The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
“A Supreme Snub”
April 16, 2019
We begin with Denise hosting Dorit to try to get to know her a little better and also, too, so that Dorit can share her theory about Lisa spreading VanderGossip about Dorit and Lucy Lucy Apple Juicy. I mean, they share niceties about kids and balancing family and career and blah blah blah but then they cut to the chase: Dorit explains that Lisa and Dorit’s awful husband have known each other for years and are as close as siblings. That said, they haven’t spoken since Denise’s wedding, some three weeks earlier. And while Dorit knows that Lisa VanderCares about her, she’s also fairly certain Lisa VanderPlanted that Radar article about Dorit and then called TMZ two days later so that she could put a statement out to defend her.
Dorit adds that not once has Lisa VanderChecked on her since this whole story erupted, she just up and vanished. If she didn’t do anything wrong, why did she go into hiding?
Denise is able to sympathize: she had her share of run-ins with the tabloids for one reason or another …
… and the only way to figure out which of your friends you can trust is to feed everyone lies, wait to see who leaks them, and then cut them out of your life. Dorit insists that she wants to trust Lisa, but Denise argues it’s going to take time.
Speaking of Lisa, her only appearance in the episode has her surveying the kitchen renovation, taking a sledgehammer to the counters while imagining that they are Kyle, and then rummaging around in her makeshift kitchen for some wine tea.
And the only Erika appearance in this episode takes place at her rehearsal for her upcoming tour. She gets kneed in the head by a backup dancer and offers this inspirational bit of advice: “Follow your dreams … and have a kickass checkbook.”
Erika’s rehearsal precludes her from attending the wedding shower Kyle throws for Camille, but everyone else is expected to be there. And for the most part, they are! With one glaring VanderException.
Kyle delivers a speech about how she and Camille have been friends for 10 years now and, like any marriage, have had their share of ups and downs.
But Kyle is past all that and Camille deserves all the happiness in the world.
Dorit notes to Kyle that she recently ran into Kyle’s sister Kathy, and Kyle replies that she had dinner with her the other night. In fact, ever since American Woman was canceled, the show Kyle made about their mother without either of her sister’s blessings or input, her relationship with her sisters has improved dramatically.
HUH. FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS.
Camille asks where Lisa is, and Kyle swears that she invited her. In fact, Kyle suggests, you should send Lisa a text telling her she was missed. In an interview, Rinna calls passive-aggressive bullshit on this approach and argues that Camille should just come out and tell Lisa that she VanderHurt her by not attending. Of course, Rinna doesn’t suggest this at the moment at the shower so who’s passive-aggressive now, LISA RINNA?
(Let me just state for the record that 1. I think Kyle’s suggestion for Camille is probably the best way to handle it, 2. a bridal shower is NOT the place to criticize the bride, and 3. passive aggression is my superpower.)
After the shower there is a dumb interlude in which Kyle and Portia go to the grocery store in Kyle’s new toy — a Vanderhall car? tricycle? You know, it’s one of those three-wheel vehicles that does not look street legal that only 65-year-old men who can’t afford hair transplants buy to make themselves feel cool again. The whole thing is somehow both boring and embarrassing.
Elsewhere, Rinna’s 90-year-old mother Lois is in town, so Rinna, Lois, and the girls go to an IV lounge to load up on some quackery and bullshit. Lois, the only reasonable person in attendance, declines the offer of an IV that one of the daughters describes as tasting “like pee,” declines the infrared bed whose benefits no one can adequately explain and declines the cryogenic chamber that reduces the girls into screaming messes.
That night, Rinna hosts a dinner for her mother at some Italian restaurant, and the other women are delighted to see Lois because they’ve all lived in Los Angeles for so long they have forgotten what real people are like.
Case in point: Kyle compliments Rinna on her new Hermes handbag which looks more like an American Girl accessory than an actual purse. In an interview, Rinna explains that all women in L.A. want a Hermes bag because (she adds to her enormous credit) they are all so superficial and fucked up. The bag goes along with their “fuckedficiality.”
I mean, she’s not wrong.
At one point, Kyle asks Camille if she ever heard back from Lisa about why she didn’t come to the shower, and Camille explains that, in fact, she had: Lisa claimed she wasn’t VanderInvited to the shower.
