TV Show Recaps

RHOBH: “I almost made out with you by accident.”

Last night’s episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was the kind of episode we all expect from the series. It included silly parties, ill-conceived product launches, yelling about Chanel bags and accusations that someone had been flirting inappropriately with someone else’s (or everyone else’s) husband. It was also the precursor to the season finale, though, which meant that we only got to see Act One of the full dramatic scene. Act Two will be next week, followed by the reunion, which is really the best drama of all because we get to skip the pretense of narrative and get straight at the good stuff. In the meantime, though, we should probably have a recap.

1. I’d happily live my entire life in a tent on Lisa’s glass-railed porch. Important to note: said tent would likely be bigger than my current New York City apartment, and it would certainly get better afternoon sun. On the downside, I would no longer get to watch the dude who lives in the building behind me shower through his bathroom window.

2. Put together, the words “red velvet vodka” made me hork. Red velvet belongs in baked goods and only in baked goods. I’m from the South, I’m allowed to make these rules. Adrienne, though, had the bad taste to try and put it in vodka, the most putrid of all booze varieties. She then airbrushed a bunch of naked people with the logo of the new brand and set them loose in her backyard to rub on each other and invited guests, and also probably sent one to Lisa’s house to sit on her white upholstery. Related: apparently you’re allowed to show nipples on regular cable, just as long as they’re lacquered with a thin veneer of airbrush branding for some Housewife’s latest half-baked product launch. In a fit of brilliance, Lisa decided that she and Brandi should have outdoor sunset massages and glasses of rosé instead of attending the party.

3. Everyone was really impressed by the “living statues” at Adrienne’s party. Apparently they’ve never seen the guy who paints himself gold and stands around in the tunnel to the S train at Grand Central.

4. Marisa is surprised that Brandi thinks there’s something wrong with her marriage. I don’t know where Brandi could have gotten a silly idea like that, what with all the times that Marisa has publicly boasted that she’s bored with her man, that she wants a Latin dude all up in her ladyparts and that her husband loves her so much more than she loves him. Yolanda, continuing to grow on me, attempted to stop Marisa from publicly complaining to the rest of the ladies and suggested that she, you know, address it with Brandi.

5. Faye has invented an incident at Kyle’s white party in which Brandi slept with a married man in the bathroom. When Faye announced this fantastical tale, it was clear that none of the present housewives had actually seen it (including Faye) or appeared to have ever heard the rumor prior to that moment. Bravo, who filmed the party, also didn’t have any footage of Brandi with the dude, let alone of her going into or coming out of a bathroom with him. In fact, all they had was Brandi pointing at a guy across the room and saying she thought he was cute. By that logic, I’ve slept with Jake Gyllenhaal because he walked past me at a restaurant and I swooned. Not that I would be mad if people thought I slept with Jake Gyllenhaal. In fact, let’s start that rumor right here.

6. Surprise, Adrienne and Paul are separated. Seemingly the day after the cake vodka (go ahead, dry heave, we’ll wait) party, Adrienne and Paul announced on the trusty ol’ Internets that they are no longer, in fact, all that into each other. The pacing of this entire episode seemed genuinely strange (there had been no mention of the massive vodka part before we were suddenly there, for example), but the spontaneous separation announcement was the most random of all events, perhaps because almost all of Adrienne and Paul’s previous scenes this season have been sanitized to make them look like a united, reasonably happy front.

7. I hate the scenes where we have to watch everyone arrive at a party. I’d take Bravo’s word for it if they just, you know, told me who wasn’t going to show up and left it at that. This ain’t the Oscars, I don’t need to watch the arrivals one by one.

8. Yolanda’s husband’s previous wife, who is also Bruce Jenner’s previous wife, makes her own apricot jam. These are the little bits of minutiae that I truly enjoy about these shows. After handing a jar over to Lisa, she joked that it was “so middle class.” Can we trade her for Faye? She makes me outraged in exactly the way I want Real Housewives to make me outraged.

9. Yolanda made sure Marisa talked to Brandi about the text message, and then she stood there and made sure she was honest about it. At first I liked Yolanda, and then I kind of hated her, but now I love her. In these past few episodes, she’s proved herself to be an honest, loyal, forthright woman who doesn’t let herself be shouted down by cast veterans or people who are intent on yelling the loudest. It was truly a joy to watch Marisa squirm under the weight of her own bitchiness and then totally confirm why Brandi had thought to send her the text in the first place.

10. Faye thinks you can measure class in how many Chanel bags you own. I don’t even think I need to come up with some sort of smart-aleck remark for this one, because other than that statement, what else could be so beautifully instructive of why Faye is the walking, talking, fake-tanned embodiment of everything that’s wrong with humanity?

11. Other things that Faye thinks: Brandi ruined Adrienne and Paul’s marriage. I said this in the comments last week and I stand by it: If your marriage can be ruined by a person publicly stating something that everyone who knows you already knew, then your marriage was super lame to begin with and was likely just waiting to teeter off the precipice of divorce. Not to mention, of course, that the conversation Faye interrupted between Brandi and Marisa had absolutely zero to do with Adrienne in any way.

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