REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS – 9/5/11

Written by:
Elizabeth Spilotro
Website: www.thislittlemama.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/thislittlemama
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Hello, I’m Elizabeth and I’m a real live housewife! A crock-pot cooking, minivan-driving, original factory-installed boobs mom of three here to talk about some other Real Housewives, those of Beverly Hills, and how little we have in common. Although when I was about 9 I was a passenger in a Rolls-Royce previously owned by Muhammed Ali. We spun out at the intersection of Hill & Hibbard because it was raining. No one got hurt, but I was late to the birthday party.

Before we get started we really must speak of a delicate subject, that being Househusband Russell Armstrong’s sad and premature demise just a few weeks ago. In addition to devastating his family and loved ones, his passing threw the entire second season of RHOBH into turmoil and launched many discussions of whether reality TV had gone “too far”. As the New York Times asked, was Russell Armstrong’s suicide reality TV’s Jenny Jones moment?

Obviously the New York Times doesn’t actually watch the Real Housewives, because that’s taking things a little too far. Russell Armstrong was a deeply troubled person who, judging from his extensive, varied, and public list of legal issues, was living a life in full disarray and careening toward inevitable disaster long before Bravo put his life on TV. Becoming a Real Househusband certainly cannot have helped, but I doubt looking like a sad sack on TV and having greater Cleveland up in his business was really the tipping point for Mr. Armstrong.

The truth about TV is that by and large, the subject matter is aspiration. There remains a segment dedicated to law and order (and often titled some variation of Law & Order), as well as a segment dedicated to providing information (whether that’s actual news or learning people up about extreme couponing, the lives and loves of ice road truckers, the social whirl of infant pageants, or exactly how women go about their day unaware they are pregnant before delivering 10-lb. babies).

Those categories aside, whether it’s home shopping, makeovers, competitions for cash or spouses, or unrealistic portrayals of luxurious lifestyles (confirmed fiction and so-called “reality” alike), the vast majority of content on television in 2011 feeds our aspirations to be thinner, wealthier, and generally more fabulous. The Real Housewives franchise is a perfect, and obvious, example, and what makes the RH series different from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is that there is a “storyline”, also known as “drama”. And to have drama, you really have to have a striver.

Most of the RH franchises feature nothing but strivers frantically scurrying to achieve ever higher degrees of fabulosity. (Alexis Bellino, Teresa Guidice, and Michaele Salahi, anyone?) The Real D-List Socialites of New York City like to think themselves as having arrived, dahling, but if you ask me Alex McCord is at this point the only one who’s not engaged in frenetic social posturing, having put the vast majority of her first-season ladder-climbing fanaticism behind her. She’s in Brooklyn and a bit bewildered, while everyone else is in high school. And the Klassy Kountess, Kween of Fine Grammar (“Thank you all for coming to Pepe Le Peu and I’s party!”) is the mean girl in chief, transparently driving the pretentious, deluded lemmings to throw themselves off the cliff in the most fabulous fashion before aaaaaanyone else gets to do it, because, you know, she’s titled! For reals! Alex cannot break into this clique, and seems to have given up. A wise choice. Those bitches will eat you alive and have Francois and Johan for dessert.

The RHOBH are a little different, because they all have either legitimate cash, moderately-legitimate celebrity (or near proximity to someone who does), or both. With the single exception of Taylor Armstrong. I have never been able to figure out exactly how or why she was cast; she wasn’t famous, wasn’t any more notably wealthy (errrr…) than the average LA suburbanite, and doesn’t seem to have had any pre-existing relationships with other cast members – she was no one’s neighbor, employee, best friend, or rival. What she is, other than a world-class example of aesthetic enhancements gone too far, is a major-league striver, and as it turns out a storyline unto herself, no assembly required. From where I sit in my spectator seat, it certainly looks like striving is what brought Taylor and Russell together, striving is what brought them to Bravo, and striving is what led to his undoing. Their Bravo experience was just the drive-through liquor store. Moral of the story: if your life is messed up, reality tv is not going to fix it. Definitely not. Moving on…

Last time we saw these zany BH 9-ers:

· Camille was in the midst of a divorce from her gay husband, Frasier Crane, who just needs to come out of the closet already. I’m convinced that his loony, self-destructive behavior (serial drug addiction, serial pre-nupless marriages) is all a futile effort to distract himself from his natural homosexuality. Be free, Frasier! We are all so okay with you being gay! Live authentically!

· Kyle had accused her sister, Escape to Witch Mountain’s Kim Richards, of being an alcoholic. You could practically hear the air being sucked out of the room at that moment. It would explain a lot, though.

· Lisa Vanderpump’s husband, Mr. Lisa, was kicking their personal Kato Kaelin out of the house. Cedric is a lazy-assed disgrace to the good houseboys of the world, who can usually be counted on to perform at least some menial tasks, or alternatively sexual favors for at least one of the homeowners. I don’t think any Vanderpumps were getting the boots from Cedric. Which may be a disappointment to Mr. Lisa since he only gets them from her three times a year.

· Adrienne was wearing tinsel in her hair. Not much happens with her. Her husband, on the other hand, gets his ass handed to him by their preschoolers almost daily, and occasionally has to resuscitate Charlie Sheen. That’s enough excitement for one family right there, I suppose.

· Taylor was attempting to save her marriage on a Mexican vacation. And we all know how that turned out.

Our episode opens with somber music and a shot of the Maloof/Nassif’s front door and their carefully groomed topiaries. (I wonder if that cookie waxer from NYC is responsible for their upkeep.) The mood is funereal because the ladies, minus Taylor, and their respective men are gathering to share about Russell’s death. Adrienne’s housekeeper serves nibbles in a red gingham apron because it’s a picnic when you are eating in a non-dining room. Dr. Paul Nassif, plastic surgeon, has come from work and is in scrubs and natty purple Crocs. (Note to self: oldest child’s green Crocs still missing. Need to find or replace.) Kyle’s lips look…enlarged, and she seems to be having a hard time forming words with them. She must have assumed she wouldn’t be on camera for a while. Dammit! Adrienne, meanwhile, has no philtrum. Yes, that’s what that dent between your upper lip and your nose is called, and according to Yahoo Answers the reason we have it is to have a place to pretend you are scratching when someone catches you picking your nose. I don’t know what Adrienne does when she gets caught digging for gold, because her lips have been plumped so much that her philtrum has disappeared. Much serious banter follows, conclusion reached that “the show life must go on.” And so it does.