The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills recap: Oh yes, it's '80s night
I do love when these women cosplay as cool, laidback concert-going gals. I love even more when they can’t take it anymore, someone makes one innocuous comment, and all the wheels come flying off in a gravel parking lot. No matter how many cropped leather jackets they wear, no matter how many Fly Girls moves they do in a box at The Greek, no matter how many times we pretend that managing Boy George is a whole job—a Beverly Hills Housewife cannot change her Missoni stripes.
Similarly fleeting, over the last half-season, these women might have briefly come together to knock Lisa Vanderpump off her high horse, but now that she’s fallen down so deep into the hole where her kitchen sink used to be that no one can find her, they are rapidly turning on one another…
And I love it. Teddi and Dorit were never meant to be friends; even when she wants nothing to do with them, Kyle and Dorit are perma-betas who will forever be competitive over LVP’s friendship; Rinna, as a self-proclaimed shit-stirrer is actually thriving, and listen, I enjoy watching a woman in her happy place. That Camille said Rinna was “unfair” to her last week when she compared herself to Brett Kavanaugh, especially after hearing what Rinna’s mother went through in her youth (as a reminder: assaulted and nearly murdered by a serial killer), made me hope she somehow gets shut inside one of LVP’s $300,000 worth of new kitchen cabinets for the rest of the season.
Also, you cannot make women over 30 wear matching cap-sleeve bridesmaid dresses—it’s immoral.
One woman, however, is exempt from this sinking ship because she exists in her own reality where she understands absolutely none of what has transpired over the last two months. And even more importantly, she exists in an alternate world where she has an occasional concern that she—hold onto your Birkin bags—has made a single wrong decision in her life. I wish I had video footage of my jaw unhinging from the rest of my head for the scene where Denise Richards got emotional wondering if she had done a disservice to her children by trying to hide the ugliness of her divorce from Charlie Sheen from them.
First of all, Denise seems like a great mom, so I agree with Aaron (her husband that she has sex and works out with every single morning!), that she surely did the best she could. But second of all, who is this woman? I assumed it was part of the Housewives contract to never, ever admit any wrongdoing. Seeing one of these women seriously consider that she could have been wrong about something, and reflect on how she could have done things differently felt truly, truly nuts…
But not as nuts as both enjoying and agreeing with one Teddi Jo Mellencamp for almost an entire episode!
Teddi is a know-it-all as Camille accuses her of being in Tuesday’s episode…but even a broken clock is right twice a day. And guaranteed, each and every one of those times is going to be a time when she’s opposing Dorit—you can never go wrong with opposing Dorit, who is always, always wrong, and usually wearing mesh while doing it. Teddi and Kyle start the episode by taking their young daughters to a photo shoot for a brand of children’s makeups which I was fully prepared to malign, but y’know what? It ended up being quite adorable. If little girls want to put glitter on their cheeks and hold hands and grin at each other while a woman who scouted Portia on Instagram snaps photos, it could be worse.
Case in point: the rest of the episode until the women finally go to this damn Boy George concert. Until they strap on their platform motorcycle boots and Members Only jackets (there must have been a dress code listed somewhere), these ladies are just sitting at tables talking about each other. Dorit goes over to Kyle’s house to talk about how crAaaaAAAaaAaAaazy it was that they found out Lisa Vanderpump claimed not to be invited to last week’s shower at the very same meal where Camille wept for Brett Kavanaugh, her self-proclaimed spiritual twin. They agree that LVP has disappeared from the face of the earth because she’s too scared to face everybody since she prefers to surround herself with people who never tell her when she’s wrong. “That’s what friends do—you call each other out, and you grow and learn from that,” Kyle says.
But that’s not the narrative LVP is weaving. “You don’t treat people you love like that,” Lisa tells Denise when she takes her to lunch. “You don’t scream at people and let them go to bed in tears if you love them.” Denise wants Lisa to know that the other women do still care about her and miss her, and—this is the part where we understand that LVP’s only current ally is an actual capital-s Stranger to her—really wish she would come on the upcoming RV camping trip with them. LVP says they could be “going shopping with George Clooney in Paris” and she still wouldn’t go. But an RV trip? It seems we’ve seen the last of Lisa Vanderpump on RHOBH group vacations.
Finally, after Dorit’s son has peed in Kyle’s backyard, and LVP has sensually kissed the largest of her dogs on the mouth, it’s time for the Boy George concert that Dorit has invited everyone to. I want to state for the record that Boy George seems like a very enjoyable person and a skilled performer—and I cannot understand how he tolerates PK. It’s logical that Dorit can tolerate PK because they are two disingenuous, tryhard monsters of the same synthetic cloth. But a cool person? I just don’t get it.
