Like the two brother coaches pitted against one another during this Sunday’s Beyoncé concert with sports on either side of it, so too did last night’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills pit sister against figurative sister. And we RHOBH fans felt like the hapless parents of two beloved children as we watched Brandi and Camille go face-to-flawless-face, but it had to be done. Here’s why: You can’t straddle the line between Team Maloof and Team Brandi. If you do, you’re doing the splits and a fishy face like that spineless loaf of bread with eyebrows, Kyle Richards. Now is the time we pick sides. We must. Let’s forge ahead.
The episode began where it left off, with all of the ladies but Kim and Adrienne in Las Vegas, politely learning how to pole dance so Brandi could feed her children. Camille, wearing a pink tee with her version of what a crucifix COULD look like if it had a sleeker design, busted out some of her gorgeous Club MTV booty moves on the pole, and the rest of the ladies gave the whole endeavor a sporting chance.
Marisa Zanuck said something about how her version of sex appeal is a woman who supports herself, and clearly the world agrees, if Janet Reno’s eighteenth Maxim cover is any proof.
Meanwhile, Adrienne kept Beverly Hills classy by reviewing a new line of handbags that matched perfectly with the hooves she designed with hookers in mind. And elsewhere in Beverly Hills, Taylor Armstrong disappeared into a fountain? Seriously, have the producers just swapped her in with Marisa Zanuck and thought we wouldn’t notice? We’re not complaining, we’re just aware of it!
And around this time, Kim called Kyle and said on speakerphone in front of the girls that she was thinking of getting her nose done … that afternoon. “Really?” said Kyle, trying to seem concerned for her sister in front of the TV cameras but really fuming that her sister just went and made a decision without deferring to her. “Welp, good luck!” Kyle said, and the ladies around her went “Hmm” and “Yeesh” and “Eek.”
Then, Paul Maloof-Nassif got his back hair zapped by a pornographic actress in a lab coat while his then-wife wore Captain EO–style wraparound glasses so her eyes were protected from the sight of a natural body-hair pattern on a man of normal weight.
And in a surgical suite not far away, moments before Kim went under the knife, she asked her doctor in a flirty baby voice whether he had a beautiful weekend. He had. Fair enough! Down she went, soon to emerge in a gory cacophony of splints and bandages pieced together with dried blood, bruised skin, and deafening loneliness. Truly: Kim after surgery made that scene from Antichrist where Charlotte Gainsburg cuts off her clit look like outtakes from Wreck-It Ralph. Congrats on your surgery, Kim! Also, your nose job is terrible. You got The Mindy in size four for a size six head. Oops!
Speaking of carnage, the main event of the episode unfolded around this point at a dinner party in Las Vegas. After Camille defended her love scene in an R-rated film and explained that men wear socks on their dinguses during intimate filmed moments, Marisa Zanuck tried to get a red-wine stain out of her white dress with white wine, based on advice she’d indirectly gotten from Barbra Streisand. Then the ladies gathered with Brandi at the head of the table and toasted to Kim’s nose job, even though Brandi’s friend Jennifer pointed out that addicts in recovery often have a hard time with the painkillers that come along with any kind of surgery, let alone the elective kind. Kyle didn’t really like Jennifer’s two cents, even though Jennifer was really just repeating what Kyle said — that maybe Kim’s decision to get her nose done was a little rushed — Jennifer just had a different reason behind her concern, namely one that was scientifically grounded and wasn’t self-centered.
After that issue was unceremoniously dumped into a shallow grave, Yolanda asked what was new with Camille, and Camille said that she was bummed to be in Las Vegas without Adrienne Maloof, who owns Vegas, apparently, or at least 2 percent of it. And that lead into a recap of the spat between Brandi and Adrienne, which, B claimed, had originated in a call Adrienne had made to Brandi last year before the season two reunion. Apparently Adrienne called Brandi to pressure her to gang up on Lisa, and when Brandi called Camille to ask her for advice, Camille gave her advice along the lines of “Speak your truth,” but seemed otherwise pretty neutral. But where the Camille-versus-Brandi spat lives is whether Camille knew that Adrienne was planning to attack Lisa at the reunion and said nothing. Camille said she had no memory of that happening, and Brandi disagreed.
Then shit got a little murky. A couple of good points were raised on the Glanville side of the table — Yolanda pointed out that the only reason Adrienne wasn’t there to defend herself in Vegas was because she chose not to be there, and Lisa relayed a nifty aphorism about how people judge you “not because of what you have to say, but of what you have to hide.” YOU ARE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS! I’ve been saying this until I’m as hoarse as a Maloof!
As the issue raged on, Brandi snarked on Adrienne claiming to own the Palms when in fact she barely owns any of that property, and that was a comment Kyle took issue with. “That’s not nice,” Kyle volunteered, and Yolanda piped up with the sanest and freshest breath of lemony air she’s exhaled since her time on the show. “What business is that of yours?” Yolanda asked Kyle, shutting the bitch down in the process. Yolanda might have shitty taste in creepy, Ben Vereen–hitting husbands, but she knows with her eyes closed that Kyle is a shit-stirring attention hooker.
At this point, Brandi mentioned in her defense that a good reason why she was perhaps a little catty to Adrienne had to do with the fact that she was being sued by her. And Camille rebutted that “she doesn’t own all of the Palms” thing by saying that Lisa doesn’t own all of Sur. Okay. And here is where Lisa was like, “So what, bitch?” and rightfully turned her laser at Kyle for not coming to her defense at any point, being as she’s supposed to be her friend. The Maloof hoof was mentioned. Yolanda mentioned once more that maybe the ladies should stay out of one another’s’ business and got yelled at by Camille. Ladies walked away from the table and came back, and Yolanda got up to leave the moment Camille barked in her direction.
We left with a stronger sense of where the line in the sand was drawn. On one team sits Brandi and Lisa, with Yolanda occasionally harmonizing in favor of that dynamic duo. On the other lives Adrienne, Camille, and yes, Kyle. That’s right, you phony Turbo Tax–shilling chicken-headed chicken. You picked the side of the Malooves, however passive-aggressively. Now shut up and own it.
The rest of the episode was recap and filler. Lisa told Ken what went down in Vegas while Kyle told her ailing sister her version of the events. Kim impulsively got a dog, which was deeply weird and unexplored. Lisa and Ken agreed that Camille was a silly cow, and Marisa and Taylor echoed in the wind like the name “Dr. Lowenstein” at the end of The Prince of Tides. It was a foreboding episode full of melancholy and dread. And next week we’ll see Adrienne actually deny the objectively indisputable fact that she and her husband sued Brandi for defamation of character. Won’t that be a hoot? Until next time, my loves.
