Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap – 3/10/15

As all the women gather, it’s abundantly clear that nobody wants to say a single thing that could create a watershed of chaos, though in this group one of the things that could be said that might allow hellfire to be spouted could be the word hello. But they’re all (sort of) trying. Yolanda and Lisa V. are acting like everything is fine and Lisa R. has a dazed look in her eyes that very much hints that she has gone to her safe place in her mind where the world has clouds constructed entirely from bandage dresses and the size of her lips makes perfect sense. She just wants to have an evening where nobody screams and nobody is threatened and nobody cries – which means that she should have stayed home.

But it’s Kyle who breaks first – and by first, I mean immediately – when she sits with a group of people, including the sister who won’t speak to her and her sister’s evil friend who just stares haughtily across the table at Kyle for kind of no reason other than to be an assh*le.

Meeting Lisa V.’s eye across the table, Kyle kind of mouths to her, “Everything is fine?”

“It has to be,” Lisa wisely mouths back, and she’s sort of right. They are stuck on a boat with people who hate one another because they have all signed contracts to go on vacation together. So they have a choice tonight: they can punch each other in the face or they can act like everything is fine.

Kyle can’t pretend though, and while I get that this issue involves a member of her family, if she’s not ready to confront the issue and she is emotionally unable to temporarily >i>ignore the issue, she should have stayed back at the hotel and ordered room service that she could have looked at instead of eaten. But she didn’t stay back; she showed up on that f*cking boat, so my feeling is that she should make the best of it by drinking some wine and staring at the beautiful surroundings and trying on Lisa’s hat because it is spectacular.

Though it probably should have been Kyle to break first, it’s Eileen who kind of matter of factly tells them all that the night feels bizarre and that there are all kinds of conflicts that she’d love to talk about. And right there we see a key difference between Eileen and Brandi. Eileen doesn’t raise her voice and she explains how she feels like a normal person. Brandi would have said something like, “Bring it, bitch,” because she’s an underdeveloped adult who starts a conversation about the resolution of conflicts by saying, “I’ve been a d*ck to you,” and then lists all of the sh*tty things she has done to Eileen who just kind of stares at the moron in front of her and tells the camera, “Well, congratulations for owning it – you know you’re an assh*le.”

Brandi is an assh*le. She doesn’t really have the ability to genuinely apologize for doing something so questionable that any person who is sober or decent-minded would react with horror and she also lacks the ability to actually look at the person who is talking to her about the ways in which she has been hurtful. Instead, Brandi rolls her eyes and averts her glance and it’s kind of gross that it’s so clear in those moments that she never grew up, that what we are looking at is a Botoxed version of a teenage Brandi who refused to take accountability or blame for anything and who would probably roll her eyes when she was yelled at by her parents before running to her bedroom and slamming the door and then lying atop her bed while she stared at the Motley Crue posters on her wall (no judgment – I had them too) and thought about how great life would be when she could finally be out of the house and get to act like an assh*le all of the time.

We all have dreams.

My dream is for Brandi to say that she’s sorry and then shut her f*cking mouth instead of retaliating by throwing something in her accuser’s face, but much like my dream of world peace and sugar-free Cadbury Cream Eggs, that dream has not come true. Instead, Brandi tells Eileen that she doesn’t like that Eileen said that Brandi is a mean drunk, to which Eileen stopped talking and managed to keep her burst of laughter in check before asking Brandi if she was the very first person who had ever made that comment, to which the idiot liar responded, “kind of.” And Brandi is not done! She is astounded that someone could say something (like Kim has relapsed) that could be life-changing for that person. How could someone say such a thing? And it’s here again where I have to wonder if participating in this show is maybe serving to destroy the lives of everyone in its path because what kind of f*cked up world must these people inhabit where mentioning someone’s relapse is worse than someone making the choice to relapse?

Watching the action is Yolanda, and after seeing with her own eyes that both Eileen and Lisa R. continue to apologize for things they were not wrong about in the first place to two people who cannot accept an apology that they don’t even deserve has begun to annoy her, so Yolanda gets up from the Crazy Table and sits at the other table by herself and begins to eat dinner. She is soon joined by Lisa V. and Eileen – and you could tell that Lisa R. wanted to bound over to the normal group too, but she is so scared to make a misstep around Kim, and it’s all kind of terrifying and sad to witness.

