Is there a reason the Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills reunion is three parts? A good portion of last night was more footage of the ladies doing lunch, albeit backstage where they continued talking about each other’s low-level dramas.
As much as I enjoy watching Lisa Vanderpump sitting around in her bathroom eating salad while counseling Dorit Kemsley through perceived slights against Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave, it’s evident that this was filler so Bravo could bilk another episode out of the rather lackluster reunion. I’m in the minority, apparently, in not minding that the drama was mostly surface and petty – it’s a nice breather from such heavy seasons about substance abuse and serious family dysfunction (I mean I love that too), but I certainly think they could’ve gotten away with a two-part reunion.
Erika Jayne Ridiculardi continues to be ridiculous. She had total stankface including towards Andy Cohen. And she better mind those P&Q’s (pussies and queens) if she wants to continue boasting that Erika Jayne Enterprises grosses more than $40k/month. Apparently the $40,000/month glam budget doesn’t include migraine medicine – although Erika is friends with Lipsa’s of the magical purse of pills!
Erika got defensive about how expen$$$ive it is to be her, citing people who spend $100k per month. She must be alluding to Kim Kardashian – a fellow offender in the ‘it takes a lot of money to look this cheap’ category. Or maybe John Mellencamp spends $100 on his lifetime monthly glam? His daughter Teddi certainly does not!
It’s totally obvious that Erika has some issue with Teddi in general. I believe the expression we use in the south to refer to behavior like Erika’s is ‘Your slip is showing’ – except in Erika’s case we know she doesn’t wear a slip, or even underwear… Maybe it’s Teddi’s natural beach wave extensions that puts Erika in a funk? Whatever it is Erika even backs Dorit in a nonsensical argument in order to have a go at Teddi.
Again Teddi offers Dorit an [undeserved] apology for tattling to Lisa Rinna about all the awful things Dorit said behind her back, months after the incident. Which prompts Erika to warn Teddi that she’s lucky Lipsa let it go, because her reaction could’ve been “dangerous.” What is Lipsa gonna do – whip out poisoned pills from her purse and start throwing them at Teddi? Jab her with a jazz hand as she’s cackling over her own jokes? Smother her with a QVC duster and a pair of Depends? Force her to endure hours of reading aloud from Rinnavation?
Dorit continues to baffle me with her inability to grasp reality. She is a paragon of delusion, that one. Dorit had one shining moment when, unprovoked, she apologized to Lipsa for all the awful insinuations she and PK made last season. Dorit claims she was so caught up in her own slights during their Vegas make-up that she failed to recognize how Lipsa could’ve been hurt by being labeled a druggie, schizophrenic and a danger to herself and other Housewives. That apology was Dorit’s good deed for the reunion and probably the entire year, because then she got back to totally trying to twist all her incidents with Teddi into being only Teddi’s fault.
Teddi at one point called Dorit out directly for gaslighting, and that is exactly what Dorit does. Albeit ineptly. They rehash Dorit’s lateness, and Teddi again explains that it wasn’t that Dorit was an hour late, but that she then went to Kyle Richards and tried to make Teddi look like an insane person to a new group of friends who didn’t have any other prior knowledge from which to go on. Luckily for Teddi the other women already know Dorit is a crazy person whose actions are totally governed by self-preservation, no matter who gets caught in the cross-hairs of her wonky wigs and they didn’t believe her. But Teddi’s point is a valid one!
Same for the wine glass affront. Dorit maintains her perception that it was TEDDI who made the rosé-in-champagne-boat debacle a huge deal, and was a poor hostess to boot, when of course it was the other way around.
Since Teddi is a human person, despite being named for a stuffed animal, she admits that she was uncomfortable hosting a fancy spa day in her home and in retrospect shouldn’t have tried to be someone she’s not. Which is why she course-corrected with the casual party at her beach house where everyone – even Dorit – had a blast. Everyone but Erika, but that’s cause she’s the fun police.
Dorit pounces on this admission from Teddi as another opportunity to blame Teddi for making her look bad – even as Teddi repeatedly tries to explain that she didn’t care if Dorit wanted to drink wine from the toilet but her HANDLING of the situation was the problem. LVP, like lecturing a small child on how to behave at a birthday party, suggests Dorit listen to everyone alive’s feedback and re-evaluate her behavior.
