Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap – 3/8/16

For the love of all that is holy, can these women please stop throwing dinner parties? A plodding exercise in both pure futility and vicious verbal brutality, The Dinner Party scenes on The Real Housewives of Wherever always seem like they should be accompanied by ominous studio scoring. Nobody at the dinner will eat a thing. Not one person will be understood better than she was before she walked in the door and planted two fake kisses on her hostess’ cheeks. No woman at that table will suddenly shout, “Eureka!” as she instantaneously decides that you were right and she was wrong during the soup course. Accept it, ladies: the evening will be a long and twisted nightmare from which you cannot awake. You probably won’t even be able to escape quickly because your car isn’t there since there’s apparently a clause in the Housewives contract that requires that you carpool to all events with the person whose name you plucked from one of Kyle’s Chanel caps. (Shhhh: the hat is as fake as its owner.) But really, regardless of how I feel about any of these strangers, there’s no denying that they’re all relatively smart women – except for Kathryn, who comes off as a moron – and I cannot for the life of me figure out the logic behind showing up at someone’s house when you just know it’s going to end badly.

And really, what is left for these people to discuss? Any retreading of past issues will again lead to no concrete resolutions and gathering together will surely just spawn even further animosity. You know what that means? It means the Reunion will end up being a FIVE-PART travesty instead of a three-part shit show and Kim Richards will show up so she and her sister can cry on opposite couches as they explain to the world at large that the only hope of mending their shattered relationship is to embrace privacy.

This week, it’s Erika who is throwing the party and to that I have but one question: Why? While I’d love to pretend that the occasion is to celebrate International Women’s Day or that she’s officially reclaimed the word “c*nt” and believes she must mark the occasion with a cake shaped like a vagina, I’m pretty sure she just drew the short straw at the last production meeting. Erika has already decided that Lisa Vanderpump is a manipulative alligator who likes to slink around in various shades of pink so she can undermine those around her while asking unbelievably intrusive questions like, “So, how long have you known Yolanda?” Yes, the woman is a monster. Erika has also snarled while watching Lisa Rinna question Yolanda’s illness and she clearly believes Kyle is a waste of space, to say nothing of the fact that it was confirmed last week that Kathryn completely betrayed her and then blamed Erika for it because she made the mistake of speaking. What else might someone in Erika’s position do now except call a caterer and welcome these women into her home? I’m confused. Are we supposed to act like any of this makes sense? Are we expected to think that Erika will seat herself across from Lisa Vanderpump and muse to herself, “I was wrong about this woman! She’s a delight!” Are we being asked to develop some hope that this season will skid to an end with all of these women suddenly friends? Or are we just being encouraged to form our very own March Madness brackets and take bets on which Housewife will walk out of that dinner party with her dignity intact? (Anyone who slots Kathryn as the winner is a total sucker. I’d put all of Lisa Vanderpump’s livestock ahead of Kathryn’s chances at victory.)

We’ll get to the start of tonight’s episode in just a moment, but first allow me to say that I intentionally did not watch Andy Cohen’s interview with Kim Richards that preceded the show. I cannot stand Kim Richards and since I don’t believe anything that escapes from her mouth anyway, I decided that I didn’t need to tune in. However, at 8:57 I flipped on my television to get ready to write this recap and I caught the last three minutes of the – well, let’s go ahead and call it an interview. Andy played a clip of some horrific reality show this beacon of strength is starring in with her beleaguered child. In the clip, Kim bursts into tears, an act that is pretty par for the course. When the clip blessedly ends, Kim is asked why she did the show. I swear on my life, I’d actually develop some respect for her if she just answered, “For the cash,” or “My mother once told me that I’d whither away and die if cameras weren’t pointed in my direction,” but no – Kim Richards can’t speak in honest (or complete) sentences. Instead we got an answer that included flapping hands and oddly dissonant sounds emitting from her body. I harnessed my inner Dian Fossey and deduced that the woman is either drinking again and that’s why she behaves this way or she’s just completely batsh*t crazy and absolutely nothing will ever cure her. By the way, she indicated through sign language that she thought it would be a ton of fun to be on a show like that with her daughter and that weepy clip sure looked like a hell of a lot of fun. In any case, it’s time now to get on with this show, the one Kim was fired from in spite of the prayers she said while crouching beside trashcans.

Tonight we begin with Erika getting beautified by her crew. They tend to her like she’s S&M Barbie and she informs them that she’s having her dinner party so all of the women can meet her husband at once. I can only imagine how many of his guests Tom will eventually bring litigation against, but I’m more perplexed as to why Erika believes throwing a dinner for people she doesn’t particularly care for makes any sense. As I realize I will never have an answer to that question (we can toss it on the list alongside Is there really a heaven? and What exactly is wrong with Kanye West?), let’s just move on.

Yolanda FaceTimes Erika just then. She’s lying in her bed and wrapped up in a robe. She looks awful and I don’t think that’s up for dispute. What could be up for dispute is why she didn’t just call Erika instead of making sure her lethargic appearance showed up onscreen. Does she only FaceTime people? Can someone please teach this woman how to text? She’ll have some free time on her hands tonight because she’s too sick to go to the dinner party, but she’s not worried about not showing up. She knows that nobody will dare mention her name because nobody wants to be the recipient of Yolanda’s next scolding email that will be shot through cyberspace in the dead of night while all of the normal people slumber.

It’s carpool time and Lisa Rinna and Kathryn have been scheduled to ride to Erika’s house together. Rinna keeps getting stuck in the worst car rides, huh? Hopefully Kathryn won’t randomly start whispering, “F*ck you,” at Lisa like Kim did that one time but I’m really more concerned that Lisa doesn’t know Kathryn’s Life Rules. Does she understand that anything she says will be passed on to a skywriter by evening’s end? Kathryn doesn’t seem to be nervous in the least about dining in the home of a woman she so recently and callously betrayed and I just realized something: I don’t get Kathryn and I don’t really want to try to get her. I think she kind of sucks as a person.

Back at Erika’s – the scene of the future crime – we learn that she doesn’t cook and she never tells her husband about the catty sh*t that goes down in her life. Since my impression is that he wouldn’t listen to her anyway, that’s probably a wise move. Besides, the women Erika hates will be arriving imminently and Tom will be able to see their flaws for himself. He won’t be getting the whole picture, though, because a bunch of the women won’t be there. Eileen’s busy filming a scene that takes place in an inferno, Kyle is either fasting or breaking the fast for Yom Kippur, and Yolanda is currently spooning with her health advocate. Lucky bitches.

Observation # 1 for tonight? Lisa Rinna might have called shotgun on all things leopard, but she will not force Erika to go upstairs and change out of her leopard print dress because she’s terrified of the woman. Observation #2? Kathryn has no idea that her food is about to be poisoned.