Hello, pals! First things first: If you saw a familiar name underneath a friendly, lumpy Jewish face on last night’s Watch What Happens Live, it’s because I was the bartender on the show! A huge THANK YOU to all of the commenters who encouraged the kind and attractive folks at Bravo to make that happen. My only regret was that I didn’t put some Ensure and a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter into Taylor’s cocktail. Bitch needs to gain another ten pounds YESTERDAY.
Moving onto the main event! Last night’s episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was, sadly, another round of crappy foreplay before whatever coitus is, hopefully, coming our way soon. And to showcase such boring non-hijinks on a trip, no less? The horror. Even tourists to this franchise know that whenever Real Housewives go away together, crazy stuff happens. Vegas Casinos are snubbed, Suitcases are gotten into, and entire New York City pizzas are left while Kelsey Grammer is still getting into character, blocks away. But apparently no cast member this season got the drama memo! WAS THE DRAMA MEMO LOST IN TRANSIT? Did Giggy eat the drama memo? Did the drama memo disappear along with Jill Zarin’s Bravo presence and the expression “I didn’t get the memo,” of which she was particularly fond? Nobody knows. But after the “Shut the fuck up” comment Brandi lobbed at Adrienne during dinner their first night in Ojai, the ladies pretty much got along and behaved themselves. And I am not okay with this! Come on, you chicken birds! Start pecking! Don’t be the “homework television” to Real Housewives of Miami’s Spring Break TV! Mama Elsa can only do so much heavy lifting.
So, last night’s episode began with an extensive discussion of whether or not it was okay for Brandi to have told Adrienne to shut the fuck up at the dinner table. If you remember, Kim and Brandi were trying to have a moment. Brandi was telling Kim that she, too, had experienced lonely times that she abetted with alcohol and Lexipro. And Kim, because she has been an unraveling spool of emotional thread since the season began and possibly since the beginning of time, began to cry. And when she did, Adrienne, witnessing the action from the other end of the table, said in a sing-song mocking sort of way, “Uh-oh! Somebody’s crying!” And that was sort of callous and shitty; like if a mom witnessed one of her son’s friends picking on another boy and decided to bully the weaker one in front of the other kids at recess. Anyway, Brandi said “Call it out, why don’t you?” to Adrienne, which was too abstract for her to grasp intellectually, so Adrienne asked what that phrase was supposed to mean, and that’s when Brandi said, “It means ‘Shut the fuck up.’” Gasps were heard, teacups dropped, monocles were sprouted from eye sockets out of thin air only to pop out of them moments later, and Kate Middleton suddenly got pregnant. Why, I never! The F word? In Ojai? You don’t say.
That was all last week, by the way. The extent of whatever action transpired last night was all in the group’s reaction to that non-event. So, post-F-Bomb, Kim, Brandi, and Yolanda went to the bathroom together while the rest of the gals sat around the table and talked about how inappropriate it was for Brandi to have said what she had to Adrienne. And Lisa Vanderpump was in the unenviable position of having to defend her pal Brandi, because Kyle and Adrienne and pretty much everybody else besides Camille, who I think only signed on to return this season to give silent, smoldering eye-bulging realness to the camera, were just chewing up and spitting out over and over again the fact that the lady with the nice body said a naughty word out loud.
And meanwhile, in the ladies’ room, Kim cried into a paper towel while Brandi apologized to her AGAIN for accusing her of doing Crystal Meth last year during Dana-Pam’s Game Night. And Kim was just like, “That was so mean! Wherever could you have gotten that idea?” And Brandi just looked down instead of showing Kim that episode of Breaking Bad where Jesse watched a lady kill her boyfriend with an ATM.
