And still the party goes on and the most amazing musician of this or any other era has not yet arrived. What is taking Paul McCartney so long? To fill the time, Lisa Rinna asks Kyle if she should maybe send Kim a birthday text just like Eileen did. (Did Eileen sign her text “Beast”?) The idea of such a text from Lisa strikes Kyle as more than mildly preposterous while Harry’s response is that she should go ahead and send a lunatic a text simply because she has the desire to do so. The guy’s either the most understanding and supportive husband of all time or he’s secretly thinking about setting up a hit on his wife and, with Kim Richards back in the picture, the cops will make at least one stop before coming to question him.
A few feet away, there is a mile of figurative space between Erika and Kathryn. Things have changed since they took a blood oath to be best friends and, sensing the deadness in Erika’s eyes, Kathryn comes clean. She lets Erika know that she “told Vanderpump” what Erika said about her and Erika reacts accordingly. She’s pissed and she has every right to be and she might even have the right to punch Kathryn’s lights out when she tells her that she assumed the two had been speaking in confidence and Erika scoffs and retorts, “Then that’s on you.” See, Kathryn’s never had a friend before so she doesn’t understand The Universal Friendship Rules. Nestled in at #3 (between #2’s DON’T ALLOW YOUR FRIEND LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT CHECKING TO MAKE SURE THERE’S NOTHING IN HER TEETH and #4’s TOUCH MY SOUL MATE AND I WILL F*CKING CRUCIFY YOU IN THE VILLAGE SQUARE) is DON’T REPEAT PRIVATE SHIT. Kathryn misunderstood, you guys. She’s always lived under the belief that anything you don’t want spread around a table at a dinner party is just something you should never say aloud in the first place. You know what? To be safe, you shouldn’t even think anything you don’t want Kathryn to scream over appetizers when there’s a lull in a conversation.
Man, the vibe of this dinner is so dark and warped. I really hope Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder can’t feel it when they walk in for their duet performance.
Making matters even more contentious and weird is Lisa Rinna who takes one long probing look at Eileen’s face and announces that she knows that Eileen is mad at her. Why is Eileen mad? Oh, Eileen thinks Lisa knows why. She’s annoyed that Lisa Rinna shut down the shit talk about Lisa Vanderpump by acting like Lisa Vanderpump couldn’t possibly pull off the skill of manipulation. Lisa Rinna knows what that Vanderpump woman is capable of – and now we definitively know (yet again) that Eileen is still not over the “affair” comment made back when I still wore a retainer.
“Why aren’t you being honest right now?” questions Eileen as Kyle (that fink!) nods her head happily. “Why are you afraid of Lisa Vanderpump?”
Okay – time out. I want to officially say that I appreciate Eileen’s unwillingness to let a problem fester because festering of any kind leads to pus and pus is disgusting. I am not of the belief that she should keep her mouth shut at all times. But what I am starting to believe is that maybe she should just stay at home some nights. Think about how much more relaxing it’ll be for her to loll around her dark manor in some yoga pants while her husband gambles away their fortune on a croquet match instead of fighting repeatedly over the use of a single f*cking word.
As for Lisa Rinna, she feels ensnared in the middle of a fight that Eileen and Lisa Vanderpump are still pretending isn’t happening. She doesn’t quite know how to split her loyalty here so she’s relieved as can be when David Foster announces it’s finally time for his special guest. I cannot wait to finally hear James Dean sing! But it’s Andrea Bocelli who walks into the place and sure, that’s cool, but who might Mr. Bocelli have in his contacts list? Any chance Jim Morrison’s number in purgatory is in there? As the master sings, Kyle realizes that his presence and song choice are clear signs being sent to her from her mother telling her to reconnect with her monster of a sister. If the messages her mother sends from the afterlife are this sadistic, can you imagine what Kyle had to deal with while that woman roamed the Earth?
The endless party finally over, it’s now time for Amelia’s surgery. Lisa Rinna has some major anxiety about her kid being put under and Amelia’s already afraid of the upcoming pain. Good thing the cameras are in the hospital to put everyone at ease! As she waits, Lisa calls her husband. Harry is calm and Lisa admits – in a sentence I think could really come back to haunt her – that if a real problem doesn’t exist, she’ll create one. Woman! Do not say such words when Kim Richards is near! She will use them against you right after she learns how to use a fork.
Kyle, the Richards sister who has mastered utensils, is in her kitchen. She’s guilting her elementary-school-aged child into living at home when she attends college. She just values family, you see, and that means it’s time for her to pretend she’s fully responsible for mending the relationship with her sister, the relationship she didn’t ruin in the first place.
