Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap – 2/17/15

Here are some things I’d rather watch instead of a nasty drunk who has teetered on the edge of full-blown alcoholism for some time undergo a 21-day cleanse in an effort to prove to the people around her that she doesn’t need to mainline Merlot:

• Kyle shopping for matching outfits with all of her daughters while laughing her annoying husky giggle and slipping the saleswoman a fifty so that she will tell her that she looks like their older sister with a straight face.
• Yolanda cuddling up beside her skeevy husband on his piano bench and asking him to play a piece of sh*t song that he once wrote for Peabo Bryson.
• Kim expounding upon the majesty of that time when she, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell went tobagganing down Witch Mountain.
• Eileen appearing as both the earthling and the alien in the sequel to Stranger At the Pentagon.
• Either one of the Lisas at the gynecologist getting a pap smear.

Yes, there is something abundantly distasteful about a woman embarking on a cleanse with such misguided motives, but I’ve come to expect only the very worst from Brandi Glanville – and I suppose that it’s somewhat comforting that she so rarely disappoints me by going ahead and behaving rationally.

The cleanse was Yolanda’s idea, as cleanses so often are. She believes that Brandi needs to be more focused than her frequent inebriation often allows so that she can concentrate on her work and her young sons, and every time I remember that Brandi has kids, I experience a shiver that rolls up the length of my spine like a locomotive. When Yolanda inquires about how it’s been living alcohol-free, Brandi replies, “I miss it,” and that sad statement then caused a whole new wave of shivers to take over and I had to pull on a hoodie to try to feel warm again.

It’s important to note that sobriety in the world of a Real Housewife exists kind of on a sliding scale. In the enclosed world that these women inhabit, certain things are deemed acceptable: wearing a hideous and blinding caftan to lunch; going on exotic vacations with people you’d never deign to speak with if a camera wasn’t pointing directly at you; not punching Faye Resnick in the face every time she opens her mouth to speak or to breathe; and gulping Xanax during a drug-free cleanse.

It’s a world without rules, everybody! And that’s why all of these women’s lawyers look so very happy.

“They’re so judgmental,” Brandi whines to Yolanda about the other women who have been such assh*les by reacting to Brandi heaving wine into Eileen’s face and threatening to knock Kyle’s teeth out.

“They’re judgmental because you gave them a reason to be,” explains Yolanda patiently in much the same tone of voice with which I explain to my dog that she shouldn’t scatter her kibble around my house.

I’m pretty sure that my dog’s behavior will change more quickly than Brandi’s – and my dog is about to turn seventeen and is almost deaf.