Back at the table, Kyle — who I DO NOT LIKE — kept telling Lisa how her friend used the wrong word to talk to Adrienne, and Lisa was like “Yes, Kyle. You’re right, Kyle. Shut up, Kyle.” Finally, when Brandi came back to the table, Lisa told her “Psst — say you’re sorry or these women will eat you alive and then skip dessert.” So Brandi obligatorily bleated, “I am sorry for saying the F word.” Adrienne said “Apology accepted,” not meaning it at all, and the dinner then resumed in awkward silence. What to talk about? How shall we change the subject? Is everybody enjoying their beef? Luckily, we didn’t have to worry about which topic would be newly introduced into the fray, because just then, Brandi’s phone rang with news that her literary agent sold her book about how divorce is not cancer.
“I got a book deal!” Brandi told a table of her enemies. “It’s about my divorce.” And Taylor eyes bulged out while Adrienne mirrored her horror, and the two joked that they should breathe in through their noses and out through their mouths because the news of Brandi’s book was very stressful.
Why aren’t you happy for other women? Brandi wondered. And Kyle pointed out that the reason Taylor and Adrienne weren’t high-fiving her had to do with (1) how much they hated her in general and (2) how Brandi had opined that the timing of the release of Taylor’s book was not classy. Remember? Taylor wrote a book about her experience being married to Russell, and she said she’d done it for the women who were killed every minute due to domestic violence, but she really wrote it because she was broke and needed the money? Which is PERFECTLY FINE, by the way? On the record: I don’t judge any of these women for writing books. They judge each other because it’s fuel for the vitriol they naturally exude toward each other’s bodies and spirits.
Therefore, Brandi’s book announcement was met with uneasy tension and a general, un-zen spitefulness. Brandi told Taylor that her book would be different than Taylor’s, because she’s writing it three years after her ex-husband left her for Leann Rimes, and Taylor said that wasn’t different from her situation at all, and then they raised their voices which “embarrassed” Kyle and caused Yolanda to wonder whether the ladies were from another planet because why else would they be sitting around a table talking about anything besides how great her husband, David Foster, is at making music? And during the gang’s reluctant toast to Brandi’s accomplishment, Adrienne raised her iced tea and added, at the most bizarre time possible, that she, too, was going to write a book. What? Huh? Who? What? Brandi said in her testimonial that Adrienne couldn’t be smart enough to write anything besides a children’s book, and I think I speak for everybody when I say how much I’d actually love to see the Berenstein Bears learn how to rid a casino of bed bugs.
The next morning, four of the women went on a hike after comparing diamond rings and asking Camille when she will one day marry her large penis-ed Greek friend. And Lisa told Brandi, who looked resplendent even with minimal makeup on, that she was giving the ladies a gift when she used the F word in front of them. The gift of proof to use against her! Brandi also mentioned that Adrienne had contacted her early that year after she and Paul had received “Twitter threats” in light of their Vander-conflict, and Brandi refused to defend her online then, adding “I’m not your puppet, bitch,” a fun song that Taylor Swift will one day cover with a ventriloquist dummy on her bony lap. Meanwhile, Lisa Vander-fabulous opened a packet of Emergen-C with her French Manicured nails and sipped a glass of water on her bed wearing a pink V-neck T-shirt and effortlessly looked like a Bronzino painting. Bitch has so much class it hurts me physically. Also, when it came to her advice to Brandi, she was right. “Say that last part again?” She was right. She was right. She was right.
After this came a golf cart drag race between Lisa and Yolanda that I will not dignify with a description. And then, the ladies played badminton badly, which was also dumb and silly and not worth my time writing about. Inevitably, the Housewives ended up in a spa around a tub, wearing three things made out of towel materials — wraps, robes and slippers. As they reclined, Kim spoke about the upcoming treatment they would be enduring together as a very spiritual one. The mud would come from God, or something? She was basically speaking Tracy Chapman lyrics out loud like they were dialogue on the page of a Witch Mountain script, and everybody around her politely nodded.
