Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap – 3/31/15

The next segment is all about Brandi’s drinking, and she babbles a response about how she has two sons and she doesn’t drink all the time but that being around this group makes her drink.

“How do you feel about being called a mean drunk?” Andy asks the mean drunk.

“I can give you a lap dance if you’d like,” responds Brandi, which I think might be her own special way of saying that sometimes she’s not a mean drunk; sometimes she’s a drunk who likes to gyrate on men who are attracted to other men.

It was hard to follow the logic of the situation…

But when Eileen is asked about calling Brandi a mean drunk, she explains that she can only judge Brandi’s behavior based on what she has seen of it, and what she has personally witnessed time and again is Brandi becoming “aggressive, bitchy, not nice, and slurry,” which is all true to any person who has seen it.

And see – that’s another thing: this Reunion was taped after the season had already started airing. Brandi (and let’s throw Kim into this too) watched how they behaved on camera. They saw it with their own eyes – and not for one single second will I even entertain the possibility that women who go on The Real Housewives don’t watch every single episode of this show – and you shouldn’t consider such a thing either because it’s nonsense. So these women saw just how unhinged they appeared, but even now they refuse to accept that it was their own actions and words that caused others to judge them. The reason for such a refusal to see the truth is either that they watched the show while surrounded by D-Level sycophants who assured them that everything is Kyle’s fault or because they have absolutely no self-awareness.

The second option is the far more terrifying one.

Also somewhat terrifying is the way that Kyle begins to blink very quickly and unnaturally the moment Kim steps up to defend her best friend. For a moment there, I feared that Kyle was having a stroke.

After only a few snarky remarks and before the bloodshed can soil her perfect white dress, Yolanda bids adieu to the women. She is ready to go home and rest, and I wish her all the best in her recovery. I also wish she would take me with her because continuing to watch this televised slaughter is starting to make me feel queasy.

But the insults and poor attempts at defecting blame must go on and that means so must I and I am rewarded for it almost immediately when Andy asks Kim if she is more discerning about taking jobs than Lisa Rinna, who apparently earned seven figures for appearing in a Depends ad.

“Oh, one hundred percent,” says the woman about to appear in Sharknado 3. “I have a little more pride than you do.”

“You did appear on Diving With the Stars,” needles Andy, which is pretty funny – but not nearly as funny as when Lisa Rinna turns to Kim and tells her, “I turned that down.” Probably my favorite second of all of it was the quiet smile that Eileen shot towards Lisa after her remark. Eileen appears to be a damn loyal friend, and when it is brought up that Lisa has an eating disorder, Eileen shoots that allegation down by saying that she has known Lisa for decades and that rumor is not true, despite the fact that Brandi texted Lisa to let her know that she is “an anorexic old hag.” Don’t worry though! Brandi can’t even remember saying such a thing so that means it never happened.

I’m not even sure how it starts, but the next few horrifying minutes become all about how much Brandi and Kyle hate each other. Hasn’t this already been established? Can’t they just give each other nasty looks? Or can that not be the game because Brandi’s face won’t move? Either way, it gets ugly fast:

“If I have a few drinks, who cares?” asks Brandi.

“I don’t walk around with a tampon string hanging out,” snaps Kyle.

“Because you don’t get your period anymore, bitch!” rages Brandi with sheer eloquence.

Then Brandi announces that Kyle “smokes pot,” and makes a toking gesture. Um, who cares? It’s not as though any exotic vacation or lovely dinner party or bullshit relay race through the streets of Beverly Hills was ever ruined because Kyle was just too high. It’s a terrible argument made by a moron and I suppose that I can say anything I want because I do still get my period and I will now mentally high-five my uterus for keeping me as perfectly youthful as Ms. Glanville.

