The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

Esopha-gate Season 13 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

Esopha-gate Season 13 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

This week on our favorite television program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did a thing or two. They took their 15-year-old sons and their gorgeous, lovely, and charming girlfriends out to dinner at a place that seems to resemble a Sizzler. Do they still even have those? They ran around their enormous modern farmhouse kitchens, screaming about purple dinosaurs and Frosted Flakes. They said their party didn’t need to have food because everyone is on Activia or Olympic or something like that. That’s not what they’re calling it. They’re calling it hormones.

Yes, the rich women did things, but one of them, Sutton, pissed me off right at the very beginning of the episode. She’s talking about the fourth-anniversary party for her store, also called Sutton. She says in confessional, “I love that I’m doing it all on my own, and I didn’t take anyone’s money to do that. That feels really good.” Thankfully, a producer is there to ask if she started the store with her spouse’s money, and she says, “Of course.”

This is what drives me crazy about Sutton. She’s entitled to every cent of the $300,000 a month she gets from her ex, and that money is hers. However, as we said about George W. Bush, she wants credit for hitting a triple when she started on third base. She used her ex-husband’s money; we know she used it, so why is she trying to hide it? She could have just said, “I did this all on my own,” which is true. She gets credit for the idea, the execution, the planning, and, obviously, for the success. She does not get credit, however, for the money.

The scene with Sutton at the party is followed by a quite intense scene with Kyle and her therapist/life coach, Jamie. I am already skeptical of an on-screen therapist, and as soon as we see a slash life coach, I am catching flags redder than Luis Ruelas’s face after two Viagras and a glass of white wine. It’s a bit of an odd session since Kyle is recapping her whole feud with her sisters and the recent suicide of her best friend, Lorene. Either we’re using this therapy session as an exposition dump for Kyle’s storyline, or she hasn’t talked to this guy in the better part of a year and is now catching up.

Kyle’s quite open and vulnerable during the scene and Jamie does give her decent advice. He tells her that he can’t have a relationship with Kathy on Kathy’s terms where Doogie is in the doghouse all the time. (Is Doogie derived from “dog”?) He tells her there are no obligatory relationships, especially if those relationships are bad. He tells her that after the death of Lorene, she needs to find a safe space, a place where she can be herself and get all of the love and support she needs. He tells her that she will find it among the cast of Rich Women Doing Things. Hahahaha. Just kidding. He didn’t say that. I mean, could you imagine? Fire him immediately!

While we do get Annemarie’s home scene, Garcelle taking Jaid and Ashlyn to Sizzler and Erika chatting with her mother about her Las Vegas residency, the rest of the episode is really about Sutton’s party. Kyle shows up with her sister Kim and both Kyle and Sutton say it’s so that Kyle can show how close she is to at least one of her sisters after Sutton’s dig last week that she had lost both of them.

Is bringing Kim Richards, Thousand Oaks’s premiere outsider artist, to any public function a good idea? As soon as she meets a real artist, she starts banging on about how she draws on all her walls as if that is normal and commendable behavior. When all of the women are sitting around arguing, Kim says to Kyle, “Sutton could use some work in here. I brought my markers.” You know what? It could be good for business. I feel like everyone would be walking — it’s L.A., let’s be honest, driving — by and say, “I must see what kind of store would have the scribblings of an insane person on display for the whole world to see.”

After Sutton gives the world’s worst speech in the middle of her store to an assemblage of Housewives and a bunch of gays with Fashion Nova addictions, she says next to Kim and Kyle, “I’m going to have a drink. My first one of the day. I’m just getting permission from Mom.” That is some of the most passive-aggressive bullshit I have heard in some time, and I live in England where there is so much of it they had to shorten it to “pass agg.” Kyle knows she’s talking to her and clarifies that she doesn’t think Sutton has a problem, just that she might have been wasted that night she went over and Sutton forced her to “Name ‘em.” Please, she and Dorit have been setting up the “Sutton is a drunk” story for weeks. She knows what she meant.

