My relationship is falling apart.
My relationship is falling apart.
Thank heavens that you and I have a healthy, normal relationship.
I hope that Bravo TV is paying their editing staff a whole lot of money for all the work they’ve been asked to do on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills this season.
Seriously. Those poor guys.
Not only do they have to make a second full season of a television show whose entire premise is pretty much built on nothing more than entitled rich women rubbing their money in our faces seem like it’s actually about something, now they have to do it while tip toeing around the death of Russell Armstrong. It can’t be easy since the events surrounding his death are still pretty touchy, and his storyline was originally going to be a big chunk of the show this time around. They’ve done a pretty good job of cutting him out of every scene and discussion other than his widow Taylor’s ramblings, even though if you really pay attention you can see some jumps in the Beverly Hills Time & Space Continuum.
Somewhere in the Bravo warehouse there must be one gigantic Rubbermaid bin of Russell footage collecting dust. The network has not really come clean on if, or when, Russell will be shown or how that will even fit into the grand scheme of things since he was always miserable and unhappy on camera from the start. I’m sure the build up is driving the hardcore Reality Junkies insane. (What are you looking at me for…?)
It’s getting to the point where I’m half expecting Ty Pennington and his crew to show up for the big Russell Reveal. “Move that bus…!!”
But anyway, lucky for us there is enough crazy left over to fill an hour every week.
We picked up where we left off last time…chilling out in the Beaver Creek hot tub with Kyle as she gets her first inkling that Taylor may be losing it. Any good chef will tell you that it is all about the ingredients. If you combine lack of sleep, too much wine, 175 degree jacuzzi water and self starvation together, it is a recipe for disaster. Sprinkle the top with a heaping of whackadoodle, and you’ve got yourself one big heaping pile of Disaster Waiting To Happen Cake.
Right here we got to witness one of those points I mentioned earlier where the editors must have just given up, cut out some good Russell moments and called it a day because one second Taylor is neck deep in hazy water crying her eyes out, and then the next she is face down in bed with Kim.
Can she teleport? How did she get there? When did they leave the hot tub? Are there two Taylors? The plot thickens.
Kim was pooped from skiing and eating chocolate chip cookies all day on the slopes, so she had crashed in her bed for a quick nap before dinner. Through the magic of television Taylor somehow ended up face to face in there with her like a richer, more botoxed Snookie and Deena on The Jersey Shore. Drunk chick on chick might work on MTV, but it is just weird on Bravo. Taylor slobbered her way around some apologies for some drama last year and cried a lot, and would probably have cried some more if Kyle hadn’t pig piled onto the bed with them like Sorority Girl #3 from a frat house cell phone video.
Since times are tight and Camille is being forced to sell the Beaver Cleaver Creek Lodge, it was only fitting that she hire a van full of chefs to cook dinner. With all those Housewives under one roof, you mean to tell me there wasn’t one of them that could warm up the soup? (Even though it was extremely fancy pants soup as the chef pointed out before serving.) While the chefs were all running around the kitchen like the Beverly Hills version of Pixar’s Ratatouille, Taylor was melting down. In a big way.
First they find her sitting in Kim’s suitcase covered in clothes. I should also point out that this was the second time in two days that a Real Housewives show featured people sitting in suitcases. What are the chances? How did I miss that trend? Awkwardly trying to blame Taylor’s…ahem, slightly erratic behavior…on the altitude, the booze, no food, no sleep, the Earth’s gravitational pull and the Tennessee Titans actually beating the Baltimore Ravens over the weekend, the other girls all go into panic mode.
Taylor goes room to room like she’s a new puppy looking for a chew toy, crying and pretty much having a breakdown. Since we all know how this story really ends, the whole thing was a little uncomfortable to watch. She licked her lips over and over like something on Animal Planet, and had some really nervous crazy eyes. If Russell was still alive she would be just another Bravo TV NutCluster coming down the conveyor belt, but since we know how it all wraps up it was sad.