What Teddi and Dorit had wasn’t a series of miscommunications, as Dorit insists, it was Dorit taking herself too seriously. It was also Dorit who brought it up over and over again until the champagne glass runneth over with name-calling like “psycho” and “a little bitch.” But Dorit doesn’t get it. She’s incapable of getting it. The bobby-pins are not connected to sonar in space which impart reasoning to her alien brain. And Dorit’s subsequent acknowledgement that maybe she was rude had all the sincerity of PK’s job ‘managing’ Boy George.
However Dorit will ride out this victim narrative until the rose gold Bentley drives off a cliff. And she is the lone passenger in this impending car wreck. Backstage, over lunch, she complains to LVP about Teddi’s “holier than thou” attitude and that all the negative things she’s said in the confessionals. LVP, who just wants to enjoy a few Spanx-free moments to eat her salad (and probably sneak some cookies), offhandedly suggests Dorit just mention her feelings. Teddi meanwhile tells Kyle that it’s impossible to penetrate the delusional bubble Dorit encases herself in. Which Kyle agrees with.
The two best parts of the reunion were Camille Grammer coming to the stage wearing the ballgag she gifted to Dorit as a bracelet. Dorit is still upset that Camille made a joke at her expense and just does not get it when everyone explains that she dished it out first by calling Camille a “stupid C-u-next-Tuesday’.
Just when we think this will never be resolved, backstage during a bathroom break, Camille and Dorit have a moment where they talk like two adult women, away from the expectations of yelling and screaming for the sake of television drama, and they mutually apologize for hurting each other’s feelings. The ballgag is now situated in the WWHL Clubhouse for all posterity, probably right next to last year’s Blue Bunny, already suffocated silently in its cellophane bag. #SaveTheBlueBunny
I do love Camille, especially her revelation that Allison DuBois no longer speaks to her after the Dinner Party From Hell, because Allison believed Camille was trying to set her up. LVP is on it with a joke that a real psychic would’ve predicted how that dinner would go… Camille’s other contribution was to brazenly demonstrate that she’s not afraid of Erika when she calls her out on her attitude as flippantly as she tosses her hair. Don’t come for Camille Donatacci Grammer or she swallow you whole like you’re one of Lipsa’s little happy pills!
The bestest part of the reunion, though, was the Beverly Hills Lifestyle Magazine showdown between LVP and Dorit. Oh it was glorious, accentuated greatly by Lipsa’s accompanying facial expressions to narrate the exchange.
LVP had no qualms about excising Dorit from her magazine, and let this be forewarning that she will also have no qualms about excising Dorit from her life (See: Yolanda Lemon-Lyme Hadid Foster Hadone-and-gone.) LVP, like the multifaceted qualities of her sequined dress, is both a fun-loving boob of a time and a serious business woman, and though she mixes the two admirably, she knows just when and how to deploy each element of her personality. Dorit never saw that head chop coming, and that’s what makes it such a perfect strike to use only the headless photos in the magazine spread.
Also playing both sides of the fence was Kyle who kept piping up to defend each woman interchangeably. Like when she mentions that Nicole Kidman was in Beverly Hills Magazine, and LVP shares that she was MUCH easier to deal with than Dorit! Naturally. Dorit’s behavior at that shoot was appalling, and her subsequent insistence that she should’ve been allowed to reschedule and bring her own glam was also preposterous. It shows not only her arrogance but her complete lack of understanding of how the magazine industry works. Additionally Erika taking Dorit’s side in this was a thinly-veiled attempt to dig at LVP because Erika also knows that’s not how things work.
I say LVP made the right decision in showcasing Dorit sans mouth. Let the diamonds do the talking, dear, because they have so many more inserting things to say. However the question remains was this LVP’s version of a diamond-studded ballgag by exacting revenge for Dorit’s transgressions, or was it purely a practical business decision? I definitely think it’s revenge served cold, in the right glass.
Revisit Part 1 Of the Reunion Here!
TELL US – DID LVP MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION IN CHOPPING OFF DORIT’S HEAD? TEAM DORIT OR TEAM TEDDI?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]
