Guys, Kim Richards stole a dress. No, wait. Let me try this again.
Guys, Kim Richards, a woman who was convicted of shoplifting from a Target a little more than a year ago, showed up at her sister Kyle Richards’s house with a dress that still had a security tag fastened to the skirt. Well, it might not be a security tag, but it sure seems like one. So, yes, Kim Richards went on camera with a dress that may or may not have been shoplifted from a store. It’s a really nice, age-appropriate floral number for her daughter’s shower and Kim looks great, but, like they say in the swag pits at Sundance, free always looks better.
I just can’t get over that scene, every little detail about it. Like when Kyle is like, “Oh, you got something on your skirt,” after she finds the tag and then says, “Those don’t come off.” Then Kim is like, “Oh, sure they do. You just need to know the trick,” and snaps it off like she’s opening a box of Lucky Charms or mixing a bowl of chicken salad using her bare hands.
This is classic Kim Richards and why she will always and forever be one of my favorite Housewives. She claims to the camera that she’s in a good place with both of her sisters and also doing well in recovery — and then she shows up with a hot dress from some store that she stuffed in a used Bloomingdale’s bag so that everyone would think that she actually paid for it, but, you know, she forgot to take the security tag off and was forced to do so in front of millions of people. Oopsies.
Although we don’t get to see Brooke’s baby shower (at least someone in the Richard’s bloodline knows how to set healthy boundaries), Kim is invited back again for one of Kyle Richards’s famous game nights. Why would anyone on this show have a game night? They always lead to disaster. These women hosting a game night is like inviting a psychic over and expecting that she won’t reveal that someone’s spouse is cheating or faking cancer. Having a game night is like renewing your vows and expecting the divorce papers to not arrive before the catering bill. Having a game night is like taking Kim Richards to the mall and expecting that she won’t mysteriously find a pair of earrings that somehow “fell” into her purse when she wasn’t looking.
Kyle couldn’t have a game night either, she had to have Cal, a party planner who lost his anal virginity at a charades-themed sex party, come over for one of Cal’s special game nights. Why? Because they don’t have Scattergories at the Target in Thousand Oaks? Ask Kim. I bet she knows all about what they have at the Target in Thousand Oaks. Cal also brought his assistant Cibrina, who is definitely going to be on another reality show someday because no one who spells her name like that is not going to be cast on a reality show. Look for her on season seven of Vanderpump Rules. Or better yet, on the next season of The Bachelor. Not only does she have a reality-TV name, but “assistant game-night party planner” is also a perfect reality-TV occupation to emblazon below it.
Seriously, these games are dumb. It is just charades, but you have to run back and forth through the house. Then it’s charades, but you had to use another person’s body to make out the charades. And you just know that Cal usually lets everyone pick their own teams, but the producers were like, “Cibrina, if you don’t put Lisa Rinna and Kim Richards on the same team at least once, we are going to make sure your casting tape never gets seen by anyone involved in the reality television arts and sciences.”
There is one misconception about Game Night that I need to correct. While rehashing all of the past Game Night dramas, Kyle Richards tries to rewrite history and blame it all on Brandi Glanville. We all know that the victors get to write history — and, in this instance, Kyle is the victor — but we watched all of these Game Nights. I warn you all to never forget. Never forget that both of those Game Night disasters were totally Kim Richards’s fault. She was the one who hid Brandi’s crutches, then she and Kyle collaborated to make her feel unwanted during the first game night at Dana “Pam” Wilkie’s empty rented house and $25,000 Sunglass Hut. It was also Kim Richards who got obliterated on pain pills (or something) and acted erratically at Eileen’s poker night, which is what caused Kyle and Brandi to get in a fight. In that instance, Brandi did put her nose where it didn’t belong, but Kim started it.
Kim starts it at this Game Night, too. Yes, everything is going perfectly as they run around, trying to pretend like they actually want to play relay-race charades or whatever bullshit it is that Cal and Cibrina came up with. They sit down to dinner and though Lisar and Kim Richards, sworn enemies to the end, are seated next to each other, they keep a lid on their simmering tensions. That is totally Kyle’s fault, by the way. She knows that there are a number of fractures in this group of women. Why not put down some place cards to keep Lisar away from Kim, Lisa away from Eileen, and Erika away from Dorit? She hired a damn mistress of ceremonies for Game Night, but she couldn’t come up with some seat assignments?
