Now it’s time to go inside of Eileen’s house, the one with the decorating scheme Brandi equated to “American Psycho.” Not that she wants to give such an assh*le credit for anything, but Eileen admits that the comment hit her hard and she wants to make her home a bit more airy. I think this is an excellent feng shui move on her part because anything that might remove all of the shades brown and the furniture made from the heaviest materials a lumberjack was able to get his hands on is probably a good thing. Unfortunately, with happy remodeling also comes sad news. Dickie Van Patten, Eileen’s father-in-law and the dad on Eight is Enough, passed away recently and the void is really being felt. Lisa Rinna calls in to check on how her friend is doing. She is currently fearing the potential loss of her own father and that kind of gripping fear children of any age feel is precisely the kind of emotion that can really bond adults in the saddest, scariest, and most profound of ways.
But not everything is about death on this show, not this early on! It’s Lisa Rinna’s birthday! It’s time for the women to celebrate! Kyle shows up in shorts, so there’s that, and then she talks about how she’s married to a “luxury lover” and that they are about to set sail for Florence and Tuscany and I can only hope that she won’t wear her shorts there. Yolanda shows up to the dinner with some beautiful flowers and not a scrap of makeup. She looks tired and drawn but still beautiful in an ethereal kind of way and it makes me mildly uncomfortable when Lisa Vanderpump suggests that she could have put on a little bronzer. Yolanda sits beside her friends and coughs quietly and begins to sweat and she leaves the table, prompting Ken to ask if she is okay. Yolanda leaves soon after and nobody quite knows what to think or what to say.
Then Harry Hamlin walks into the party and Lisa lets us know that her husband is on fire career-wise and the two of them look pretty happy, but they also look kind of identical to one another. Seriously, you know how people often look like their pets? Lisa Rinna looks like her husband. Maybe that was the secret Kim Richards hinted at last year when she bellowed, “Everyone will know!” at Lisa across a dinner table in Amsterdam. Maybe Lisa and Harry are really brother and sister – or maybe I’ve just been watching far too many sick movies where a twist ending manages to knock me on my ass every time.
And now that she’s gone, everyone can talk about Yolanda. Kyle brings her up in much the way Kyle often does, in that she’ll toss out a mild comment about someone and then sit back and take mental notes on what other people are saying so she doesn’t have to get her own hands dirty. As for what is said in her absence, Lisa Rinna is impressed that Yolanda showed up without makeup and thinks it was very brave of her to display her vulnerability but Ken explains that he might have told her she looked good, but she actually just looked really ill. The truth is, I haven’t really followed any of the activities that have gone on in the lives of these Housewives since production wrapped last year, but I certainly know that there are a lot of theories about the veracity of Yolanda’s illness. I don’t know nearly enough to form an opinion yet, but I will say that the woman looks sick and like she’s struggling. Then again, I also thought Brooks must have been telling the truth about his cancer diagnosis because what kind of f*cking lunatic would lie about having cancer? (Answer: the same kind of f*cking lunatic who willingly spoons Vicki Gunvalson.)
And back at her home where the dogs eat their kibble from bowls that have the Chanel logo – and I don’t care what anyone says; I still believe Kyle’s pubic hair has been shaved into a similar shape – Mauricio and Kyle chat about whether or not Kyle should get into regular contact with Kim. It’s so hard for Kyle, you guys! See, she was reared by a family who likes to their keep private life private, a fact she states directly to a camera. At what point might this woman realize that the privacy ship (where she, of course, reserved the most luxurious berth because she is very wealthy) has sailed far away and then been shot at by pirates? There is no more privacy, not for this clan, and they made that choice when they signed on for this show knowing how many secrets they all harbored. As for reconciling with her sister, Kyle is in a lose-lose situation here because she is trying to mend a relationship with a person who will never feel anything for her but total resentment that her life didn’t turn into a simmering pile of sh*t too.
Next week, Kyle feels like Sophia Loren’s twin because she’s in Italy and because she too was born with a uterus and Yolanda experiences a health crisis that looks legitimately frightening. I’m betting it was a moment like that one when David Foster decided “till death do us part” was really just written to be a song lyric belted out by Céline Dion, not a policy to live by – especially if this no-makeup thing becomes a habit.
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.