The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap: A Thousand Pounds of Beef
Welcome to another week of your favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things, and, boy, did the rich women do things. They prepared for a day on the yacht by putting on hats with their initials on them just in case they forgot their names after too much booze and too many pills. On the yacht, they told the chef how to barbecue skewers and lobsters because their decades of supervising people engaged in the culinary arts made them more adept than someone who went to school and studied the industry for years. When the women found Hermès towels on said yacht, they wondered if the textiles belonged to the boat or if they were just more gifts from the hostess to cram into the overflowing monogrammed luggage that she had already provided for them.
While the rich ladies did lots of yacht-based activities, mostly what they did was fight with Dorit. The episode starts where the fight between Kyle and Dorit left off in the last episode, and I would like to, once again, perform a close reading of this argument, which seems like it is going to be the crux of the season.
Dorit starts by saying that there are two sets of rules with Kyle: one for Kyle and one for everyone else. This is objectively true, and even the most virulent Kyle stan cannot object. To illustrate her point, Dorit goes back to the joke she made about Kyle’s disastrous fashion show, and when Kyle says she would never speak ill of Dorit’s business, she brings up Kyle making fun of Buca di Beppo and the Capri Room way back in the day. While Dorit’s Capri Room isn’t her business necessarily, I think the point stands.
When all of this comes up, Sutton is at the end of the table mouthing across to Erika, “We’re going back that far?” and Erika is like, “Oh yeah!” That’s the thing about this fight: The only three at the table who can really follow it are Kyle, Dorit, and Erika because they were the only ones there for all of this old bullshit. Boz and Jennifer Tilly are more at sea than the Parsifal III when it loses a sail. At least Jennifer Tilly (always both names) admits later it was fun watching the two of them go back and forth. She’s right. These are professionals at their craft. These are women whose skills have been honed through more than a decade of ferocious combat, and watching them in person must be a pleasure.
Kyle tells Dorit that she has been a good friend for many years, but in the last two years, it’s been hard for her since she’s dealing with her best friend’s suicide and the world’s slowest-moving divorce. (I always forget about Kyle’s best friend because she was never on the show, but it seems like that is the thing that kicked off this whole midlife crisis — or whatever it is that Kyle is going through.) This is a valid point, but Dorit volleys with a valid point of her own: She gave Kyle a lot of leeway because of those things, but she’s fed up with how she’s been treated and is sick of holding space for Kyle like she’s the lyrics of “Defying Gravity.”
Dorit says Kyle punishes her by icing her out but asks why Kyle wasn’t mad at Erika when Dorit read Kyle’s text backstage at last year’s reunion, and Erika said it was manipulative. Erika is sitting there searching frantically for the NeNe Leakes “Now why am I in it?” GIF. After Erika explains herself, Sutton tries to squash the fight by saying Kyle has also frozen her out, they have talked about it, and Kyle has vowed to work on it.
Then a shocking thing happens: Kyle cops to it. To all of it. She says she ices people out and she needs to work on it. She admits that what she said about Dorit not being that close to her on Amazon Live was messed up. She’s sorry for it all. I know there are plenty of Kyle haters out there who won’t think the apology was honest, but acknowledging she has a problem is the first step to fixing it. (The problem with Kyle is she never finishes fixing anything.)
Now, this is where Dorit loses me because she is incapable of doing the same thing. When Kyle brings up Dorit’s comment at BravoCon about not knowing who her favorite Richards sister was, Dorit reiterates that it was a joke and gives the ultimate Housewives nonapology: “I’m sorry if you were hurt.” Dorit can never admit that she’s wrong and can never see how she might have been part of the problem. She feeds Kyle the same line she fed Garcelle for seasons. I’m paraphrasing, but it sounds something like this: “If I ever did anything wrong, I will be the first person to apologize.” The problem is, she can’t see her guilt, so even if the person is telling her that they were wronged, she still won’t apologize. It’s like the bank saying, “If we find an error in our accounts, we’ll refund the money,” but it never finds an error; you’re just sitting there, a little bit poorer, waiting for a reimbursement that will never come.
Garcelle, as if on cue, agrees with Kyle that Dorit can’t apologize. Dorit tells Garcelle, “I’m not surprised you agree with that. I’m not your favorite person; you’re very clear about that.” Right, but the reason Dorit is not Garcelle’s favorite person is because Garcelle told her multiple times that Dorit hurt her and Dorit still couldn’t apologize. She hasn’t put the cart before the horse; she is both the cart and the horse, and she is filling that cart up with her own horseshit, and no one wants to sit next to her.