Eventually, they all sit at the table with food, and Brandi has a great idea! They should all go around the table and each person should say something that she loves about every other person there! If this group could be honest with one another, it would be a sweet – albeit odd – way to pass a dinner, but since this group is filled with people who have emotions that run from apathy to full-fledged fear and hatred for one another, I’m concerned the game could end with blood spatter.

I might be the only one concerned; the game begins and all of the women croak out sweet comments to one another about their energy and their aura, except for Brandi – you know, the one who came up with this game – who only says things about liking someone’s eyes or waistline or hair. She refuses to go deeper than the superficial because she doesn’t like what’s underneath these people, which is a weird charge for someone to make when she herself is dead inside. Kim, on the spot, has to say something nice when it’s Kyle’s turn to be complimented (this is Kyle’s favorite game ever!) and it’s a little hard for Kim because she is hurt that her sister has been hanging out with “people who have been unfair” to her – you know, when they feared a loss in the sobriety that took place directly in front of their own eyes. But Kim manages to tell Kyle in her creaky voice that she admires Kyle as a mother and as a wife and Yolanda makes them hug and then it’s Kim’s turn to be complimented. Personally, I’d commend her for her sheer capacity for delusion, but I must have done something right in this lifetime and I was rewarded for it by not having to be anywhere on that boat or in that country or in the same “D” where Kyle was able to stretch out because she’s so small. So from America, I sat back and watched petrified women lie to Kim Richards, telling her that she is a survivor and that she is strong and that she is a winner, and Kim is too out of her mind to realize that every single person’s voice had an audible tremor because they are all terrified of her.

It’s finally Brandi’s turn to be complimented (“You have the perfect ass” or “I’m impressed that someone hasn’t tried to decapitate you yet” would be my compliments for Brandi), but she bolts from the table, refusing to hear the fake complements from the mouths of these women, even though she was the one who suggested this self-esteem exercise in the first place. She runs into the bathroom of the boat that is sadly not covered with pictures of Nikki Sixx and eventually she comes back out, but she never says that maybe the reason these women would all have to completely lie about her positive qualities is because she hasn’t shown them that she has any.

At the end of the night – another one where there has been tears from the Sisters Richards and pathetic comments made by Brandi about how Eileen is a home-wrecker – it’s time to get the f*ck off of that boat. But before they can scramble to safety, Brandi has decided that it’s time to get a little playful because she mainlined vodka while she was locked in the bathroom avoiding compliments. And which lady does she want to be playful with? Lisa Vanderpump, the former best friend she tried to destroy for sport!

Playtime begins with Brandi trying to kiss Lisa, who is not having it. First of all, she hates Brandi. Second of all, it’s quite unclear as to where those lips have been. Third of all, the hat on her head is arranged at just the right angle and Brandi leaning in to kiss her (“No tongue,” promises Brandi) might cause the thing to go askew. So since Lisa won’t kiss her, Brandi playfully slaps Lisa across the face and then immediately gets the same look on her face that my niece had when she was two-years-old and she removed her own diaper to poop in the corner of the living room and then got caught doing it. That’s the look Brandi has on her terrible face after slapping Lisa, who is simply stunned and says, “No! That’s wrong!” which is the very same thing we said to my niece when she was crouching near the piano.

Will Brandi apologize for slapping this woman? Are you f*cking as high as Kim? Of course she won’t apologize! She will just laugh and say, “Now slap me!” to a former friend who stands horrified before her.

Next week, Brandi forgoes a meal with the ladies – which causes Eileen to squeal with an unmitigated sense of joy – in order to have dinner with some random guy she met whom she describes as only a woman so adored by her ex-husband’s attorneys can: “Beautiful man, beautiful c*ck.” The truth is, I’d rather talk about a stranger’s scrotum than watch Kim Richards get called “a winner” by a woman fighting to keep a straight face ever again, so I shall be tuning in next week to find out whether or not this guy is circumcised.

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.