Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap – 1/27/15

Before we move away from Yolanda, I want to say that I found it somewhat comforting that she offered her son a snack, even though the snack was almonds, because I think that anyone with a pulse and working vision probably sat appalled watching the moment last season when Yolanda shared with her daughter Gigi a literal crumb of birthday cake – at Gigi’s birthday party. Look, obviously being thin is working for Gigi, who is a bonafide star in the modeling world. But that scene where she and her mother savored a speck of cake continues to make me feel sad, and I’m proud to say that I inhaled an entire layer cake in protest and in solidarity – and in hunger.

And speaking of feeling sad, we’re back with Brandi, who has invited one of her best friends over to her house. Jennifer is an addiction specialist. Stop laughing! She is! She’s on that bullsh*t VH1 show about F-list addicts! But she is not there to discuss Brandi’s chronic drinking or Brandi’s lack of proper boundaries or that Brandi’s behavior – since it’s televised and all – might not look good for her children who might watch the show some day. She’s not even there to react to how strange Brandi looks without makeup, though it was in that moment that I made a new personal goal to wear fake lashes because all of a sudden there was clear visual evidence at how alarmingly they can change the look of a face. No, Jennifer was there so that Brandi could discuss how worried she is about Kim because clearly Kim had relapsed. She recounted the story to Jennifer, and it became obvious that Brandi could see what was going on, but she just wanted to get Kim out of the eyeline of the other women and the cameras to protect her friend but she went about it in all the wrong ways. And maybe that’s Brandi in a nutshell: decent intentions destroyed by clouded actions and reactions.

Since there must be another gathering during an episode where all of these women can collide, Lisa Rinna throws a party at her home to sell jewelry. All of the proceeds will go to a charity for breast cancer research, and everybody but Kim shows up because Kim is now in the hospital. Maybe it’s an ulcer, maybe it’s something else, but she’s in a hospital and I only hope the doctor does not prescribe her Vicodin. But the jewelry party must go on, and it’s pretty obvious now that producers insist that these women ride to the parties they have to attend in pairs so they can talk sh*t about what’s gone down recently rather than driving to an event in comfortable silence. Paired together today are Eileen and Lisa Vanderpump and Yolanda and Kyle.

Eileen and Lisa have some tea while Eileen marvels at the swans that live on Lisa’s property – even the one who tried to maul her – and then she is treated to the absolute glory that is Lisa’s closet. During this visual overload of fabulous, Eileen told Lisa about what happened with Brandi and Kyle and Kim, and Lisa took it all in stride and kind of kept her mouth shut and managed not to say that Brandi is dangerous to humankind in general.

Over at Kyle’s, Yolanda steps over dogs and listens as Kyle relays the story to her. As Kyle finished getting ready and stuck a watch on her wrist – whereupon I caught a glimpse of a red string and thought of course Kyle has a Kabbalah bracelet – Yolanda listened carefully to what transpired and at the party later on, she took Brandi aside and told her that maybe she shouldn’t drink that day.

Obviously, Brandi is grateful that she still has a non-hospitalized friend who is looking out for her after she has systematically alienated everyone else in the time zone, right? Um, no. Brandi’s eloquent response to Yolanda was said thusly: “I’m a f*cking grown up. I’m allowed to have drinks.” Then she mused to the cameras during a brief confessional that “these ladies need to f*cking lighten up” and that “yay, another lecture,” was upon her, and I wanted to concentrate hard so that I could relay her pearls of wisdom in my recap, but you guys: it was so hard to do that because Brandi does her confessional interviews while wearing a dress with a neckline so plunging that I think I can see her cervix and she has a hairstyle that looks like an unironic rendering of the hair Barbara Eden had in I Dream of Jeannie and I literally went to bed last night wondering if the stylist guy who currently lives with her helped to execute that look, and if it was in fact him, he needs to be fired and then deported so he can never inflict such hideousness on another woman ever again.

Before she could bolt out of a place filled with people she had insulted, Eileen sat down with Brandi and told her that she found it quite rude that Brandi had insulted how her house looked and then fired off a litany of profanity while her son was upstairs. Staring straight ahead instead of looking at Eileen, Brandi apologized for her actions in a way that’s definitely one of the categories you would check off while you were trying to determine if a person was clinically sociopathic.

But then it was time for her to leave, and it made me laugh out loud to hear that Brandi was off to a Parent/Teacher conference. Can you imagine being the teacher and speaking to this woman about her kids after witnessing her doing the things she has done so brazenly on television? Could you possibly expect to have a normal or rational discussion with a woman like that? I would not, so if her kid ended up in my class, I’m pretty sure that I’d just let him continue to eat paste and nail kids in the head during games of dodgeball.

I would just wait the year out and spend my sober evenings praying desperately for summer.

Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon. Check out her website at nellkalter.com. Her twitter is @nell_kalter.