, said that she would. We all know that Dorit’s sense of humor is about as developed as a Polaroid stuck in the camera, but she was clearly joking. The way Garcelle tells the story and the way Sutton receives it, it’s as if Dorit really could be bribed by a bag. She probably could be, but that also wasn’t the spirit in which the line was delivered.
Speaking of Garcelle, it’s curious how her continued defense of Sutton is becoming a detriment to the women, particularly because both Sutton and Garcelle have been skeptical of Boz and Dorit’s very similar dynamic. I have some of the same annoyances with how Garcelle lets Sutton get away with bad behavior. The one thing I wanted Garcelle to tell Sutton from her dinner with Dorit is that Garcelle said her wallet comment was “cruel,” but either that wasn’t brought up or it was left out of the edit. I wouldn’t mind Garcelle blindly defending Sutton in front of the other women if we ever saw her trying to guide Sutton to be better when they talk alone, but all of Sutton’s bad stuff gets hidden, like PK’s offshore assets.
There’s also some chat about Sutton’s continued infatuation with Kyle and why that upsets Garcelle so much. I feel like Sutton wants that kind of Greater Los Angeles acceptance that Kyle represents, where she can roll with the Kathy Hiltons and Kris Jenners and Morally Corrupt Faye Resnicks of the world. Sutton wants what she never had: to be the cool girl. I think she also wants to be close to Kyle to get closer and closer to that center diamond that she’s never going to hold as long as Kyle is part of the cast.
You can tell Garcelle is annoyed by this, as if she isn’t enough by Sutton. Garcelle also asks, “That is the million-dollar question: Why does Sutton continue to stand up for Kyle when Kyle doesn’t stand up for her?” I have a simple answer for her: because Sutton is so often wrong. Whether it’s storming out of Magic Mike Live, shouting at Crystal’s ugly leather pants, or using her wallet against Dorit, it’s hard for Kyle to stick up for Sutton when so much of what she does is indefensible. I think that Garcelle still defending her through all this says more about Garcelle than it does about Kyle.
But why does Sutton want to be the cool girl so badly? How about just unapologetically being herself? That’s what Jennifer Tilly keeps doing, and she is winning this season. She sits down and tells Garcelle and Sutton that the group is very cliquey and that she is finding it hard to slot herself into the group. She thought they were all going to be sisters; instead, it was lots of sniping and backstabbing based on years and years of rotted dynamics. Yes, Jen may be struggling, but she’s a star. The cast seems to love her (despite tabloid reports I don’t believe), the fans seem to love her, and she seems to be having more fun than Mauricio three mushroom caps deep on the last day of Burning Man. This is whom she should emulate — this is whom she should want to be — though that defeats the point. Just be yourself, unapologetically and bizarrely, and I think Sutton might find that the fans will come running faster than last night’s vindaloo seeping out of PK’s ass.