But Sutton is just as full of bullshit. When Kyle brings up the “bombshell” that Sutton dropped at her house about her new ring and its possibly being a makeup band, Sutton says, “I didn’t say that.” She’s right; she didn’t because she’s such a coward that she had to have her lackey Garcelle say it for her. Also, she heavily insinuated it, which is like saying it. Also, she was saying it in the confessional but not to Kyle’s face, which I would say was lily-livered, but if I comment on Sutton’s liver, she might think I was calling her a drunk.

Sutton says that her questions about the ring are a reflection of what other people are saying. I get that, and I think it’s totally fair to ask Kyle, “Hey, I am reading all over the press that you and Mo are broken up and that you’re a lesbian. Any truth to that?” But she doesn’t. She won’t confront it head-on and instead makes all these comments and insinuations. Sutton, just say it!

But as full of shit as Sutton is, Kyle is equally full of shit. She is upset that her friends saw her new ring and thought it was a “makeup band” because her husband was cheating on her, not a birthday gift or an anniversary gift. Yeah, because they’re all reading everything in the press, of course they would assume that! But no one, except maybe Garcelle, can actually ladies up and confront her about it. Garcelle does ask her, “If there is a story, would you own up to it?” Kyle immediately says yes, but here we are watching her FaceTime with the woman the tabloids say is her lesbian lover, and she does not own up to anything whatsoever. She’s owning this story as much as Dorit owns her own house. (Oh, that’s a low blow and not really true, but I’m sticking with it.) Kyle knows what Sutton means when she says she’s “in denial about something,” but her pretending like she doesn’t know is as bad as Sutton pretending like she’s not saying these things.

As they’re all talking about this, Sutton mentions to Dorit that Crystal told her that Dorit was saying she was a drunk. (I need a shot just to parse that sentence!) Dorit goes over to talk to Crystal about it, and Crystal decides that it’s time to clock in after eight episodes. “You hear about it. You fear it. You wish it never happens to you. But today, I am on the other end of a Dorit interrogation,” she says. We then see Dorit just ranting at Crystal for God knows how long. I wish they would do that thing like they do during Survivor endurance challenges and say, “Elapsed time: 84 minutes.” We need to know just how long and torturous these are.

As all the ladies sit down for a chat, it is now Annemarie’s time to shine. Well, maybe shine is a big word. After all, her husband said the reason he married her was that she was an 8.5 at everything: her looks, her athletic ability, her smarts. I know he meant it as a compliment that she is well-rounded, but, honey, if you don’t give me at least two tens, then I am going to pick up Mary Lou Retton, swing her at your head, and hope that your cranium flies higher than our Mary Lou when springing off the vault.

Annemarie starts asking about Sutton’s medication and whether or not she should be drinking on it. She starts asking about her esophagus and what exactly is wrong with it. I landed in some hot water after talking about this exact thing in last week’s recap. I would like to apologize for insinuating that she has an alcohol problem because of her esophagus situation. It was indeed a low blow. What I was — admittedly unsuccessfully — trying to show is that we can take a little bit of evidence, a little bit of Googling, a little bit of observation, a little bit of rumors and come to hasty or incorrect conclusions. Both she and Kyle are doing it to each other, and maybe we should all just stop.

But I’m actually on Sutton’s side in this whole Annemarie discussion. Sutton doesn’t even know this lady and she’s asking her medical questions in front of a group of people and a camera crew? And in Sutton’s own store? If I was Sutton, I would have “Good-bye, Kyle”-d her ass as soon as the names of my medication came out of her mouth. This is Annemarie looking to be of use and failing. Also, esophageal stretching? Apparently a thing!

As the party ends and Crystal goes home to wipe the Dorit spittle from her gorgeous white blazer, Sutton is still sitting on the couch that was put there for the evening. Avi, Georgia, and Josh, the assistant she forgot about in the storeroom for six months, are walking around picking up glasses, throwing away napkins, and eating the few remaining pigs in blankets that Kim Richard didn’t try to draw on. Sutton looks around at all of it: the staff, the step and repeat wilting in the wet weather, the designer dresses with a few more fingerprints, the jewelry cases with the earrings and broaches winking as if they’re trying to flirt. She sees it all and knows that, no matter where the money came from, she did it. This is hers. All of it. And as Avi drains a half-full champagne flute in the distance, Sutton gets something like pride or anxiety or sadness welling up in her throat. Nope, that’s not it. It’s just her esophagus.

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