The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap: All My Exes Live in Text-es
This week on our favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women really did things. They met with their bulbous-lipped celebrity designers to talk about how a room is like a face, but that doesn’t seem very true because no one has ever sat in my room before. They cheated at Skee Ball and ran up the ramp to put the ball in the 1,000-point hole so that they could get enough tickets to afford Chinese finger traps for all of their friends, even though we’re probably not supposed to call them that anymore. They skipped out of games of tennis so that their tennis instructors didn’t get sweaty enough to take their shirts off and, I’m sorry, that is a crime against all viewers, and someone should call the Hague, the U.N., or at least Judge Reinhold so that he can prosecute these ladies.
The ladies did very many things this week, but mostly what they did was talk about Kyle and Dorit freaking out at each other at the Viper Room. In a continuation of the last episode, the fight over Kyle’s text messages with Dorit’s ex-husband almost came to blows before Erika talked Dorit down. But even still, Kyle was talking down to Dorit, saying that she said she wouldn’t text PK, a Drano enema, anymore and asked what else she would want her to do. This upsets Dorit even more.
Garcelle tries to come in and defuse the situation by asking Dorit how the situation with PK, a tongue after it’s fully licked an ashtray, is going. Dorit asks, “Are you asking that genuinely?” In confessional, Dorit accuses Garcelle of not being able to read the room, but in this instance, I think Dorit couldn’t read the room. Clearly, things with Dorit’s divorce aren’t going well; how about she talks about that instead and brings all the women to her side, and forget about this fight with Kyle, which is nothing more than a terrible distraction?
The next day, Sutton has Kyle and Garcelle over for a tennis lesson where hardly anyone plays tennis, but Kyle is still mad about what happened with Dorit. She says that Dorit and the others were making fun of her for the veins popping out of her head, and Kyle says the last time that happened was when she delivered the classic line, “You’re such a fucking liar, Camille,” during the first season of RHOBH. Yes, that was the last time Kyle let her Botox fail, and her aesthetician is certainly going to get a bad review after she lets it fail once again.
I think there are a few things going on here. As Sutton says, Kyle doesn’t like when people stand up to her, especially on what she can only possibly view as her show. Dorit is finally doing it, but Kyle doesn’t know how to deal with her or their new dynamic. But I also understand Kyle’s point that Dorit is trying to make it look like she did something wrong when she clearly thinks she didn’t. (By the end of the episode, we’ll know that she sure did!) But it seems to me that Kyle is still on Mauricio’s side about this. She tells the women she talked to him that morning and he thinks it’s dumb that she can’t be friends with PK, a severed toe in your fruit cocktail. Of course, he does. He’s a dude! I had to explain to my husband that if I hate someone, he has to hate them, too. That’s the way the world works, but guys don’t get it.
However, the craziest Mo defense comes when Garcelle and Sutton tell Kyle they wouldn’t have liked it if she was texting their exes, and Kyle says the situations are different because Garcelle was dealing with infidelity. What happens next is the kind of deflection and stonewalling that is wonderful to behold. It was so absolutely insane I would like to preserve Kyle and Sutton’s back and forth for posterity.
“But you also had infidelity. Let’s not forget that part,” Sutton starts.
“Which part?” Kyle asks.
“Infidelity.”
“Who did?”
“You did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“With Mo?”
“When?”
“You’ve talked about him.”
We then get a flashback to her at the last reunion, talking about how he broke her trust and then Kyle saying how he talked to women on Instagram and she didn’t like it. Sutton just said that Insta moment is what she was thinking of and dropped it. But Garcelle is right; we all know something went on, we all know something happened, and for Kyle to continue to have that man’s back when he is going to try to fleece her in the world’s slowest-moving divorce is going to come back to haunt her some day.
Garcelle and Sutton were really coming for Kyle in this episode, and I could not have been happier. Sutton, Kyle, and Garcelle devise a surprise for Erika, who is pissed she didn’t get a pizza party like Kyle did when her divorce was going down. They show up at her house, blindfold her, and take her to a Chuck E. Cheese so deep in the valley that porn producers wouldn’t even buy a house nearby. Okay, this was hilarious and showed the women having a great time together. The cast of RHONY should pay attention because this is how you do a prank that is both good television, good-natured, and good shade.
Anyway, at Chuck E. Cheese, which could probably use its own Capri Room, the talk naturally turns to divorce, and Garcelle tells Kyle she’s going to be painfully blunt. “Do whatever the fuck you want to do. Be whoever you want to be. If you want to be a lesbian, be a lesbian.” The line gets an uncomfortable laugh around the table, but I’m glad someone finally said it, not just to draw attention to the fact that Kyle might want to go for a little bit more than a dip in the lady pond, but that someone permitted Kyle. Garcelle said to her that they don’t care, that no one will care, that she should do what is true in her heart, but I’m not sure that Kyle knows what is in her heart these days other than a deep gnawing rot no number of Kemo Sabe hats will fill.
