Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills is back, but before we welcome the new, let’s recap the old! In season 4 the cast tried to tackle issues of betrayal, religion, and race mixed with diamonds, rosé and glamorous vacations. It didn’t work.
They also tried to drastically alter the status quo by staging a coup against Lisa Vanderpump. That also didn’t work. But it did teach us a very important lesson about intergalactic geography: Brandi Glanville is an alien invader from Planet Trash! That explains everything…
Last season introduced us to one-failure-wonders, Carlton Gebbia and Joyce Giraud (or shall we call her Hoyce, depending on how much we’ve had to drink?). Carlton made her storyline about how she was the living embodiment of all the bored middle-aged ladies yearning for their husbands to become Christian Grey, but instead they got stuck with Mr. Green who is working his boring job to pay for boob jobs, instead of tying them up with twist-ties and beating them with bananas atop the Etruscan marble breakfast nook while the maid vacuums in the background. Carlton decided to prove that a gal can have both by building a parents playroom (with the help of her icky nanny) and taking her MIL to the Hustler store for bikinis.
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Good old Snarlton loved women – just not the women she works with! Only the kind that are willing to showcase their sexuality by making out with her on a trip to Palm Springs while drunk. Snarlton is also a witch – I’ll say! That didn’t go over well with Kyle Richards, who has plenty of experiences with witches, just not with Wicca.
Splits McHairflips and Snarlton bickered over who was judging whom about religion and who was giving each other nastygrams in the form a necklace that had to be soaked and cleansed and sulphored and burned at the stake to purify. Snarlton nonsensically offended by everything… sex, religion, questions about her life that she feels are judgment, discussing your husband’s penis size, but not showing off your sex toy collection. HUH? It was really LABELS she objects to – no, no not Louis Vuitton or Christian Louboutin, those are fine, but bad labels like Gap! And then there were curses… curses that bring bad juju and diarrhea! And it was all because of a star tattoo.
Joyce, of the pageant hair flip and perfect life, deeply unsettled single and unable to successfully mingle, Brandi, as the two were perennially on the wrong foot. First Brandi couldn’t keep her comments to herself, then she misconstrued everything Joyce said as attention seeking and desperate, and finally Brandi insulted Joyce’s race during a trip to Palm Springs. Yeppers, it was RHOBH’s first racist moment, and let’s hope it is definitely the last!
Palm Springs was the epicenter of everything that was wrong with Brandi last season – she couldn’t hold her liquor or her comments. Over a drunken dinner, she sloshed and slurred about how she couldn’t remember Joyce’s name and kept calling her “Jacqueline” because Joyce was the name of a “big fat pig.” Joyce, miraculously kept her composure.
Despite all of that when Brandi learned her beloved dog Chica had gotten out and they couldn’t find her, Joyce tried to be supportive by saying her dog had died once too and Brandi screeched that Joyce always tried to make everything about her. Pot meet kettle. Or should I say, sauvignon blanc meet chardonnay. Poor Brandi never did find Chica – or a friend in Joyce!
Of course, Brandi also did not see the error of her ways – she’s friends with a lot of black people guys, and she’s even dated one! Among the other issues Brandi has with Joyce was that she speaks Spanish. Ugh just talk English like all the other ‘Muricans. The situation erupted during a dinner at SUR, where Joyce and her husband Michael, tired of Brandi’s f-bomb laden-comments and drunken behavior, called her trash – specifically an expat from Planet Trash. Actually! Actually! The QUEEN of Planet Trash! They are missing their leader – return at once. Joyce left SUR calling immigration to report an illegal alien, and Brandi left feeling like Lisa allowed her to be attacked. Yet again.
Lisa also kept throwing Eddie’s former mistress Scheana Marie in her face to promote her business, at the expense of her world-class friendship to Brandi of the Boxed Whine.
Brandi was unable to stop herself from being the center of every little bit of distasteful drama – especially turning on her former BFF Lisa and trying to sell her out to the drama vulture that is Kyle. Oh Kyle, never a storyline, always a splits-doing sidepiece. But this season, oh this season, Kyle got her moment in the sun – even if it meant selling her marriage out to do so! This is Kyle’s favorite pattern: she’s sold her sister out, her friends, and now Mauricio, hottest man in Housewives. So hot that he’s unable to escape the lure of a tabloid cheating scandal.
