Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap – 3/24/15

Over at Sober Manor, Kim tells her stylist that Kyle said that Lisa Rinna said that Brandi said that Kim needs an intervention and that means Kim must confront Lisa Rinna yet again because Kim loves to feel stronger than someone – it so rarely happens – and she recognizes that Lisa Rinna is scared to death of her and Lisa’s abject terror gives Kim a fun little thrill because she is a very sick person.

Lisa Vanderpump swings by to pick up Kyle and I am saddened beyond comprehension to say that Lisa’s outfit was very much a mistake. Since I find her delightful, I will overlook it and maybe one day I will be able to block it out completely like I did with seventh grade. I feel the scenarios are comparable as they both involved very bad hair.

Arriving at Adrienne’s party to launch the idea that she’s now available to be rented by a magician (I think that was the point of the party, but it all got a little foggy), it’s clear from the first shot that this is an Adrienne Party. What’s an Adrienne Party? Imagine shirtless waiters, angels dangling from the ceiling, a hostess with more peeled layers of epidermis than any other human being on the planet, women who abhor one other, and no food anywhere in sight. Then add a haze of gaudiness and top the whole mess with a Danish Prince.

That’s an Adrienne Party.

The women saunter through the crowd and greet one another with that overlong double-kiss thing they insist on doing and Camille gets to show off her S&M finery as she sets her sights on the royalty in the room, which is really just good sense. I’d thought Fake Hamlet was the virile male concubine of Mauricio’s mother, but I must have been mistaken because he was tonguing Camille by night’s end.

Having less fun is everybody else.

Lisa Vanderpump approaches Brandi, who is standing near a bar – shocking – and she is wearing a dress that doesn’t cover her nipples. Now listen: I’m all for wearing stuff that is low-cut, but this dress was not only beyond the realms of normal good taste, it was also clearly a pain in the ass to wear all night because Brandi kept trying in vain to conceal her areolas. Into her cleavage walks Lisa, who begins to speak to Brandi about some apology email Brandi sent, but Brandi is a child who cannot deal with more than one thing at a time and tonight all of her focus is on the fact that her father is “dying” in a hospital while she is at a party.

Let’s call this situation for what it is: a f*cking mess. Brandi is there probably because she is mandated to show up, but if you and your breasts are going to follow guidelines and show up, keep your emotions in check. Don’t start lashing out at people who would have been there for you had you not sought to destroy them publicly and then all but pissed on any decency they once threw your way. Brandi herself says that only Yolanda has been in touch with her to inquire about her father’s well-being, but Brandi has only herself to blame for the fact that her reality television co-workers do not offer their emotional support to a woman who has wronged them at each and every turn.

(By the way, according to Brandi herself on Watch What Happens Live, her father is recovering nicely.)

“I’m sorry your father is not doing well,” is really the very most Lisa can offer Brandi in ways of empathy, and frankly, that’s actually more than Brandi deserves. It’s all really quite sick. Brandi obviously has a complicated relationship with her father and she clearly sees Yolanda as a mother figure and she once saw Ken and Lisa as sort of surrogate parents, but she slammed her metaphorical bedroom door on them one too many times and got annoyed when Lisa mentioned that she ought to do the responsible thing and get her broken wrist checked out by a doctor and now Brandi has lost her fake parents and she’s nervous about her real father so she does what any adult would do: she goes to a party where everyone hates her and bursts into tears as a way to deflect anger and drinks her weight in chardonnay.

Across the room, the same nonsense that has transpired all season is occurring yet again. Crazy Kim wants to ask Lisa Rinna if Brandi actually used the word “intervention” when speaking about her, and that word is apparently of the utmost importance. See, if Brandi had said some version of “Kim needs serious help because she’s out of her f*cking mind,” well, that would be okay. But the word “intervention”? That’s a word that can’t exist – and Lisa Rinna shouldn’t exist either because what she did, according to Kim and her enormous levels of rationality, was to make “something out of nothing and it’s going to ruin my reputation and my life and all that I have worked hard for.”

Once again, in what stratosphere does this broken woman live? What convoluted mindset does she follow? Who has allowed her to get away with believing that the reactions of others are the problem and that her actions that cause those reactions are negligible? What has been presented on television this season (and last season – and the season before that) is legitimately psychologically-imbalanced behavior, and I would feel sorry for Kim maybe I would even root for her if she wasn’t such a cruel assh*le.

