On last night’s Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, one lady celebrated a monumental birthday, while another celebrated administering a monumental dose of comeuppance with the touch of her bejeweled-gloved fingers.
While Lisa Vanderpump is stewing in the juices of last season’s arguments, Kyle Richards is cruising around in a Lamborghini with Lisa Rinna. Look at Kyle, just gloating on air like the revolution of a Lambo’s wheels, so happy is she to be the appointed so-called peace-maker. Under Kyle’s caftan is a haven of support and unconditional gossip.
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Kyle is already annoying me. I can’t stand when she pretends to play mediator. She’s really just using other people’s issues to get attention and be in the middle of drama so she feels important. Inevitably, Kyle will botch this re-friendship situation, then turn it all into how no one supported her when she was there for them and make it all about herself. Kyle should just let someone like Erika Girardi – someone with more aplomb and smarts and less need for lavished praise – occupy the mediator role, while she sits there and makes goofy jokes. Kyle is at her best when she plays the Family Guy character who invaded RHOBH.
The funniest thing that came out of Kyle and Lipsa’s car ride to a row, row, your mouth exercise class was Lipsa admitting that when she input Dorit Kemsley into her iPhone, it got auto-corrected to “Dorito.” I too have been afflicted with that problem, and Dorit is filled with cheese crunch and possesses a rather fake-flavored accent, so perhaps it isn’t all that far from truth?
Well, someone loves Dorit Of Dorito-land just as she is, and that would be her husband PK. Sometimes one really does find their soulmate in a bar over banter – the British word for “small talk” (yes, I know PK was being facetious). Dorit is turning 40, which requires something all Real Housewives everywhere love above all else: a giant, expensive, silly-themed party all about them! For this one, PK is keeping Dorit in the dark and won’t let her be involved in any of the planning.
Honestly, though, what do you get the woman who has everything? What do you get the woman who never goes within 5 miles of her own house? Other than Challa bread, you get her a $230,000 Bentley the color of over-egged Challa that she almost crashes in her own driveway. Whew, Dorit dodged a bullet! She almost got stuck with a “Tiffany blue Maserati” – how embarrassing!
What do you get the other woman who has everything, including mini horses? Well, a full-fledged horse she can ride on, of course! LVP has now added to her menagerie a horse named His Royal Highness, Prince Tardon, specifically for her to ride atop and cast her imperial glances down upon the rest of us. Never a seat in the saddle of battle was so comfortably occupied. Not even by Napoleon!
The horse, like Lisa’s conscious, is snow-white and of a rare breed of unimpeachable lineage. After dismounting from her trot ’round the ring, she murmurs to Ken, ever-present ego-guard, that she knows Dorit is too good of a friend to ever talk shit about her. Well, that sure sounds like a healthy dose of foreshadowing.
In Erika Jayne land, T-shirts are the new dresses, and dancers are multiplying their legs into splits, because it’s time for a NEW ERICA JAYNE video. You know you’ve been waiting with bated breath…
Why does Erika have an entourage and enterprise as if she’s Beyonce? Sure, she’s got a kitschy kind of talent, but she’s no musical superstar, except in her own mind, and perhaps Eileen Davidson‘s and Tom’s. I swear, Don’t Be Tardy For The Party is more popular on iTunes (and Kim Zolciak hasn’t left her dressing room mirror since 2012.)
Anyway, the latest video requires dancers with butts who can do splits in a bathing suit. Mikey, Erika’s what is he – like Oversee-er of the VaJayneJay? – is leading the casting and informs Erika that she too will need to do a drop split in a bikini. This makes Erika so sick with anxiety she goes home to vomit for two days, and ends up so disoriented she gifts Dorit a Chanel purse Erika herself has been lusting after. Is that also why she forgot to wear pants to Dorit’s party?
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Well, Eileen has momentarily – I said momentarily! – stopped reminiscing about the apology LVP owes her in order to reminisce about her many years on Y&R. A part of me still loves Eileen. She’s got a certain, um, innate sophistication. That said, I hate the super white-blonde highlights. They are to Eileen’s head what Vinnie’s jeans are to Dorit’s birthday party. I also hate that, try as she pretends she might, Eileen (like LVP) finds it impossible to simply move on.
At Lipsa’s house, her daughter makes spaghetti with zucchini and they all eat like two bites before talking about Cindy Crawford giving Delilah modeling advice. This makes Amelia sulky, because she wants to model, too. We also learn Lipsa grew up eating tater-tots, spam, and TV dinners – which explains a lot about her level of fakery!
On the bright side, Lipsa has decided she is completely over any drama with LVP. In this sentiment I feel Lipsa is genuine. She doesn’t like conflict – at least not with real friends – and she did genuinely enjoy her relationship with Lisa. So Lipsa realizes it’s better to open her lips good and wide to eat crow, or whatever it is LVP will put on the menu at SUR for this display of subSURviance. Just hope it’s not Jax Taylor, naked, on a platter!
Now it’s time for Dorito to add an extra layer of flavor by celebrating her birthday. Dorit doesn’t trust PK with her party because he’s usually very blasé with the details. For a woman accustomed to micromanaging, this is causing her nose to run with anxiety. She also barks at her hairdresser that he’s over-touching her hair, like it’s Kim Richards’ chicken salad or something!
Luckily, PK has other tricks up his sleeves, though. The evening starts out as your classic overly-stuffy cocktail party in what was once the great divorce room of J.Lo and Marc Anthony. Now, you know Kyle is going to be sidling up to Dorit extra-hard just in case she’d ever like to list this highly pedigreed (but dull as stucco) mansion. Just in case the fumes of an unhappy marriage haven’t been saged out enough to satisfy the current owners and are now ever-so-slightly haunting… Just in case!