Kyle:
Camille goes on to say that she responded to Lisa by saying that she didn’t know Lisa hadn’t been invited but of course she wanted her there, instead of telling her that she knew perfectly well that Lisa had been VanderInvited.
Kyle:
Dinner arrives, and someone asks where Harry Hamlin is. Rinna explains that she invited him, but it was a busy day for him politically: it seems that day was when Dr. Ford’s testified against Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing and Harry Hamlin was obsessed with the story. Rinna goes on to praise Dr. Ford for her courage in speaking out, and how heartbreaking it is that her family has been so harassed.
That’s when Camille is like, “Yeah, I disagree. I think Ford is making the whole thing up. Where’s her evidence? Where are her witnesses?”
And I am now realizing why this was the episode where I walked away from the season because JESUS CHRIST, I didn’t want to go back to this place. In fact, a year later it still feels too soon to reopen this particular wound, BUT HERE WE GO, I GUESS.
Camille’s position: During her divorce from Kelsey Grammer, a lot of bullshit and lies were spread about her through the media, and therefore she knows what it is like to be the target of a smear campaign. And before you come at her with your #MeToo, Believe Women nonsense, may she remind you that she is also a victim of abuse, and she made sure to tell people at the time, instead of waiting for 35 years. In conclusion: it’s a He Said/She Said and she chooses to believe him.
The other women’s position:
Kyle, desperate to diffuse this conversation bomb, reminds everyone that you’re not supposed to discuss sex, politics or religion in polite company, which is a such a sweet pre-2016 summer child thought. But they change the topic and toast Lois for being a badass. After, Camille gets up from the table and goes downstairs.
This is when Kyle receives a text from Kim, who happens to also be in the restaurant downstairs. Kyle uses this news as an excuse to take her leave, and says goodnight to the other women.
Downstairs, Kyle runs into a crying Camille, who feels bad about the political conversation — but it’s unclear what, exactly she feels bad about? starting a fight with her bad opinions or if it’s that she feels like she was ganged up on by the other women? In any event, Kyle basically tells her to brush it off: they can all still be friends while disagreeing politically. (CAN THEY THOUGH? ASKING FOR A FRIEND WHO IS ON THE VERGE OF DELETING SOME FOLKS ON FACEBOOK.) Camille then takes the opportunity to ask Kyle to be a bridesmaid in her wedding, because, really, what better time?
Camille then returns upstairs where she and Rinna make nice and Camille clarifies that really this is all about her and Kelsey and everyone is like, “Yeah, but that was 10 years ago and you’re marrying someone else and honestly, he came off the asshole in that whole thing, so you should probably let it go already, jeez.”
Downstairs, Kyle runs into her other sister, Kathy, because this is all just a simulation and nothing is real.
And then Rinna slips out of the restaurant without saying hello to Kim because they haven’t spoken since The Bunny Incident and frankly who even has the time?
Finally, the episode ends at the Rinna home where Rinna and Lois reveal that some 60 years earlier, Lois had been one of the first victims of David Carpenter, a serial killer who became known as “The Trailside Killer.”
OK, so, a few years before Rinna was born, Lois was living in San Francisco, and she was waiting at her bus stop after work when one of her coworkers pulled up and offered her a ride home. She accepted, but instead of driving her home, he drove her to the heavily wooded Presidio, which at the time was still an Army base. There, he attacked her with a hammer and a knife and would have killed her if a military police officer hadn’t noticed his car, followed him into the woods and stopped and arrested him. Carpenter only received seven years for his attack on Lois.
After he was released from prison in the seventies, he went on a murder spree in Santa Cruz and Marin counties, killing at least 7 people, possibly as many as 11 (and on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, they say it could be as high as 16-18 people). He was convicted of 5 murders and is still on death row in California.
Rinna reveals that her mother didn’t tell her about this attack until she was much older, believing her entire childhood that her mother lost her sense of smell in a childhood playground incident.
Somehow, Rinna decides that her mother being attacked by a serial killer made her immune to sexual harassment in Hollywood.
But whatever. The bottom line is that Lois is a badass and she SSDGM’d.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs on Bravo on Tuesdays at 8/9 p.m.