Again, knowing the end of the Russell story before it unravels on TV is odd. Picture a box of Cracker Jack with a secret prize inside. Except that there’s a picture of what the secret prize is on the front of the box. Now the whole surprise is ruined. Granted, you still eat the entire box in one sitting, but you already know what the prize will be. It’s kind of like that, but not as crunchy.
Kim and Kyle’s messy sister-hating relationship bubbles up during Taylor’s breakdown, and Camille somehow uses a friend’s mental breakdown as a good chance to do a little more Kelsey bashing. You go, girl. Put it on a tee shirt.
These Housewives must have Rolaids in their Prada bags, because I have yet to see them eat a full meal without drama. That can’t be good for the digestion. Taylor cries some more at the table. Adrienne tries to be the Calming Force while Lisa seizes the opportunity to be the Voice of Reason and show off her boobs again.
After one of the chefs interrupts the drama to give a detailed listing of every single ingredient in the fancy pants soup, Kim decides to lighten the mood while unintentionally foreshadowing her own mental slinky going down the sanity staircase. Kim grabs a napkin and while yelling “BAM BAM!” over and over again like Barney Rubble’s son, proceeds to testify to the Lord as she tries to heal Taylor over appetizers. Not for nothing, but it’s gonna take more than a little table linen voodoo to fix this one.
To wrap it up, I’ll try to talk like a Bravo editor, since they are now my idols.
Once everyone made it back to Beverly Hills in one piece we had to sit through a few quick scenes that the editors should have cut out. Lisa is hoping to expand her restaurant empire by blowing a hole through the wall and taking over some open space next door. The entire scene is really not even worth mentioning, except for the quick glimpse we got of husband Ken holding sissy dog Jiggy (styling in his DogJog suit…) while Lisa proudly restated that she only puts out twice a year, but to get what she wants she might actually make it a trifecta.
Cut back to the shot of a defeated Ken holding her lap dog. Can you tell which one was neutered? Me neither.
Taylor met with her Life Coach, which is the biggest scam career known to man. The coach commends Taylor on how well she is doing to repair her marriage. Doing so well. She is finding her own voice. Everything is going to work out. Pay me $100 an hour and I’ll tell you anything you want to hear, too. ”You need to be the change that you want to see change or nothing will change because you didn’t become the change…do you have change for a hundred?” or whatever it is that Life Coaches always say.
Cut to that Cracker Jack box again if you need a reminder of how well Taylor’s Life Coach did. Job well done, honey.
To finish off the night, and to make everyone else feel financially inferior, Adrienne goes a few rounds with hubby Paul.
Mausoleum de Maloof has got to be one of the gaudiest, ostentatious, over the top pieces of real estate out there next to Donald Trump’s bathroom. Why Adrienne doesn’t just scotch tape $500 bills all over the front of her house I’ll never know. That would be less pretentious. (That was a lot of big words in one paragraph, thank you very much.) How Adrienne didn’t notice that someone had strung Dollar Store crepe paper twists all over her crystal cabinets is beyond me. Seriously. Did you see that? Behind them in the kitchen. Must be because she wears sunglass in the house.
For someone with so much cash, Paul still loves to act like he’s in Junior High Study Hall and poke Adrienne until she goes screaming out the front door. They are debating whether or not to go to the final Sacramento Kings game and risk their lives in the executive suites. Since Adrienne apparently spent all the money that was ear marked for a new stadium and put in some serious Wizard of Oz french doors in the hallway instead, they may have to relocate the team they own to another city.
I guess that the Sacramento fans are going Kim and Taylor mental over the move, and it seems that security is afraid Adrienne stands a good chance of getting bitch slapped by someone with purple and silver face paint if she shows up at the game. Bottom line, after a few minutes of their patented “Don’t look at me…stop looking away…look at me…” they end up going to the airport to board a private jet for the game. Why they didn’t just have the thing land in their lobby at the bottom of the winding staircase, I dunno. Must be a no-fly zone.
Cut to the airport. Adrienne had invited Kim. She wasn’t there yet. They called. She sounded drunk and spoke in one long, rambling 2 minute sentence with no punctuation.
She’s a hot mess. Next week is gonna be good stuff.
End scene.