This is when the dinner goes absolutely silent. Boz takes an awkward sip of her drink. Erika looks around the room, hoping there won’t be another stray headed in her direction. Kathy Hilton, a woman who earlier tried to brush her teeth with an eyeshadow wand, holds the candle up under her chin like she’s about to tell a ghost story and the terrible thing that happens to the protagonist is … they get banned from Chanel for the rest of eternity! The horror! The horror!
The next day is the yacht trip, and my favorite thing about it is that Sutton has a crush on Captain Theo, who runs this here San Diego yacht. Guys, this is a great match. They seem to be about the same age, he is handsome, he is used to yachts, and, to be honest, his haircut says he loves a corny joke and you know nothing drops Sutton’s panties faster than a dad pun. On the way off the boat, Kathy tells Theo that Sutton has something wrong with her leg, so he carries her down the stairs. Then Dorit gives Theo Sutton’s number because Sutton is too much of a chickenshit (not to be confused with Dorit’s horseshit) to do it herself. I really love this. I want this to work out. When do we find out if he’s single? When do we find out if he called? I don’t think I can wait for the reunion; the suspense is killing me.
On the boat, Dorit and Sutton have a nice bonding moment where Sutton offers to support Dorit through her divorce if she needs it. Garcelle and Kyle also have a nice moment talking about being single mothers with kids about to leave the home. Kyle also mentions that PK, a horseshit sculpture that Dorit made in the town square and then brought to life with the help of a Magic 8 Ball (of coke), texts her. I’m going to save the discussion of that until the next episode when it seems to come up again.
The biggest movement on the boat, however, is between Dorit and Kyle, who seem to squash their considerable beef. Kyle apologizes again, Dorit non-apologizes again, and they admit that they both have so much going on right now that they shouldn’t be fighting; they should be supporting each other. I’m sorry, but this is the first time in Housewives history that I’m sorry a fight is over. Usually, I’m ready to move on, but I kind of want these two feuding for the next 15 episodes. I’ve been sat for all of this, and I am ready to be sat for more.
Luckily, I didn’t have to wait that long for Dorit to fly off her Louis Vuitton broomstick once more. At dinner that night, Sutton makes everyone stand up and wants to read a speech she wrote from her phone. Okay, I’m sorry, but reading off your phone sucks. Seth Marks did the same thing at Meredith’s bat mitzvah on RHOSLC, and I was mad then. If you need note cards for a speech, fine. A little piece of paper, okay. But the phone? That just makes you look dumb. And if you’re making me stand up and the speech is so long that you need to get out the phone, then why are we standing up? Can’t this be a seated speech? After everyone roasts Sutton’s speech, she bonds them all together with a ribbon and declares everyone sisters. I actually said out loud, “Cue the montage!” because I fully expected to get a “TWO WEEKS LATER” on the screen and then a clip of them all rending each other’s garments and throwing each other’s wigs into the sea.
At the dinner, Garcelle brings up Dorit posting a video of her, Kyle, and Teddi Mellencamp (her name was said more than three times, so she is in the room with you right now) singing onstage with John Mellencamp. The night before, Dorit said she wasn’t that close with Teddi. Garcelle just wanted to point out Dorit’s hypocrisy, especially since what she was really mad at in this whole fight was Kyle saying that the two of them weren’t as close as people thought. While this is going on, Dorit is explaining that she didn’t say she wasn’t “friends” with Teddi, just that they weren’t close. Across the table, Erika whispers to Kyle, “I don’t think that’s what she said last night.”
Damn, that is a lot of setup for this next stage of the fight, which happens in the Sprinter van, as all good fights do. Sutton says she heard Erika whispering in a way that everyone could hear her comment, but she wasn’t being open with the group about what she was saying. Sutton says she doesn’t want to be in a group where there is so much talking behind people’s back; I’m at home saying that if that’s what she wants, then maybe get another second career outside of the reality television arts and sciences, and Erika is across from her hoping that the NeNe Leakes “Now why am I in it” GIF is still on her clipboard so she can just paste it in the group chat without another search.
Dorit, as she always does, argues the example, not the point. She is trying to get clarity on what she did or did not say about Teddi. Meanwhile ,everyone is telling her it’s not about Teddi or even about her; it’s about Erika’s whispers and the fact that they should be able to say these things out loud to each other, work through them, and move on. (Garcelle in confessional saying that Teddi will be thrilled with all this secondhand screen time is such a devilishly delightful read.)
Dorit tells the group she knows what the fight is about, but she doesn’t. She is still stuck on Teddi when the rest of them have moved on. This is what is exhausting about Dorit. She is so often wrong, confused, or misdirected, but she also can’t admit that any of those things are true, so she ends up yelling at Sutton about who started yelling at the other first while missing the whole point. There’s the cart, there’s the horse, and there’s Dorit somewhere behind them both, screaming that she smells something stinky and not doing anything to hitch them together, to get the whole caravan moving, to ride off into the sunset with something resembling the truth.