As soon as Kim approaches Lisa Rinna, Lisa begins to shake. She is scared out of her mind of this woman and she should be because Kim doesn’t fight fairly and she apparently is not bound by pesky little things like truth or public decency. Not wanting to get into it all again because it won’t matter anyway (“Kim will believe what she wants to believe,” explains Lisa – who is correct), Lisa tries to demure and she begins to stammer and she looks around the table for an instrument that can maybe help her burrow her way out of there and she is trying to decide which is a better digging tool – a cocktail stirrer or the clip that is in Eileen’s hair – and she is desperately trying to avoid any conversation with Kim about alcohol and how screwed up she is.

Kyle is stunned that Lisa won’t simply admit that Brandi used the word “intervention,” and she and Eileen both explain to her that the truth must be revealed, but Lisa wants nothing to do with any of this bullsh*t anymore. She’s right to feel this way because it’s not like Brandi will tell the truth or like Kim will sit up suddenly and scream, “Eureka! I do need help!” Lisa is in a lose-lose situation, and she finally decides that she might as well wade through the dark waters of Kim Island – it’s an island where there is no food or hope – and have Kyle’s back, so she paddles her way over to Brandi to let her know what is going on and that she should tell Kim what they each said about her. Brandi is furious at how “toxic” all of these horrible women are, but she somehow manages to forget that the only reason Kim even knew that Lisa had spoken about her compromised sobriety in the first place is because Brandi told her while conveniently leaving out the fact that she was a huge part of that conversation and that she agreed with every single thing Lisa Rinna said.

Yolanda then approaches Brandi and pulls her to a quiet spot and begins to pour the woman some water because she is sweating-off-her-makeup trashed and she tells Brandi that she should speak to Kim, who comes right over to speak with her very best friend in the whole wide world. Kim asks Brandi if she mentioned an intervention and Brandi asks her for exact clarification of how Lisa ordered the words that Brandi apparently said. And all of a sudden, we find ourselves in a discussion involving semantics because if Brandi can latch on to the fact that Lisa Rinna misquoted her or stuck a comma some place Brandi did not, Brandi can be found to be not guilty by a woman who desperately wants to believe that Brandi has only her best interests at heart. So when Brandi dances around what she did say and sort of denies the truth, Kim takes her slurred word for it and all is right in the world of the two most repulsive blonde women on basic cable – and that includes the emotionally-detached Betty Draper on Mad Men and any participant of Teen Mom or Gypsy Sisters who happens to be momentarily flaxen-haired.

And with that lack of a climax, the season ends. We find out from the onscreen text that Yolanda is still battling Lyme disease; that Kim is still caring for her ex-husband and that Brandi is still her best friend; that Eileen and Lisa Rinna are exhausted and dazed by what they have been through in their inaugural season; that Lisa Vanderpump is – as per usual – doing just fine; and that Kim’s dog bit Kyle’s daughter’s hand down to the bone and the sisters have not spoken since.

Maybe the dog hated Kyle’s daughter’s face.

And Brandi? Well, Brandi is walked out of the party by her ex-boyfriend who is now stuck back in her life. She weaves her way down the street and she says, “You have to accept me as I am. Don’t try to make me into a different person,” and for some reason, the game of Mad Libs came into my mind and I started to think of applicable words that could be used in place of “different” in that sentence. Here are a few suggestions:

• moral
• appropriate
• not insane
• reasonable
• wise
• logical
• sober

Personally, I’d go with the word “sober,” and I’d keep it in the forefront of my mind as I listened to the last official line of the season uttered by the woman tied for first as the biggest assh*le in Beverly Hills proper: “I don’t understand why I always have to be the bad guy.”

Perhaps that mystery will be solved during the Reunion that begins next week. According to the promos, Brandi will end every sentence with the word “bitch,” like she’s an extra on Breaking Bad; Kim will mock Lisa Rinna; Eileen will be embracing meditation so that at least she can transcendentally be elsewhere; Kyle will cry; Yolanda will drop by to give Brandi some orange slices and her allowance; and Lisa Vanderpump will sit back and count the number of diamond tiaras she has in her head to pass the time until she can be somewhere else entirely.

The truth is, I’ve become a little tired of all of this disgraceful behavior and the fights that never get resolved and the vile duo of Kim and Brandi and this season cannot end for me soon enough. I think that I really need to begin to expose myself to quality television for my own sanity. Luckily, The Real Housewives of New York premieres in just a couple of weeks and nothing screams “sanity” like Ramona. I hope Bethenny strangles Ramona with Ramona’s own vocal cords this season and I hope that we will get to see an uncut version of that brawl and that it will be shown in slow-motion and maybe in 3-D so I can begin to believe that there is goodness in the world again.

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.