Before the women arrived at the film festival, they shared a limo and discussed the enigma that is Brandi.
“Why does she behave this way?” wondered Lisa R. “What is she trying to do?”
The theories about Brandi’s vicious and unbalanced nature were bandied about. A few think she just wants attention. Kyle thinks she’s simply just an assh*le. And Brandi – who does not even appear onscreen in this sequence – is being spoken about constantly and remember, it’s all good as long as she’s being talked about! She might want to keep that quote that she lives by in her mind while reporters film her arriving for potential custody hearings in the not-so-distant future.
Having been away during the most recent Brawls Involving Brandi, Yolanda invites Brandi over to her home to do yoga, and as someone who does yoga, I can only say that I sighed with a total sense of contentment just thinking about how amazing it would be to plank in such an idyllic location. Yolanda has heard the latest round of issues involving Brandi and she wants to speak to her friend about it because Yolanda is wise enough to understand that if everybody has a problem with you, it’s not that everybody else is wrong or uptight; the problem is emphatically you.
The talk does not go all that well. See, Yolanda is no longer shimmying around the issue. She tells Brandi that her proclivity to get trashed impedes her ability to behave like a decent person. She tells her that maybe Xanax isn’t a good thing for her to take. And she flat-out says that if Brandi has a problem with alcohol, Yolanda wants to be there to help her.
It’s not easy saying such things to a friend, but it’s clearly all being said with only with good intentions. Therefore, Brandi’s response is one of maturity and gratitude and…oh wait – I forgot that Brandi is just a defensive piece of sh*t who cannot look introspectively when a friend gently brings up an issue. Instead, Brandi denies she has a problem with alcohol by saying she gets her kids off to school in the morning. I’m pretty sure she just described the very nature of being a functional alcoholic, but I could be wrong – and if I am, I would like to be brought up to Yolanda’s hillside paradise, get served a lemon, and be told that I’m wrong as I gaze at the ocean in the distance. Brandi also said that if she did have a problem, she would admit it, telling Yolanda, “There’s no shame in my game,” an idiotic motto that Yolanda deftly ignored.
“At some point, you have to behave,” Yolanda patiently explained to her warped friend, telling her that her intense aggression towards the other women was wrong.
“Well, that’s been who I am for my entire life,” explained Brandi about how she behaves if someone lobs a single word of criticism her way. She is just doing what she has always done, which is to respond as viciously as possible and it’s this kind of bullsh*t justification that tells me that Brandi will never change and that she actually doesn’t want to. Who cares if she’s alienating every one of her reality television co-workers? Who cares that she’s often publicly perceived as being an alcoholic? That’s what people say about Yolanda’s daughter, and it’s not true.
Yes, Brandi told Yolanda – to deflect the issue from herself – that people are saying that Yolanda’s daughter is an alcoholic, and I want to commend Yolanda for not knocking Brandi’s skull off and tossing it from of her balcony. What Yolanda did required restraint, and she continued to explain her fears about Brandi’s behavior directly to Brandi who stared off into the distance because she is a woman who has been frozen in adolescence and she will not meet your eye if you are criticizing her and since she doesn’t have a bedroom door to slam, she will retaliate by refusing to look your way.
Cutting to a real and functional mother/daughter dynamic, we join Lisa V and her daughter at a market where Pandora has bottled the alcohol that is normally just served at Lisa’s restaurant. It’s there that Lisa tells her daughter that Max has been curious about his genetic history and his heritage, a revelation that stuns Pandora and clearly makes Lisa nervous and emotional. That said, though she fears that Max could one day want to meet his birth mother, she explain that they all must be supportive of his choices because this is not about them – it’s about what Max might need.
Can you imagine Kyle ever saying such a selfless sentence? Yeah, me neither.
When Max comes over to the house later, he has with him the results of the test and he and his mother examine them together. He is Scandinavian and Irish and he finally sees what his name was at birth.
“How does it feel to see that?” asks Lisa.
“It’s weird,” Max responds.
And when Lisa later brings up the possibility of meeting his birth mother, Max is quick to say that it’s not a pressing desire for him to meet her and that he is more than happy with the life that he has been blessed with and I cannot stop wishing this family the very best because they are articulate and compassionate and witty and there appears not to be a total assh*le in the mix.
And speaking of families, Eileen has the idea to get Kim and Kyle together over lunch to explain how she recently lost her sisters and that life is short and she does this hoping that the Richards sisters will reconcile. It’s a very sweet intention, but these are two co-dependent women with garages in the Valley filled with resentment and secrets and one lunch won’t rectify anything.
“As much as you have been a good sister, there are times when you hurt me,” croaks Kim, and I believe that every person in the whole world who is a sister stared at the television screen in puzzlement. Has any sibling not hurt another sibling, whether intentionally or accidentally? You have known each other your entire lives – it’s not always smooth sailing!
Kyle’s response? Could it be about herself? Why, yes it could! “You’ve hurt me too!” she wails, and it’s right about then when Eileen realizes she has made a grave mistake because these two cannot possibly move forward because they are both still stuck in the past and pretending they are not. And though I can’t stand her, it’s upsetting to watch Kyle apologize to Kim because Kyle is not the ultimate cause of this issue. Kim’s addiction and the impact it has on relationships is what has caused the tumult to spring forth in this family, and every time someone apologizes for having a normal reaction to a woman who is so abnormal, I think a sober angel in the heavens spontaneously drops dead.
The last scene of the episode is a coffee date with Lisa R. and Brandi. Lisa just appeared on Brandi’s podcast – oh, Lisa… – and both women are swathed in animal prints. Lisa tells Brandi that she had fun being interviewed and that Brandi is good at it, but she wants to know why it is that other people describe Brandi as being so mean.
“I’m not mean. I’m temperamental,” responds the mean lady. “If you hit me, I go lower – unfortunately.”
Unfortunately? What the hell does that mean? If her behavior is so unfortunate, why not try to reel it in after it’s happened – publicly – more times than anyone with fingers and an abacas can count?
But Brandi does reveal a bit of awareness during her time with Lisa. She knows that Kim is messed up and that her addiction must have been compromised. She knows that Kim telling Brandi that Brandi is her best friend is the saddest statement ever uttered by a woman with vocal cords. And she knows that, should anyone question Kim’s sobriety directly to Kim, that Kim will die.
“We are privy to someone who is in pain and suffering,” Lisa tells Brandi, and Brandi – for once – just shuts her mouth and nods at the truth while wondering what the cruelest thing she could ever say to Lisa Rinna might be and, upon figuring it out, she tucks that verbal dagger into her cleavage so she can pull it out when it’s needed.
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.