When Dorit arrives backstage at the concert, PK is just bursting to tell her about his conversation with “Kenny” (a.k.a., Ken Todd). Despite being sure that Lisa Vanderpump planted stories about them abusing animals in tabloids, PK and Dorit are desperate to rekindle their friendship with Lisa and Ken. And something about that is fishy. If you feel both wronged by a friend, and that friend is making no effort to apologize to you or seek forgiveness, why would you still want to be friends with them??
Well, I guess you could be a pair of disingenuous tryhards, for one. These two are in their element, showing off their glamorous Boy George lifestyle to Kyle, Teddi, Lisa Rinna, and Erika tonight. They hang out with Boy George and Billy Idol backstage, and Teddi gets to look cool for being very accustomed to this kind of scene as John Mellencamp’s daughter…and also for seeming to have owned the clothes she’s wearing before two hours ago. Everyone has three margaritas and goes full “Margarita Kyle,” dancing along to Boy George and special guest Gladys Knight. It really does seems like a good time…
And then PK comes into the mix.
After the concert, the women and PK are hanging out with Boy George backstage, congratulating him on a great concert. And, to be fair, Margarita Kyle opens up a very weird line of questioning where she asks Boy George if he’s ever scared for his safety onstage. He says no. She persists: doesn’t he feel vulnerable to attack being one person watched by thousands? This might be a reasonable thought to have flit through your mind as a non-performer, but it’s also like asking a surgeon if they’re ever afraid they’re going to kill someone—the answer is almost definitely yes, but you don’t ask them about it.
Boy George, however, doesn’t seem to mind that Kyle is being weird—but PK does. He lets her get about halfway into the first question, and snaps, “Nobody thinks that.” She reiterates the thought one more time, and PK blusters from across the room, “You could have issues, you can’t even get on with your best friend, so you could have issues.”
The room goes silent and PK oozes, “It’s a jooooke.” You know how I know PK wasn’t joking? Because this transition doesn’t make any sense. Kyle is asking Boy George if he’s ever scared for his safety when he’s onstage because…she…can’t get along…with her best friend? No! It’s just something he was dying to say. And it quickly becomes clear that PK intends to use this rift between LVP and everyone else to position himself and Dorit as her number one friends instead of Kyle. Kyle snaps back that he’s in the exact same boat with LVP as she is, and he waves his “almost an hour” conversation with “Kenny” to her like some pathetic badge of honor.
PK, I don’t believe Ken can sleep for a whole hour without having to get up and go to the bathroom, I certainly don’t think you two were gabbing for 56 minutes about rekindling your friendship.
Margarita Kyle is starting to get really annoyed, saying, “The whole reason I even got into this situation was speaking up on your wife’s behalf!” Said wife is trying to explain to the stunned women that this is just an example of signature British humor like Boy George uses too, and Boy George (plus all of England) are like <Jonah Hill Oscars cut-it-out gif>.
Finally, the other women agree it’s time to go, and Dorit stays behind to explain to her husband, “When you say a joke and you hurt someone’s feelings, then you say I’m very sorry.” PK scoffs that he did, which he absolutely did not, and I would not be shocked to find out that the words “I’m sorry” deploy some kind of self-destruct device in PK. That man has never apologized in his life.
Kyle is fuming about PK as she, Rinna, Teddi, and Camille sit outside waiting for the car. She mutters, “It’s all based on your f–king wife, and you giving up your f–king dog.” And I would love for her to continue that train of thought for approximately the next four episodes, but as usual, Dorit arrives to ruin all my fun at that exact moment. She raises her hands in the air and motor-mouths that she understands how Kyle feels, but PK is just very comfortable with her, and he didn’t mean it as an insult. Teddi jumps in to say that the hardest part isn’t what he said, but that he followed up by talking about how good he and Ken are.
Dorit’s eyes go black and she fumes, “That doesn’t matter, I’m not talking about that right now, Teddi, do me a favor let me HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH KYLE FOR TWO SECONDS!”
Dorit hates Teddi so much, and I almost respect her in this moment for ever so briefly letting down her façade. These tenuous friendships they created to go up against Lisa Vanderpump were never built to last, and it is my genuine hope that this all comes crashing to the ground so that Andy Cohen can rebuild this franchise from the ashes, phoenix-style.
But of course, everyone just snaps at each other for a little while and agrees to move past it. With any luck though, this will turn into Dorit and Kyle secretly trying to see who can rekindle their friendship with Lisa Vanderpump the fastest. That or Ken pushes PK into a pool—whichever comes first!
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