It’s something else that happens at Charles Entertainment Cheese’s that really sets this episode on fire. Earlier, we saw Kyle go to visit Boz the day she had surgery to have ten fibroids removed from her lady parts, including one so big you could see it protruding from her stomach. (Now that is a PK description I should keep in the vault for the next time I need one.) She was back at home four hours later. What the hell is wrong with the American health-insurance system that you can have a whole citrus fruit removed from your body and you’re back at home in your pajamas in time for lunch? That’s insane.
What’s even worse is that these women couldn’t leave Boz alone long enough for her to heal. Not only did Kyle and Dorit send competing floral arrangements (Kyle’s are more traditionally pretty, but Dorit’s are more contemporary, more colorful, and clearly more Boz’s style), but they also both came to talk to her about their problems. Give it a rest, both of you. Give this woman some time to heal!
Kyle basically comes over to make her case about how she would never do anything terrible to Dorit, that what she and PK, a grapefruit-sized fibroid that protrudes from your belly, was doing wasn’t that bad. Kyle says, “Everyone knows I’m not that girl.” But aren’t you? Aren’t you the one who ran Denise Richards out of town because she may or may not have had sex with Brandi Glanville? Aren’t you the one who turned on Yolanda Bananas Foster Hadid when Lisa Rinna said her Lyme disease was fake? Aren’t you the one who maybe stole Kim Richards’s house? I mean, we have 14 years of evidence of the kind of friend Kyle is, and it’s not always a great one.
Boz is totally right that Kyle and Dorit are in two different friendships and have different ideas of what it is like to be close. Kyle then tries to say that Dorit never shares anything about her marriage, but we see footage of it happening, and Boz points out that Dorit told her everything in their first five minutes of meeting. Boz clearly knows that Kyle is full of shit. Kyle brings up how Dorit hugged Mauricio on the show, and it made all the fans think they were having an affair to prove her point. Girl. Gurl. Gewwwwwwuuuurrrrlllll. That happened when Dorit had just been robbed at gunpoint! You’re going to use that moment against her?
Both Boz at her house and Erika at Chuck E. Cheese tell Kyle that Dorit wants to see what was in Kyle’s texts to PK, a Teddi Mellencamp fan. Well, at least that’s what Boz says, and I’m with Kyle: That seems a little crazy. Dorit should be able to trust Kyle enough not to show it. Believe what your friend said was in those messages. Erika says that Dorit wants to know when Kyle gets any more texts from the ex, which makes total sense to me. It’s a much more reasonable request than handing over your phone like Annalise Keating just found her husband’s dick in it.
Then Kyle decides that she is going to read her text from PK, the smell inside one of those Chuck E. Cheese mascot masks, saying, “The fact that she’s trying to make it seem like I’m anything inappropriate is gross.” The text, which she sent right after the divorce announcement, basically says that she has been and always will be his friend, but then it gets even worse. “I’ve never repeated anything you’ve shared with me and never would,” she reads.
What?! Kyle chose to share this with everyone? She thinks this is going to exonerate her? Oh no, there is a hole outside that Chuck E. Cheese, and it is Kyle’s own grave that she just dug. I know what Kyle’s defense is going to be. This is the kind of text you send someone after their divorce announcement, trying to lend your support, but this is not the boilerplate thoughts and prayers that you send. We all immediately have a million questions: What has he told her before? Why hasn’t she said anything? Does Dorit know that he told her these things? What is so bad that she feels like she can’t share it publicly, and why is she soliciting him to tell her even more things that she’s then not going to share? This is exactly what Dorit feared, what we all feared, and here is Kyle sharing it thinking that it’s her ticket to freedom. Oh no, sister. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The last scene is Garcelle going to bother Boz in her sick bed, and Garcelle gives Boz the hard sell on why Dorit is annoying. And I get it. I see why all of these women are annoyed with her. Dorit, who has always talked a lot, is now talking more than ever, and she’s shouting at these women; she’s getting aggressive with them; she’s making the veins bulge out of their foreheads. I get it. That’s annoying, and it sucks. But that doesn’t mean Dorit is wrong. In fact, those who are often the most correct can also be the most annoying.
Still, Garcelle knows how messed up this all is, and when she tells Boz what is in the text, Boz screams, “Hell no!” And it echoed right past all the shoes collected at Boz’s front door that can’t be in the house; it echoed down the streets of Holland Park where Erika is looking at fabric swatches; it echoed over the Hollywood Hills and into the valley past all of Kyle’s poorly behaved animals; it echoed all the way to Chuck E. Cheese. You could hear it over the sirens and whirs of the Dance Dance Revolution machines, the children shouting for more tokens, the parents telling them “no,” and the siblings fighting over the last slice of pepperoni pizza. It echoed everywhere, and we all heard it, and now Kyle is out in the parking lot, lying in her grave, wishing that, somehow, she could take it all back.