After dinner and games, all hell finally breaks loose. It all starts because we’re still arguing about Erika’s vagina and the fact that Dorit’s husband saw it. Ugh, seriously. As Kim Richards, an avowed fan of going commando, says, what is the big deal about someone wearing panties? While I did like Eileen yelling at Dorit for talking too much (clearly Eileen and Dorit hate each other and nothing makes me happier than seeing the one person that even Eileen Davidson can’t tolerate), she obviously has no idea what the problem with Lisar and Eileen is. Both Lisar and Eileen don’t want her going around saying that the reason they fought with Lisa Vanderpump was because they lost their parents.
Kim Richards can’t understand this either. Right after saying she doesn’t care about underwear, Kim purposefully turns the conversation to the fight that she and Lisar had last year. “I think Lisar uses excuses,” she says. “Like what you did to me all last year.” Kim wants to talk about how she never got an apology from Lisar and decided to use this avenue to rehash it. The problem is, Kim keeps saying that Lisar is using her father’s death as an excuse for what happened with Lisa, so Lisar and everyone else keep telling Kim that that is not what is happening.
This is, once again, classic Kim Richards. She completely misunderstands the argument at hand and starts arguing a point that no one is making. It’s like trying to plan a party with Kellyanne Conway: Just as you tell her that all of the invitations are ordered, she tells you that the invitations haven’t been ordered yet and you get in a fight about whether or not the invitations have been ordered, when clearly they have, but Kellyanne just wants to ignore the facts and dispute something that is demonstrably true. So, yes, Kellyanne, the fucking invitations are fucking ordered, now will you talk to me about whether or not we want a cash bar? (This is going to be the worst imaginary party ever.)
What happened next, like every Upworthy headline, was unbelievable. It was all thanks to Eden Sassoon. But first, a long aside: The rules of the Eileen Davidson Accord of 2013 are shadowy for new characters who aren’t official Housewives. I would posit that we should also give them a grace period of several episodes before saying that their static faces are a little bit too shiny. However, I think that they have such little screen time that we can pass quicker judgments on them. This is especially true of Eden, because she is already my second-favorite Real Housewife of Beverly Hills and I think will continue to remain true.
Just as Kim and Lisar had gone really low in their fight with each other, Eden pipes up at the end of the table to ask Kim if she’s a sober woman. Kim says she is. Then Eden replies, “Sober women come from a place of truth and leading by example. When I see this, I feel like it’s coming from somewhere deeper. Why don’t you express that to Lisar?” That opens up what is potentially the first honest conversation these two women ever had: Kim admits that she doesn’t trust Lisar because she hurt her, and Lisar, finally, sincerely apologizes. She says that she was angry at Kim because of the things she said about Harry Hamlin, and that she said things to intentionally hurt Kim. Then she apologizes and it really seems like she means it.
It was a thing of beauty. It was like a scene from a movie, where this horrible fight finally breaks, like the rain coming on a sweltering summer day, and everything washes away with the purifying water. Everything changes after that moment because someone spurned them into the truth. As Lisar says, someone made them confront each other, changing the dynamic of recriminations and backbiting that cause these entrenched rifts that rot and fester and destroy entire franchises of the Real Housewives. It was as if Eden reached into the little bag of crystals she keeps tucked inside of her leather pants and crushed one up and sprinkled it all over the scene. It was like everyone’s auras cracked, letting their energy out in a rush that was so profound, so physical, that it would have blown out all the votives on the table if they hadn’t burned out long ago.
Lisar walked off, out to her limo to think about what happened, and she felt lighter, not just like a weight had been lifted off her, but like there was some actual light inside of her. It was like the mitochondrion in every one of her cells started metabolizing differently after that night, churning up her anger and releasing it as positive energy, vibrations that couldn’t move a mountain or cause an earthquake, but that could change a person — no, change every person — if she could just keep up that frequency long enough.