Anyway, for a man light on details, PK has pulled out all the stops – even hiring mini Hummer golf carts to ferry guests from the bottom of the driveway (where valet takes their car) to the front door. This proves to be even too much walking for LVP and her hella impractical heels. That was quite a look, right? Somewhat Elvira-ish, made for statement bitchiness glamour with those giant be-blinged gloves Erika was probably salivating over; and that choker, which I’m sure doubled as taser or a tranquilizer capsule holder, or a hypnoic stun-gun to neutralize and manipulate her enemies. Well, it sure worked on Lipsa, who accepted all of LVP’s snarking with good-natured flippancy. It was total ‘fake it til you make it’, but that’s Lisa’s general operating mode and it was the right track to take.
Apparently this party had a red or black dress code? But then Erika arrived wearing a T-shirt with heels. It may have been a designer t-shirt, but it was still ugly as sin, and it also sinned in violating Dorit’s carefully-crafted dress code. The lace on Dorit’s gown stiffened as she tried to brush off Erika’s disorderly conduct, but you could see it festering inside Dorit in a way that couldn’t be smoothed over. Not even with Chanel + gift receipt. Erika is drinking only water because she’s ill. Maybe she rolled out of bed in her sleep shirt and slapped on some heels and ran out the door? The worst part is those boxy tunic-styles just aren’t flattering on her – she’s too curvy and they make her look dumpy.
Eileen radiated in red, Kyle wore something predictably unflattering, and signifying that they’ll patch things up that night, the Lisas both wore black jumpsuits.
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Eileen and LVP experience an awkward moment that was one for the soaps. LVP approaches Eileen and they rather slyly quasi-interrogate each other, country-club kindness style, and then LVP says, “I’m sorry…” Causing Eileen to reel back slightly, with surprise, until Lisa continues explaining that she is sorry Eileen’s mom passed. NOT for anything else.
Eileen stumbles the recovery and admits [to us] that she actually thought – for one inopportune minute – that LVP was apologizing for the affair drama of last season. Eileen – don’t even start that again! Don’t. Even. Start. Later, Eileen jokingly confesses her gaffe to LVP, who will smirk that, even if hell froze over, she wouldn’t apologize for that.
For Kyle, this tepid conversation between LVP and Eileen, however stilted and slimy, is still real progress. She’s super impressed at how well they’re getting along. Apparently Kyle is treating the many fractures of her friend group like a mom cheering on her little kid’s soccer game: giving lots of positive feedback and helpful tips in a fake supportive way, clapping overly-enthusiastically from the side-lines, silently holding her breath while her eyes ping-pong back and forth, and murmuring to the other parents about close calls and good plays and the other team’s bad ref. Real Micro-Mom-Agers of Beverly Hills!
At first, Dorit is less than wowed by PK’s party, because Hummer golf cart taxis aren’t enough. Unless you’re Lipsa, who is impressed and notes, “These people have some money.” That they do – I wonder how they get it? An underground smuggling operation of Boy George‘s used eyeliner tubes? Sold exclusively to Kyle?
Then PK unveils the real party. He’s covered the entire backyard into a lounge – everything shrouded in red and black, with sushi, ice sculptures, a dance floor, and a rather wonky close-up painting of Dorit’s face on what looked like a giant bath towel. She complains about it until PK informs her that Boy George painted it, so she swallows her gripes with a gulp of champs. Oops!
While everyone is bee-bopping around and eating lots of sushi to make up for Erika starving them at her party, Lipsa pulls LVP onto the dance floor and announces that it’s time to be friends again and none of LVP turning those crystal gloves into pointed barbs and jabs is going to deter her. Lipsa proves sincerity by apologizing for being a shitty friend last season and she doesn’t even expect an apology in return. Instantly, LVP decides they’re good again.
With Eileen, on the other hand, not so much. While Erika is lecturing PK on how Americans aren’t stupid, LVP is wielding that spicy British humor. Or so she says…
When Eileen can’t find Vinnie (look for the only guy wearing dad jeans with a blazer), Lisa casually adjusts her opera-length gloves and wryly suggests that she may have seen him with his head up another woman’s skirt. Then she just let’s it hang there for a second too long before insisting that she’s joking. This is what makes Lisa a professional HW and a genuinely riveting member of the reality TV community.
Eileen, armored with decades of professional soap experience and one season of LVP operating experience, grimaces, laughs, then walks away. I imagine her chanting to herself: “I will not let this get to me… I will not let this get to me… I will not let this get to me… It’s fine… I will just laugh until I convince myself that LVP is just trying to unsettle me… I will just keep my distance but be polite… ”
Now LVP knows full well if she made that joke to Dorit, Kyle, or even Erika, it would be just a saucy comment with no double-meaning; she also knew full well that this comment aimed at Eileen was meant to be mean. I fully agree that LVP should tread with caution in regards to these women, but she could show a little more grace.
Eileen just kept dancing the sting away… dancing, dancing…
When Kyle approached, specifically to ask Lipsa and Eileen how things were going with LVP, Eileen repeated the comment while erratically swinging her arms and swaying to the beat. As Lipsa and Kyle registered their shock over LVP’s audacity, Eileen still danced (probably imagining herself Erika Jayne – so girded by corsets, sexy clothes, sycophantic ‘gays’, and don’t give a f–k attitudes that she’s untouchable).
So, tsk, tsk, Kyle – consider yourself warned that LVP will take no prisoners!
TELL US – IS LVP BEING TOO HARD ON EILEEN AND LIPSA? BETTER BIRTHDAY PARTY: DORIT OR ERIKA?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]