Keeping Brandi in front of the firing squad where she belongs, it comes out that, while in Amsterdam, Brandi told Lisa that Kyle had told her that Lisa was having an affair with her trainer. “That’s what your best friend said about you,” Brandi reports happily, the envy dripping off of her puckered lips. There are two problems with Brandi weaving such a tale – on camera! – and the first is that Lisa doesn’t have trainer. The second is that there is no way that Kyle would confide in Brandi, and the likelihood that they will become friends in the future doesn’t appear promising, especially when Brandi mutters “f*cking c*nt” under her breath. It’s a good moment; even Andy stops to ask her what she just said about Kyle and at first Brandi gives her typical response – the same one remedial students in middle school give when confronted: “What?” But then she relents and says that she called Kyle a “c*nt” and everybody just stares at her like she is filth, except for Kim who is relieved that someone else is the target for a while and she doesn’t say a single syllable to her best friend about how it’s not very nice to call her sister a c*nt.

All things Amsterdam are then explored and we get to learn the surprising news that Brandi did in fact sleep with the twenty-three year old boy she met there, explaining it thusly: “I f*cked him and it was great.” Since then, she and the boy have spoken and he wants to visit her. But Lisa Vanderpump – the mother of the best friend of this kid – has a different story because she claims that he told her that he wouldn’t sleep with Brandi because she was too drunk and Brandi’s eyes narrow into even slittier slits than usual at being accused of not f*cking a twenty-three year old stranger who is best friends with her enemy’s son.

This is it, I thought. This will be the moment when Brandi’s face pops! But my joyful anticipation was for naught and I can only hope for the explosion in part two if this endless Reunion.

But did Brandi go quietly into the good night, grateful that her face hadn’t burst? Of course she didn’t! Instead she looked at a woman who has been married to the same man for decades and said about Amsterdam Andre, “I think you’re just pissed he didn’t want to f*ck you.” From there, they get into The Slap Incident and Lisa logically explains that it wasn’t that the slap was hard, but it felt like a violation.

Trying to help Lisa explain that Brandi always takes “fun” too far, Andy suggests that it’s like when an owner is playing with a dog and the dog gets too excited and bites the owner, but holy sh*t – Brandi must have a serious problem with either dogs or owners because she completely loses her mind and tells Andy that she will not be abused by him as she is already taking abuse from everybody else, once again removing herself from having any responsibility for causing the chaos that leads to the confrontations she calls abuse. Whatever, Brandi – your inability to rationalize effectively is terrifying, but to make you feel better, I’d like to suggest that nobody ever compare Brandi to a dog again. Let’s just stick with the bag of trash analogy and call it a day.

What it comes down to is that Brandi thinks that Lisa used the fact that she slapped her as a way to hate Brandi forever, but what she doesn’t see is that normal people don’t search and hope for reasons to hate people they once loved. And when Lisa calmly says, “I’m not interested in that kind of friendship,” holy f*ck, that’s where it all becomes chilling because this is Brandi’s response: “Watch your back…” It is said in a sinister singsong kind of way, like how it would sound if Charles Manson were auditioning for the Glee Club at his very first reformatory. It is scary as hell and when Lisa laughingly responds to the threat made in song by saying, “I’m sure I have to now,” Brandi responds with a dry and humorless, “You do,” and then she tells Kyle that she has beaten her up in her mind thousands of times and on that peaceful image of a show that was supposed to be about rich women cavorting in the California sunshine, part one of the Reunion mercifully ends.

The previews tease that Kim and Kyle will continue to fight next week – hey, at least they’re speaking! – and their dialogue will go a little something like this when Andy brings up the fact that Kyle’s daughter was badly bitten by Kim’s dog. (Warning: to get the full effect, you must imagine Kyle saying her lines with an expression of shock and disgust and Kim gurgling her lines with psychotic satisfaction.)

Kim: I’ve never told the real story.

Kyle: About my child?

Kim: Yep!

Kyle: Oh, wow.

Kim: And you won’t like it…

Kim’s last sentence – said about her own niece – is spoken in a manner just as melodic and menacing as when Brandi threatened Lisa and to say it’s unnerving would be a grave understatement.

She and Brandi deserve one another and absolutely nothing more. And should those Scientology origin stories be correct, I can only hope that one day both women will be dropped into a simmering volcano.

I will bring the marshmallows.

Kyle will bring the weed.

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.