Ladies and gentlemen, hell has frozen over.
That’s right – you should grab bottles of water and canned goods and take cover and prepare for the following: swarms of locusts, Lindsay Lohan becoming the most reliable actress of our time, and the Kardashian family at large developing some real talent. Yes, the world – at least the world as I know it – has ended, because tonight on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, I found myself really rooting for Kyle Richards.
I wish someone had cued me into the fact that the first twenty minutes of the show was just filler. I could have spent that time folding my laundry or reading Dostoevsky or counting my teeth using only my tongue in order to collect the strength I’d need to simply view the real portion of the episode when Kim went legitimately batsh*t crazy, Brandi became a slurring enabler, Kyle showed more true fear than she ever has on this show before, and Lisa R became the new Goddess of Truth, who I shall make time in my busy schedule to worship daily.
It all started so simply. But what I now realize those sneaky imps at Bravo were doing was creating some classic misdirection. The Spa Day that it seemed the episode would revolve around – ugh, I thought, another f*cking spa day? – was in fact just the MacGuffin, that sneaky little plot device that has no real impact on the actual story.
(Shout out to Andy Cohen: Hitchcock would be proud. Or he’d roll over in his grave to have just been referenced in a recap of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Oh well – he’d have a reaction is what I’m saying.)
We fade in on a beautiful morning and I can’t help but wonder if Lisa Vanderpump wakes up in her luxurious bedroom that takes up an entire wing of her grand castle and gently removes her pink silk sleep mask as the gorgeous California sun tumbles through the windows and then, even before she has her first cup of tea, mumbles f*ck, because she has just realized that today is going to be one of those days when she must spend producer-mandated time with a bunch of women she doesn’t really care for anymore.
Yes, my friends, it’s Spa Day, and I’m distressed to report that mail is still delivered on what should be a national holiday when the ladies of Beverly Hills pile into a luxury bus and head north for a day of pampering, which will be a nice change for them since normally they spend the daylight hours digging trenches for minimum wage.
Arriving first at the bus are Kyle and Eileen, two women who are juggling quite a bit of stress. See, Kyle is still coping with the nightmare of dropping her daughter off at college and the dawning realization that she won’t be around anymore to make sure that her eighteen year old is wearing the proper amount of designer labels on a daily basis. Eileen is still waking up in the dead of night and bolting straight up in bed while drenched in sweats as she deals with the post-traumatic ramifications of Brandi slinging wine into her face for a reason that would only have made sense if you were bipolar or hammered or both.
As they greet one another, the other women arrive and I’m struck again at how long their greetings take because they all insist on doing the double-kiss thing and I’m starting to believe that habit is their way of cutting down on the amount of time they actually have to talk to one another. Yolanda is not going to be massaged with the rest of the gang today because she is still in New York helping her daughter get settled, and her absence is a little scary because she seems to be the only one who can kind of reign Brandi in these days – and the default caretaker for the woman with the best ass on television who shows up and announces that she is on her best behavior for the outing is Kim, a woman who seems to have trouble forming words and making them come out of those lip-shaped things on her face.
The women launch into their favorite topic on the way to the spa: the global debt crisis. I kid! They are discussing pubic hair, and I think we are only about five episodes or so into this season and I have heard more about the bush these women do or do not rock than I have about maybe anything else and I’m going to take some time out of this recap to make a public plea: please stop talking about pubes. I’m no prude, but I think one – or seven – conversations about landing strips would suffice for a season and it’s really just better for my psyche to never imagine what Kim’s vagina looks like.
Anyhoo, at the beautiful spa the women are greeted with flutes of champagne by the staff and a flute of orange juice for Kim since she’s in recovery. They toast to a perfect day, and somewhere in the distance the Gods began to giggle.
Here’s the thing–I recognize that Brandi is a trainwreck. But I actually like her. Here is my reasoning.
One of the biggest issues I have with the majority of the women on any of the Real Housewives is that they seem so hell-bent on presenting themselves as these up-standing, classy women who are so above appalling behavior when if you look at the reality of the situation, they signed up to be part of an experience where cattiness, drama, and appalling behavior is producer-mandated and encouraged and rewarded. By signing up to be one the show, you are agreeing to associate yourself with people who act a certain way. My biggest issue with Lisa V., Kyle, and to a lesser degree Yolanda is that they try to act like they’re “normal” and above the craziness when in actuality that craziness is what keeps their show on television and is in fact what they signed up for.
The reason why I like Brandi is because she is the most self-aware housewife in the entire franchise. She knows that she’s crude, crass, and inappropriate. She knows that she was cast to play the villain and does her job. She knows that she’s always going to be judged and looked down upon by the other ladies regardless of how she acts, simply because of her background. So she just shows us who she really is. I truly believe that with Brandi, what you see is what you get. She doesn’t put on airs or try to act like she’s above the nonsense. She just embraces the show she’s on. That’s why she’s my favorite.
I’m always baffled by the people who find Brandi “real” and decide they like her for that. First of all, Brandi is always claiming she “never lies” and people buy that crap. Hook, line, and sinker. She’s actually one of the biggest liars on the show. She’s constantly lying both on the show, in interviews, on social media, and most recently on “Celebrity Apprentice”. Sadly, I do think she believes her own delusions; however, she is STILL a liar. She’s foul and gross and can’t believe ANY of these women would choose to have her in their life (even Kathy Hilton apparently invites her to parties – color me confused). I have very little money and do not feel myself above or better than others. That said, I would NEVER allow Brandi to even sit at the same table as me. She and Tamra Barney from the RHOC are two of the most vile human beings I’ve ever had to listen to. I’m all for presenting a character on a show, but I think these two are lost in those characters and have proven to be vile, lowlife human beings and I wouldn’t allow them to walk my dogs, let alone have them around my family and friends.