As we inch closer to the last day of this year – or towards the first day of a brand new year, depending upon your levels of optimism – it’s hard not to contemplate everything that’s come before. After all, something new often walks hand in hand with some type of ending, doesn’t it? There have definitely been some years where I felt a true thudding inside at the awareness that so much is over while other years it’s just a bittersweet kind of twinge that takes over whenever I catch a glimpse of a calendar that tells me it’s December 29th. But this year? Well, I feel completely at peace. What’s gone is in the past and the present feels breezy and bright and I think that the very best is yet to come and the greatest part of all of it is that I haven’t even tried to convince myself of such a thing. I simply feel this way and it’s like wrapping my tired feet in slippers made out of cotton and clouds.
But when it comes to the Housewives, I’m not sure that peace and tranquility sells. My guess is that nobody wants to watch a program about happy rich people gallivanting around the globe, but then there’s that part of me that wonders why Bravo thinks we want to watch a woman in the throes of a debilitating illness that’s either physical or psychological or a devastating mix of both. And allow me to just say this: I believe Yolanda is truly sick, but I also believe that participating in this show when she claims everything about herself has been compromised is an odd choice. I know she’s insisting that she is out to spread awareness, but since all we’ve been exposed to thus far about her illness is that she has a curious health advocate at her beck and call and a massive closet crammed with medication that clearly wasn’t all prescribed to her by a doctor and her friends tossing out words like Munchausen Syndrome, I’m not positive she’s doing the good work she’s pretending is being done. After all, this is a show that’s always been fueled by a cocktail of conflict and suspicion that’s served with a slice of cynicism. This is a franchise that celebrates a convicted felon returning home from jail only to find a brand new Lexus sitting in her driveway that’s wrapped in a gigantic red bow. This is a series that invited Brandi Glanville back to make guest appearances – and paid her for it. This is not a televised forum for anything particularly wonderful and we all know it.
But still we watch. Still we stare at Kyle as she alleges to hate attention even while she stares into a camera. Still I have sky-high hopes that Erika will eventually stop referring to herself in the third person. Still I hope that Eileen will become more interesting and that Lisa Vanderpump will start shooting scenes exclusively in her sumptuous closet and that Lisa Rinna will refuse to apologize when she hasn’t done anything wrong. Still I pray to a sky filled with stars and airplanes that Kim Richards never returns. It’s a new year, dammit, and I have nothing but hope.
Unfortunately, that hope is fading fast because we begin this episode in Kyle’s terrible store where Lisa Rinna arrives to go on a shopping spree that will be paid for entirely by Mauricio in what I can only imagine will be a write off. Before she can don hideous caftans in colors that will never be located in nature, Kyle lets us know that she is opening a pop-up shop in the Hamptons and she invites Lisa to attend. Not only does Lisa agree, but she also manages to find the one beige clothing item in the entire store and she slips it on. She looks fantastic and the scene blessedly ends before Kyle can do her throaty giggle so all the tourists in the shop can hear her and nudge one another that they have just been in the presence of someone famous.
Things are less calm over at Lisa Vanderpump’s house. Her swan, Hanky, has a stomach infection so she and Ken are taking him to the vet. I know how difficult it can be to get a tiny dog into a car so I give them credit for managing to slip that swan into an SUV. On a happier note, it’s nice to know that there are animal clinics that treat swans and that biting is an indication that Hanky is getting better.
Also looking better is Yolanda. She and Erika are meeting up with Kyle to go on a hike. It’s the first time Erika and Kyle are meeting, so Kyle makes sure to compliment her on whatever she can find – in this case, it’s Erika’s long ponytail – and they walk for only a few steps before sitting down to discuss how depression can mimic other medical symptoms. Yolanda, however, is not allowing this conversation to go all that far. She insists she has Lyme Disease and she wants everyone to know that just because she looks good one day, she is not out of the woods. Before anything else can be discussed, she switches the focus to Erika. Erika explains that she’s a singer and she has a son who is a police officer and she and Kyle bond over the fact that they both had their first children when they were almost children themselves. And then it happens: the pretend, “Hey! Here’s an idea that came to me organically and wasn’t planted in my head by a producer right before we all met up! Let’s bring Erika to meet the other ladies for a drink tomorrow!” I love these faux moments because I think anyone with sight can spot them a f*cking mile away. Anyway, Erika is in despite the fact that she really only likes to hang out with gay men and a few incredibly accomplished women and I think it’s quite possible that Kyle is sh*tting herself like Hanky the Swan knowing that she has just made it into that kind of esteemed company.
It’s important that all of the women get together soon because Yolanda is heading off to Cleveland to have her breast implants taken out. In a recent MRI, some silicone leakage was found in her chest cavity and she needs to get that sh*t cleaned out and what this means for viewers is that we have already watched her crowns get pulled and now her implants will be sucked out (I’ll bet on camera and in close-up) too. If her tongue is yanked free from her mouth next, I will officially be done with this show. Then the news emerges that two of Yolanda’s kids also have Lyme Disease and the entire thing seems bizarre to Kyle and kind of to me too and I know this will sound incredibly unkind and I don’t quite mean for it to, but spending time with Yolanda these days is absolutely no fun at all.
Thank God for Lisa Rinna, because this woman is a ball of crazy fun. She’s home when the waxer arrives for a house call and soon her entire ass is clear of any kind of hair. After listening to a conversation about leaky implants lodged in a chest cavity, this kind of levity is nothing short of a delight. I’d watch Lisa get waxed in slow motion rather than go back to that bench with Kyle, Yolanda, and Erika and I think I’m not the only one who feels this way. Lisa is headed to Canada and then to do a gig on QVC before she jets off to the Hamptons and I’m glad she’s doing all of it while being as hairless as she can possibly be.
I have no idea is Kyle is hairy or not, but the thought did cross my mind as she arrived to meet up with Lisa Vanderpump at CBS Studios for a tour of Eileen’s show. In case any of us forgot – or successfully blocked it out – Kyle reminds us that she is an actress and she was on that soap when she was about four years old. Eileen busts out happily to greet them, tossing out an All About Eve reference in the process that makes me adore her. They play for a while in the costume department and Lisa tries to stick a hundred dollar bill into a vending machine. Then Kyle attempts to do her English accent and now my hand hurts from punching the television screen. Afterwards, they all creep quietly upstairs into Eileen’s dressing room where they help her run her lines and chat about how they’re all going to meet up later on with Yolanda and Erika. It’s posited that Lisa Rinna was not trying to be malicious by repeating the tales of Munchausen Madness that are apparently running rampant around the boutiques of Beverly Hills, but Kyle believes that Yolanda will be hurt to know that Lisa said any such thing behind her back and I am once again reminded of just how idiotic it is that these women profess to be hurt and shocked when their “friends” speak about them when they’re all on a television show that requires interviews with producers WHO DIRECTLY ASK THESE WOMEN QUESTIONS ABOUT ONE ANOTHER.