Once they all shuffled into a dark room, a thin spa lady with glasses explained that the abalone shells they were all given were filled with a detoxifying, hydrating thing of some kind, and the next thing I knew, the women were all rubbing mud on each others’ bodies and Kim was making orgasm noises. Pretty harmless stuff, until a beat later, when you take into account the ice water fight that ensued and Kyle’s impression of a monkey. Look, none of this is important. All you have to know is: The girls were goofing around and blowing off steam by acting childishly and getting along instead of acting childishly and fighting for real, or sitting quietly and letting the mud do its job.
Then, the ladies met Chad Minton, the executive chef of the Ojai Valley Lodge, Inn, Spa, Mud Shack, and Food Hut. He recited a monologue about the chicken and beets they would soon be eating, and then a sommelier came around with a bottle of champagne designed by Gaultier, because, he posited with a straight face, the ladies were all so fashion-conscious and beautiful. And that is when we learned that Yolanda wasn’t drinking because she hurt her back after she gave birth to her 10-year-old son, and was taking injections of baby lamb cells to combat that condition, and naturally you can’t combine alcohol with baby lamb cells, you stupid dummy.
After a fun chat about whether the other ladies also had difficult childbirths, the women soon retired to the drinking suite, where Taylor distributed Patron and Taylor put her fingers under her lips and made them dance around like silly worms.
And that was Yolanda and Kim’s cue to leave. Said Yolanda, “I want to get up early and exercise and have an Ojai day.” And Kim echoed delightfully in the sporadic third person, “If I could stay up and party, I would! But … Kim’s gotta go!” After making sure she knew Brandi knew she did not love her, Kim adjourned to her sober room. And that’s when the rest of the gals decided to full-on act out like goofy boozy-bubs. Taylor and Brandi arm-wrestled, and then Brandi arm-wrestled Adrienne, and soon the girls took turns doing handstands on the bed, cackling like Witchiepoos, and dancing, hoe-down style like they were yee-haw donkey-riders. Also, I think I saw Taylor’s bare entertainment system. She was waxed, though, so I didn’t have the chance to say “So THAT’S where Snowball the dog ended up!” Maybe I will use that gem another time.
The next morning, Kim paired granny glasses with spa slippers and told us that the trip was nice, but that it didn’t help her and Kyle bond as sisters. And Kyle recapped the previous night’s Drunk Olympics to Yolanda, while Yolanda made sure we knew that she got up to work out at 6 a.m. so that she could continue to look crazy in a yoga tank and rosary choker. “There’s nothing worse than a drunk woman,” the Dutch Ellen Barkin proclaimed, a statement more transparent to telegraphing ironic action to come that a line of dialogue ascribed to a character in a movie where thunder is about to clap: “Well, at least it’s not raining!”
Then, the ladies headed back to Beverly Hills in a humvee limo, an action that said “Fuck you, environment! Thanks for the weekend in your hilly bosom.” And after Lisa blazed through her estimable grab bag of impressions of all the other ladies, Kyle decided to recap the “Shut the Fuck Up Dinner.” Cool idea, Kyle. Brandi and Adrienne had some words over their Humvee Starbuckses about what both of them meant, exactly. and we finally left the episode with some ambiguity concerning whether or not Adrienne and Brandi would make up for good. Zzzzzzz.
Next week, thank God, it looks like some sparks will fly between Paul and Brandi! And will Ken be okay? Of course he will. He’s got those Ozzy Osbourne genes! And it looks like we have some more Kim/Kyle passive aggressive hijinks to look forward to.
What did you think? Was this week’s episode the snoozefest I’m painting it as? Or should I just cheerfully swap out my gloomy palette for some rosé-and-diamond-hued swatches? Did I miss any noteable quotables? Was Brandi out of line at dinner and am I excessively loyal to her, foul mouth, hot bod, and all? Tell me in the comments below! Oh, and please say I looked thin on WWHL. It’s literally all I care about. That and, you know, God taking care of his children. With his … God mud.
See you next week!
