The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap: Just Deserts
This week on our favorite program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things! They took their daughter for a driving lesson in their Porsche, then yelled at them when they didn’t use the brakes, and then remembered that this is what Honda Civics and driver’s ed are for. They ordered their brand managers to tell their assistants to tell the butler to tell the house manager to change the color of the ribbons on the bee pollen that they were putting on the table as both a decoration and a bit of product placement. They brought 18 different pairs of shoes and 93 different Chanel bags for a four day trip to the desert so most of them will just be collecting dust and possibly melting in the heat because even though they paid countless thousands of dollars for them they’re still made of cheap glue in Chinese factories so that the two French families that own the companies can race each other to be the world’s first trillionaires when the closest most of us will ever get to trillionaires is if Nabisco decides to make a triangular Triscuit called a Trillionaire.
Yes, the rich women went to Sedona on Sutton’s private plane, but before that there were a few scenes back in boring old Los Angeles. Jen Tilly went over to Sutton’s house to talk about this trip to Sedona. Sutton says that she hasn’t been drinking that much, which means her purses are now much lighter because they don’t have to have both a bottle of vodka and grapefruit juice in them at all times. There’s also a strange interaction between Sutton and Jen when Sutton is talking about how she wants to be friends with Dorit now that no one on the show wants to put up with her. Jen says, using a silly voice, that Sutton can’t just show up and be like, “I want to be your friend now.” Sutton gets all upset, saying she knows she can’t and that Jennifer can’t mock her. Cool your jets, sister. Jen knows. She’s your only friend on the cast. Don’t go at her too. Also, this is Sutton’s fatal flaw: she has absolutely no sense of humor, especially about herself.
Next, Kyle goes over to Dorit’s house because she has shipped her children off to Florida for the season so that we don’t have to look at them at all. Ugh, thank God. Who wants to see children? No wait! I take that back. Did you get a load of Rachel’s son Kaius, who is back from camp and spitting zingers like when Rachel tries to carry his duffle bag and he says, “Come on, you haven’t been doing weights on the treadmill for nothing.” Look at this adorable little angel munchkin. He is a star. Build Next Gen LA around him and his sixth-grade class. It will be a giant hit.
No, Kyle went to Dorit’s so that she could talk more shit about PK, a UTI of the soul, and how he isn’t around for his children, has no money, won’t go to mediation, and is generally making Dorit’s life more miserable than a coach flight with an itchy butt. Kyle says this is surprising to her, again repeating this line that is not the kind of man she knows, but Dorit is totally right to check that. When your friend tells you their ex is a piece of garbage, you say, “Damn right! Take that man to the dump!” However, Kyle is also right that airing all of this on television probably isn’t the best way to go into divorce proceedings. Dorit says she wants to take care of this in mediation so it doesn’t have to go to court. As a human being, I want this for her. As the president and founder of the Real Housewives Institute, I want this to go to court. I want this to go to court so bad. Show me the financials! I want all the financials! Then we can get H&R Block to sponsor The Bravo Docket and give them seven accountants to comb through all the filings. I will listen to the entire 13-part podcast about this divorce while eating cashews and sipping lemon Spindrift from a martini glass.
Speaking of bad financials, I have to admit that the Eileen Davidson Accords are creaking under the weight of a blond woman known as Amanda Frances. This show really wants us to hate her, they’re working harder than both those gay hockey boys in a group shower to make us hate her, but we must wait. We have two more episodes! The story she tells about Erika at Kathy’s Gazebo Dinner and Gifting Suite is strange for a slew of reasons. She says that at Jen Tilly’s naked painting party she was talking to Erika about her two Cancer children and said that they’re “highly emotional.” Erika, who is a Cancer, “Do you think they’re highly emotional or are they mean?” Amanda responded that anger is an emotion, which Erika agreed with and the topic was dropped.
She says that Erika was trying to intimidate her or come at her negatively or something. I don’t know. I don’t get it. She seems to either be misinterpreting the situation or making something out of nothing. I assumed Erika was saying that, as a Cancer, they can be mean. It wasn’t a judgment, it was a description. After all, Cancers are crabs, and we all know they have claws. It’s also strange that she said she got Erika in that moment, like Erika was someone who was going to try to intimidate her or something. I don’t know. I don’t get it. I don’t get any of this.
What I also don’t get is Sutton’s response that, in that moment, Amanda didn’t get Erika in the way that she thinks she did. This could be read in several ways. It could be a read on Erika, whom we know Sutton has had issues with in the past, saying that Erika is mean and intimidating, but in a much more complex way than what was on display there. She could be saying that Erika’s badness is vast and multifaceted, and that she needs years to understand her darkness and complexity fully. Or it could be more generous to Erika, saying that she’s actually a good person who didn’t intend to be mean, and that Amanda is getting the surface-level flippancy but not the soft interior. Either way, she seems to be saying that Amanda either misinterpreted the situation or that she doesn’t really know Erika as well as she thinks she does, and maybe she should take some time before forming judgments. We’ll never know because Sutton doesn’t really elucidate her point.
When Amanda arrives on the private plane for the Sedona trip, Rachel, in confessional, is talking about everyone’s travel looks and says, “Amanda got on that plane with LV logos bigger than my head and really felt it.” There is no work for the rest of us to do. Thank you, Rachel, for your service.
But there is one issue I have with Rachel, and it’s that she FedEx-ed her luggage to Sedona because there was so much of it, and then it didn’t arrive on time. When I think about The Rachel Zoe Project, the only image I can conjure in my mind is of her and Brad Goreski shouting “Where are the dresses!?!?!?!?!” at each other ad nauseam, and I’m glad that we got a little bit of that flavor in this episode. But then I saw that Boz’s assistant, Nico (who, shhhhhhhh, I have a crush on), was with her on the trip. It’s getting to be too much. Why all this glam? Why all the assistants? Why ship the luggage? Why all of it? I get it’s a visual medium, and we want it to feel rich and expensive, but at this point, all the extra help is starting to feel like the Birkins; they only have it because all the rest of them have it, and they need to have it so they don’t look poor. Remember that one trip to France where Kyle was like, “And no glam!” Can’t we have that rule all the time? Or at least on the mini-trips? Let the ladies do their own hair and spend more time sniping at each other at dinner. That’s what this show is all about.
There’s not much sniping around the table. They’re mostly all just mad that Amanda won’t shut up and says she spent $10,000 on crystals once. Then Erika opens up about meeting a guy backstage at Mighty Hoopla while she was performing in London. Wait, I was backstage at Mighty Hoopla. How did I miss this? She tells the ladies not to get too crazy, that it’s still the early stages, but they’re still dating now, so maybe all the gushing is worth it.
But this trip is not about men, at least not according to Sutton. It’s about her introducing the group to Sutton Brown, her new persona, her new personality. She says that Sutton Brown is a fun person and a great friend, but this is Sutton’s problem: she’s always telling us about herself and not showing us who she really is. Erika says that if Sutton starts showing up consistently, then people will start to believe those things. But Sutton is just trying to get over her insecurities, of not being pretty enough or cool enough for the group, and on this night, she’s accomplished it. The stars are twinkling down at them, adding cool light to the 91-degree heat. The dirt of the desert is circling around in little eddies as the wind blends it together with the starlight. Somewhere in the distance, animals skitter and howl, unseen but heard. It’s a glorious night filled with laughter, drinks, and candlelight. It’s almost enough to make the rich women forget that there are still price tags on the crystals making the table sink under their weight.