Away from sibling misery, Yolanda, Erika, and Eileen meet up at a park. It seems like it might turn into a calm gathering, but Eileen – who I think might have an actual problem because she can never just be quiet and let something slide – wants to talk about how uncomfortable the dinner party was with the party’s hostess and the hostess’ friend who has known the hostess for some measure of time but it’s a mother*cking secret so don’t even try to figure out the year they met. Eileen begins the retreading of bullsh*t with Kathryn’s unprovoked blab at Erika’s expense and Yolanda is dismayed that Kathryn announced such a thing to the entire group, which is a really shaky criticism to lob after you cc’d an email to everyone who’s ever watched you take a pill.
“It seems like you and Lisa have a lot of unresolved issues,” Eileen says to Yolanda, baiting her. Then she sits back and appears disappointed when Yolanda doesn’t have much to say that’s negative. Eileen’s problem seems to be that she likes Lisa but she also believes deep down that she’s a total wench and now she’d like to discuss her complicated feelings for the woman during every single meal she eats from this day forth. As for Erika’s assessment of Lisa, she articulates it thusly: “She enjoys thinking that she’s smart.” Is “smart” a bad thing to think of oneself?
Now an outcast because of her own brazen stupidity, Kathryn has nobody to eat lunch with other than her sisters. The three sit in a restaurant and discuss their mother’s descent into dementia, a devastating thing. It’s really too bad that Kathryn no longer has any friends she can confide in about her feelings, but she’s pissed off everybody simultaneously for absolutely no reason and now she has to crawl her way back to a group of people who have already decided that she sucks.
And finally Kim arrives at Kyle’s house where she reveals that she’s in a great place and she doesn’t want to drudge up old incidents. I’m guessing that the reality show on which her very worst incidents aired in Dolby is maybe not the ideal place to drop by then, but this is Kim Richards we’re talking about and nothing she does makes any sense. (Really though, at some point don’t you ever ask yourself how much Kim gets paid to drop by Kyle’s house to fight? Why do angels not drop glittering coins at my feet when I drive to Westchester to see my sister?) Kim and Kyle agree not to discuss the past because that makes “things” (read: the truth) too complicated and it’s just way better to pretend that they’re cool with one another by acting like strangers. It’s a convoluted idea being argued by a sick person, but really, did anyone expect anything different? I mean, you have two sisters who are wired for sound maintaining that they need to keep their relationship private. Kim? Kyle? I’d like to introduce you to my good friend, Irony. Irony thinks you’re both insane.
The truth is that the past must be discussed for any valid form of moving forward to commence and a major problem between these two is that Kyle believes that Kim hates her. She does! She hates that her little sister is more successful and married to a wealthy man and doesn’t have a rampant addiction. She hates that her sister can easily make friends and that she doesn’t shake violently when she speaks. Yes, she also probably really loves Kyle, but the key to all of this longstanding resentment is buried under so many light-years of garbage and filth and animosity and the reality is that the vault will not be pried open anytime soon because neither sister really wants to locate that key and I wonder if it must be hard to never ever learn a thing.
Next week, Erika’s husband tosses Kathryn out of a dinner party I’m surprised she was even invited to in the first place and that’s got me thinking. Why do these people keep throwing dinners for people they can’t stand? Why do people who have been accused of being malicious and duplicitous keep showing up at these events? Is it for the gift bag? Since we all know the dinner party milieu will continue on this show for all of eternity, I’d like to propose some less incendiary conversation topics for the women to bandy about over tilapia in an effort to collectively try to avoid ever being the actual recipient of one of Yolanda’s emails:
• Global warming and its impact on the swans in Lisa’s moat
• Famously Single, Brandi Glanville’s new and ludicrously titled VH1 show
• The Egyptian debt crisis
• How long it took to create the Marcia Clark wig Sarah Paulson’s wearing on The People vs. OJ Simpson and what form of possum the wig is made from
• The likelihood that Kathryn isn’t real at all and she’s just a cyborg created in a Slovakian laboratory under the direction of Aviva Drescher, the fired New York Housewife who’s undoubtedly got some free time on her hands. My belief? Aviva fashioned “Kathryn” in her likeness and gave her two full legs and stuck her on this show to destroy the people who had the nerve to dismiss her even after she heaved a prosthetic limb across a dining room. Aviva and her programmed sidekick will not stop until they’ve burned this mother*cking franchise to the ground and made all of them, including King Andy Cohen, suffer for not realizing the depths of her depravity.
Now that’s a conspiracy theory.
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.com in paperback and for your Kindle. Also be sure to check out her website at nellkalter.com. Her twitter is @nell_kalter.