Poor Kyle – no one denied it strenuously enough! No one stood up on top of the Hollywood sign, or Yolanda Foster‘s lemon grove to Heaven and announced with ferocity that Mauricio would NEVER cheat on the amazingness that is Kyle! Have you seen her hair?! It’s Panteen-worthy! She wears the kaftans of a goddess. If only her one friend, that friend she threw under the bus for Adrienne Maloof‘s mansion listing – ahem, LISA – would have said vociferously enough that Mauricio did not cheat, then Kyle would have been vindicated. Ken denied it – that counts right?!
But oh no, instead instead Lisa betrayed her. So how did Lisa betray Kyle, let us count the ways: FIRST she mentioned that the rumors existed in the first place – she called Mauricio an adulteress hooker-lover right in front of Kyle’s daughter Portia! How dare she! Then, oh – it gets worse – she forced Brandi to confront Kyle about Mauricio’s cheating while they were trapped in the luncheon from hell at the Wicked Witch Of Wicca‘s house of Raunchy Horny Sexy Show, featuring creepy dolls!
Worse yet – Lisa said no one was 100% sure that Mauricio didn’t cheat, although she didn’t believe he would! And finally, Lisa noticed that Brandi was in possession of said tabloids when she was visiting Brandi’s ricketedly little house and she tried to force Brandi to put the tabloids in her suitcase so she could confront Kyle about them in Palm Springs. And poor Brandi was so distraught by the obvious manipulations and meanness of Lisa that she was forced to get drunk to deal with the pain. OMG – when will Kyle admit she planted those rumors herself for attention?!
Kyle and Brandi initially hated each other over bullying accusations, until Brandi’s crisis of conscience forced her to come clean to Kyle that Lisa had been the one who kept bringing up the cheating scandal! Then, naturally, they became besties, bonding over being used as Lisa’s pawns and then being cast aside as useless.
According to Brandi it was Lisa who was forcing Brandi to be her mouthpiece and do all the mean things Lisa’s heart desired. She was smothering Brandi and trying to make her look like an out-of-control alcoholic when she’s just a fun-loving girl who wants to speak the truth! Of course all of Brandi’s issues with Lisa strangely coincided with Lisa and Kyle becoming friendly again.
Oh everybody hated Lisa – call it the trifecta of fainting on Dancing With The Stars, being the fan (and Andy) favorite, and having a successful spinoff, but everyone wanted a piece of savagery Lord Of the Lies takedown. Even Yolanda, battling Lyme and memory loss, was able to gather her strength for that. Yolanda’s critiques may have been justified – Lisa wasn’t really a good friend to her while Yolanda was going through her illness. She didn’t really call or come around, and Yolanda deduced that Lisa was no more than a “Hollywood Friend.”
That would have been fine, except Yolanda’s lemony-lyme-y brain had some confusions: she thought Ken assaulted her and she thought she took Lisa out for Starbucks to discuss their issues, but she actually just took Brandi there a few times to sober up after a bender. Well, you know – it happens! That’s life, Babe. Good thing Yolanda has David to look out for her all while behaving like a real man and staying out of women’s problems.
And what exactly did Kim “Rambles” Richards do last season? She had Kingsley – a dog. And she prayed to trash cans, and she hated Ken Todd for being dismissive of her because Ken only had so many hours to listen to Kim ramble about Kingsley, and also Lisa skipped Kim’s daughter’s graduation party because she was attending a charity event, and got back a few hours early, and preferred to check on her businesses instead of show up at some party for a person she barely knew. Although Lisa did send a gift – a very generous gift from a box labeled Tiffany’s. Kingsley ate it however, and Kim now claims it never arrived.
And on a beach in Puerto Rico, on a trip that was supposed to be rejuvenating, the masses descended on Lisa like vultures, to pick the meat of drama from her bones enough to make a storyline in which Lisa was drown in her own machinations. They all turned on her: Kyle, Brandi, Yolanda, Kim, and even Mauricio. So Lisa fled in the middle of the night, seeking refuge in a 5-star resort with Ken and Giggy by her side.
But the most important thing that happened last season was Werepuppies!
And now we are ready, for the 5th season, which features new castmates Eileen Davidson and Lisa Rinna. Oh my, I am going to have to come up with a nickname for one of these Lisas – which one shall it be?
TELL US – WHAT WAS YOUR MOST AND LEAST FAVORITE DRAMA FROM LAST SEASON?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]
