Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap – 1/13/15

The Beverly Hills version of the Real Housewives series has always struck me as the platinum standard of the franchise. Sure, the women from New York own spacious mansions in the Hamptons that come complete with tennis courts and perfectly manicured sprawling lawns, and the women from New Jersey live in homes stuffed with the largest Baroque-style of furniture ever measured by modern man. Not to be outdone, the ladies from the O.C., who first brought this televised aspirational version of Dante’s hell into our living rooms, have the largest breast implants of all the women combined, but those distinctions simply do not matter. Because it is the group whose zip code is 90210 or 90210-adjacent who bring the real glam to those of us who watch the program while wearing sweatpants.

It seems important that I tell you that I have watched every single episode of every single season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I haven’t been able to fully commit to the other incarnations of the Housewives phenomenon, one that I firmly believe began as a fever dream in the mind of a flu-ridden Andy Cohen, but the Beverly Hills ladies have always had my undivided attention.

I’d love to tell you that it is the women’s collective intelligence that causes me to be an avid viewer or that their unparalleled acts of philanthropy are what draw me in. I’d like to say that. And I suppose I could say that, but I’d be lying because the biggest reason that I love The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is because of the unbelievable closets these women have. Those who are now in control of the universe – the people who work at Bravo headquarters, not the United Nations – perfectly understand the lure of thousands of Jimmy Choos arranged by color and rows of Birkins as far as the eye can see, and the reason I know that these producers realize the importance of those magnificent closets (which I’d willingly move into and happily spend the next decade surviving on the sustenance afforded by the breath mints the women left behind in the bottom of their purses) is because we see more scenes that involve those closets than scenes with the women’s husbands.

There’s just something glossy and calming about watching people exist in the ever-present sun, especially as temperatures here in the east are taking a nose-dive. I sit bundled up in a hoodie and watch the women as they sip wine on perfectly sunny patios and as they traipse through phenomenal gardens resplendent with colorful flowers and as they go hiking along the beach where they then stop to gossip about the poor housewife who tragically chose to go to a Pilates class instead of on the hike because her absence means the hikers get to talk sh*t about her while they rehydrate. There also seems to be less raging anger between the cast of this show than on the other versions of the series. Sure, some of them have had real issues, but since many of their faces are stuffed to the brim with Restylane, their expressions don’t change when they get angry and, as I’m kind of a pacifist, the quiet and unwrinkled fury quite appeals to me.

The players on this show are competing for prizes, though they would never admit it. See, there are symbolic ribbons handed out for Least Delusional Housewife, Most Wealthy Housewife, Least Likely To Enter Rehab Housewife, Congratulations: Your Husband Hasn’t Cheated On You Housewife, and You’ve Been Selected Above All the Others to Compete On Dancing With The Stars Housewife. And the hands-down winner of all of the awards is one of the original Beverly Hills ladies, Lisa Vanderpump, a woman who during the opening credits of the first season spoke the bold and haughty tagline, “In Beverly Hills, it’s all who you know – and I know everybody.” And I swear that the first time I heard her say it, I applauded her stylish swagger from my sofa.

The other original housewives are Kim and Kyle Richards, two former child stars whose other sister is Paris Hilton’s mother. Even if these women were able to solve the world’s greatest issues – finding cures for diseases, protecting freedom of speech forever, removing the caloric content from Ben & Jerry’s – I would still probably dislike them because of the Hilton connection of which they are so proud. Kim, the blonde sister, is a recovering alcoholic who speaks in a shaky voice and has no storyline except for the fact that she is attached to her adult children in a way I find mildly questionable and she has a pit bull who snacked on her niece (sadly not Paris) during the off-season. And seriously, that’s all I can really say about Kim. But her sister, Kyle? Well, settle in, friends – I’ve got a lot to say about Kyle.

Kyle Richards claims to be blissfully married to one of the most successful realtors in the country and she drops references to her wealth about nine times an episode. She’s the kind of nouveau riche woman who has her manicurist apply the Chanel logo to her nails and I have the sinking suspicion that she rocks pubic hair that is also carved into the Chanel logo. She is passive aggressive to the extreme, pretending that she’s friends with everybody but making sure to plant suspicions in everyone’s mind before sitting back and pretending to look concerned at parties where the women she has helped manipulate into anger begin fighting in her midst. She’s not stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but she strikes me as the kind of person who can only fully be happy for you if something even better just happened to her.

Then there’s Brandi. Oh, dear. Brandi is currently in her third season on this show, and when she first hobbled onscreen with crutches all the way back in season two, I really liked Brandi. She came across as somewhat suspicious about people in general and she was aware that she was on the show in the first place because of the flimsy notoriety she received by being cheated on by her husband, who is now married to Leann Rimes. She looked like she was trying to make friends but she didn’t suffer fools easily, and when she was attacked by the others, she stood her ground and she fought back. She also formed an unlikely alliance with Queen Lisa, and that Lisa all but sponsored her made me believe that Brandi was one of the Good Ones. Sadly, in the last year or so, Brandi has either lost her mind or has shown us exactly who she has always been. She waged war against her former friend and told the world that Lisa had once been bankrupt and that she was responsible for starting all kinds of rumors about the other women, even though there appeared to be no recorded proof, which is odd when you’re talking about people who wear a microphone more often than they wear deodorant. These days, Brandi can be accurately described as a woman who swills wine with gusto and then makes ridiculous and crass comments that someone who was once either afraid of her or who wanted to f*ck her told her were funny. Last week she tossed wine in Eileen’s face in an effort to get her to get Eileen to act out the scene she had performed on the set of The Young and the Restless earlier that day. At best, it was the move of a lunatic. At worst, it was the move of a lunatic.

Yolanda is Brandi’s biggest champion, but it’s not really all that clear to me why she’s supporting someone who is self-destructing for our televised pleasure. Married to the creepy David Foster – a man with far more Grammy Awards than Bruce Springsteen, a fact that makes me shout blasphemy towards the heavens – she is the mother of two gorgeous girls who are models and a son who never appears on camera but whom she swears exists. Yolanda supports her daughters’ endeavors by smiling widely in their direction and taking carbs out of their mouths anytime they even think about swallowing one. Yolanda enjoys lemon cleanses, throwing parties where every guest must bow at the piano alter of her husband, and plotting the death of the inventor of the bagel.

Eileen, the wine victim, is one of the new girls this season. Eileen has a long resume as a soap actress and I spent a lot of time in college running home from my Nutrition class so I wouldn’t miss her on Days of Our Lives, which might be why I only got a C in Nutrition. On this show, she comes off as calm and happily married and perhaps too lucid to last long on a franchise where your contract is renewed if you show evidence of being slightly demonic.

The last of the cast members is Lisa Rinna, also new to the show this year. Lisa R was also on Days of Our Lives during what I consider the show’s glory days, and she’s had a pretty good showing on the Housewives so far. She’s all tousled hair and gigantic lips and smudged kohl eyeliner and she does something odd: she smiles when other people look happy. She’s buddies with Queen Lisa, she thinks Brandi is out of her f*cking mind, and she seems like a fun addition to the group. She’s also the kind of friend who will wipe the wine from your retinas when the crazy lady across the table hurls it as the beginning of an improvisational activity that nobody else realizes is taking place.