Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap – 3/3/15

This episode begins in Amsterdam, where it appears the world might implode. There’s very little as uncomfortable as traveling with people you’re not compatible with, and I can only imagine that being trailed by cameras cannot possibly make it easier, but – again – these women have made the choice to go on this vacation. I’m just glad that they told their husbands back in the States what day the housekeeper comes because there appears to be a very real chance that some of these women will not make it home.

Arriving first are Yolanda, Lisa R., Kim, Kyle, and Brandi, and Eileen and Lisa V soon join them. The look of sheer relief on Lisa R.’s face when she sees her friends arrive in the lobby seems authentic in its severity. She is so grateful that two calm and stable people have joined the group, and she tells them what happened on the plane ride over: how Kim refused to greet her and then screamed at her for attempting to compromise her sobriety – which I thought had been compromised that time she gulped down that painkiller, but whatever – and how Kim would not accept an apology. Lisa V. and Eileen look shocked, which is the healthy response to hearing something crazy, and the glazed look in all of their eyes speaks to the internal dread they feel for being on a luxury vacation in a faraway land to which they have chosen to travel with psychopaths.

Oh, but it’s about to get so much worse, ladies. I can legitimately say that I had stomach cramps watching this episode and, while I don’t believe we can accuse Bravo of unknowingly exploiting the Housewives, I do think that maybe we can all band together and sue the network for taking something that was light escapism and turning it into torture porn before our very eyes.

Can’t we just see Lisa’s opulent closet or Yolanda’s glass refrigerator – just for a second?

Meeting down in the lobby, the women are all clad in black and one of them makes a comment about how it looks like they are going to a funeral. They’re not – yet – but they are embarking on the worst dinner experience any of them have ever had, and that includes the dinner party at Camille’s house in season one where the cigarette-puffing psychic smiled and told the group that if Kyle’s daughter got kidnapped, she wouldn’t help the police to find her.

At the restaurant – which is made alarmingly out of glass – Yolanda sits at the head of the table and proposes that they all share things with one another in an effort to truly connect, the kinds of thoughts and experiences that they often try to hide in the effort to appear perfect. It is a rather sweet and noble choice of a conversation topic, but it’s also one that can only go off without a hitch when every person at that table can veer into honesty, and when one of those people is a secrets-hoarding addict, it might not turn out all that well.

(By the way, had it not turned out “all that well,” that would have been amazing. The way it actually turned out was nauseating and absurd. Buckle up, my friends – we’re going there.)

Yolanda begins the Truth Talk by discussing how destroyed and frightened she was when her daughter got that DUI, and Kim’s face immediately lit up like a f*cking Lite Brite with flashes of fear and anger that anyone was discussing an alcohol-induced misstep because she knew it could lead back to her. She’s not a real empathetic person, that Kim. She’s got too much venom inside of her that is attempting to cover all that she has to hide.

Lisa R. then becomes emotional and she shares that she lost her sister many years ago to an overdose. She tears up as she talks about that profound loss and the fear it has inspired within her that her daughters are predisposed to the genetics of addiction and it’s not just something that is coursing through their DNA because of the alcoholism on her husband’s side of the family, but from her side too. Then she looks across the table at Kim – who has watched Lisa bare her soul without even a smidgen of kindness in her hardened eyes – and she tells her, “I’m sorry if I’ve ever gotten into your business. I never meant to. I only wanted to…”

And with that, Kim cuts her off and responds like this: “Well, you have.”

The expressions that immediately flash across the face of everybody at that table – besides Kim, who can’t give such a look because she is dead inside – is one of shock at Kim’s utter inability to be gracious, to show compassion, or to react with anything but selfishness to a woman in tears before her who has just spoken about the tragic loss of her sister and then apologized genuinely for anything she has done that caused Kim to feel offended. But that brief, cutting retort is just the start of the insanity that takes place before the women have even ordered carbohydrate-and-gluten-free appetizers.

“I have been sober for three years,” Kim insists to a table filled with women who watched her lose her sh*t after swallowing a painkiller with their own eyes. And just in case we don’t remember, there’s a flashback to Kim – severely under some kind of influence – raging at Lisa R. in the car on the way to poker night and slurring her every breath at the card table later on that evening. Then she tells Lisa that if anything had been amiss, one of her good friends at that table would have said something to her.

I’m wondering if by “good friends,” she was referring to Lisa V., who asked Kim a few seasons ago in Paris if she had taken a sleeping pill because she could barely stand up straight, to which Kim responded with pure vitriol. Or maybe she was talking about Brandi, who did tell Lisa R. that Kim had relapsed. Perhaps she was referring to her sister, who sat open-mouthed at that table, horrified by Kim’s behavior and who has been badgered relentlessly about refusing to stand up for her sister each and every time Kim misbehaved in the past. Were those the people Kim was talking about, or were the friends she referenced in her nasty response to Lisa R.’s concern her imaginary friends?

More perplexing is that Kim cannot point a finger at someone without literally pointing a finger at that person, and I wonder if it’s because an acting teacher when she was seven once told her that pointing declaratively made her look strong. In any case, when she shoots that pointer at Eileen, the calm and disgusted woman across the table tells her not to point a finger in her face. The response was so simple and so normal that I tried to high-five Eileen through my television set. It didn’t work, but I got a little shock when my hand touched the screen and I like to think that means that Eileen could feel my symbolic support.

Think it’s over? Not a chance.

“We care about you,” Lisa R. tried to explain to the person who has been taught to avoid personal accountability her entire life, to which Kim sneered and stated, “I’m concerned about you!” And then she got a cruel little glint in her eye at the thought of being able to expose somebody before that person exposed her first. See, it’s a nifty little game she taught herself while she was lying on the floor of a bathroom with the spins.

Kim’s had a lot of time to practice that game.

“I’m concerned about your situation at home,” said Kim, so pleased with herself. And Lisa’s eyes grew wide with shock and at that point obviously every single viewer wondered what could be going on at Lisa Rinna’s house. But whatever it is, it cannot possibly be worse than what is going on at that table or within Kim’s mind, so don’t sweat it, Lisa. You will be fine.

“You want to bring out my stuff?” hissed the more snake-line Richards sister. “Let’s talk about your homelife.” And that’s when Eileen burst in to stop Kim’s reactionary fury and Kim responded to her like this:

“Shut your f*cking mouth. I’ve had enough of you, you beast.”

“Beast?” responded Eileen, stunned out of her mind.

“I don’t like you. I have never found one thing to like about you, from your hair to your face to your attitude,” said the crazy lady who is sober.

What was Brandi doing during all of this emotional and verbal carnage? Sipping wine. What was Kyle doing? She was dying inside.