The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap: A Tale of Two Dinners

This week, on our favorite television program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They flew to Augusta, Georgia, commercial, and they were very upset about that, but then they got to hang out at some kind of secret airport lounge and got driven right to their plane. (How do the rest of us get to that lounge? I would like to eat my airport Popeye’s there, please.) They chased their stinky, ill-behaved dogs through the backyard as they tried to bathe them because the only luxury the dogs had not been afforded was a private obedience coach. They asked one of their only two Black friends if she was wearing a necklace that was puka shells or pearls, and their Black friend said, “They’re diamonds, girl!” and for one brief shining moment it was as if DEI hadn’t been erased from the face of our good nation.

But mostly what the rich women did was have awkward conversations across the country from each other, with Sutton taking Garcelle and Kyle to Augusta to meet her mother, Reba, a single mom who works two jobs and loves her kids and never stops, and Kathy Hilton having a dinner for the leftovers at her house. Dorit didn’t even know about the trip to Augusta, and to make it even worse, Kathy chose a Capri theme for the dinner, which just reminded Dorit of the demise of her own personal room of a Buca di Beppo in Encino.

Before we can get to those things, we need to make a brief stop at two hangouts between the women and their men. The first is dinner between Boz and Keely, during which they talk about the timeline of their relationship and what they want from it. Keely seems to have no sense of urgency at all, but Boz reminds him that they might want to have a kid together. Boz is 47, which means the time to put a plan together for her to carry a pregnancy was about two years ago. Now, we know that it isn’t impossible for a woman of her age to have a baby; look no further than Diana Jenkins, the Princess of Liplikia, who gave birth to her latest child at 49. But, even still, if this includes IVF and such, they better start booking those appointments (checks his Apple Watch) faster than I can close the ring on the number of flights of stairs I am supposed to climb today. I just wanted Boz to be like, “Are we getting married and having a baby or nah?” and then for the Jeopardy! theme song to play while he has 30 seconds to think about it.

The second visit is between Kyle and Mauricio, where he puts on his camo Agency trucker hat to take her to the shooting range because we are living in Trump’s America and Kyle would like to know how to fire a gun for when gun ownership becomes compulsory, which will probably happen before Boz’s first appointment with a fertility specialist. Kyle is on the shooting range wearing a tight black tank top, cargo pants, and combat boots and firing a 9mm. She’s never beating those lesbian allegations, is she?

It was kind of a sweet conversation between the two of them. Kyle is checking in on his new condo and wants to make sure that he’s eating more than just canned soups. (Girl, if eating canned soups gives you a body like his, I’m buying stock in Campbell’s.) She also wants him to know how lonely she feels in the house where their family used to live now that they’re all gone. She’s crying, he’s holding her, it’s as if the world’s slowest-moving divorce isn’t happening. But it is! Kyle says she’s mourning the loss of someone who is still there. Then get him out! Move out of that house! Give up on this idea of the past that she’s still clinging onto like a losing scratch ticket.

Then Kyle is whisked off to Augusta to hang out with Sutton and Garcelle. They pull up to Sutton’s home, which looks like Chateau Shereé’s “after” picture. There are Corinthian columns across the front, a veranda on either side, and the ghosts of plantation cotton all around. It’s a stunning house, and since it’s in Augusta, she probably got it for about 79 cents and a half-off coupon for the Piggly Wiggly. Sutton’s mother lives in another gorgeous house in the backyard. These reach people, always buying their properties BOGO.

It’s weird they came all this way to see Reba and then spent about 15 minutes with her. Garcelle presented Reba with a scarf, the garment equivalent of a scented candle. Reba doesn’t know what to make of this gift, but she does tell Kyle that she’s pretty. When Garcelle compliments Reba’s grandchildren, Reba says they are all smart but that James is weird. Okay, I love this truth teller, and I love Garcelle even more for saying she has a weird one, too. In confessional, she says it’s Jax, who is absolutely, 100 percent the weird one (complimentary).

After saying hello and settling into their rooms, Sutton takes the ladies to Luigi’s. I don’t know whether I should make a joke about how it’s not as good as its brother restaurant, Mario’s, or if I should make a joke about how Luigi’s is the hottest restaurant in town and all it had to do was kill a health-care CEO. Which direction do you want me to go in? Choose your own adventure. At dinner, Sutton talks about how difficult her relationship with her mother is, how she feels like her mother was never proud of her, and that her mother was more worried about keeping up her own lifestyle after Sutton’s divorce than helping Sutton through it. Garcelle says she wants to talk to Reba about showing Sutton some love and respect, and Kyle just giggles under her hand at this bad idea. Kyle knows a thing or two about difficult mothers, and she knows the best course of action is the one where you just smile, tell her that her perm is lovely, and then give her a hug on the way out.

Speaking of Kyle’s difficult mother, I have a feeling that Kathy Hilton is that exact same person as Big Kath, but after she has exhaled a full tank of nitrous that she bought at a smoke shop in a strip mall. Boz asks Kathy about Kyle being cold with her since she joined the group, and they all wonder what is going on with Kyle. Kathy says she knows better than to ask too much because that is when Kyle starts to get worked up, like when everyone was asking her about her texts with PK, a sheep’s testicle pie. Are we sure that is why Kathy isn’t asking Kyle about herself, or is it that Kathy just takes up all the air in the relationship?

Then the conversation turns to Dorit’s divorce and how she didn’t think it would get so dirty so quickly. Kathy asks, “Who couldn’t love PJ?” This is Kathy’s nitrous habit in action. She didn’t get his name wrong; Kathy thinks that Dorit is married to a whole different person named Philip Jacobson, who is a real-estate developer who builds apartment buildings on the central coast of California. He is tall and blond, has a great body, and coaches his son’s little-league team. Kathy sat next to him at dinner once ten years ago and has been convinced that Dorit was married to him ever since.

Just kidding — Kathy just got the name wrong, but she still gets to deliver some unbelievable shade. When Dorit says her soon-to-be ex is 56, Kathy says, “I thought he was 56 when we met, and I first met him at Phyllis Diller’s house in 1992!” Kathy then asks if PK, Astroglide flavored ice cream, is a good father, and Dorit flat out says “no.” This perfectly illustrates the change we’ve seen in Dorit this season. She says that in the past, she would have said yes to protect him, but now she’s telling the truth: He’s often absent, he never calls the kids, and he’s not very hands-on. This is all we ever wanted from Dorit. I get that she wanted to protect her man and her family, all of us would, but we all knew this was the answer for years and she’s finally telling us that our eyes did not deceive us. She’s showing us what we always knew: that he isn’t as nice as she says, that he’s not as good a partner as she says, and he certainly doesn’t have the kind of money to afford a whole suite of Hermès plates for people to do coke off of in the bathroom at one of their dinner parties.

This comes about because PK, a piece of pizza that landed cheese-side-down in a dog park, sent Dorit a seven-page email about how he expects this divorce to go, how he wants her to take up all payments for the mortgage, how he thinks custody should go, how he would divide up assets, and threatening her if she doesn’t go along with his plans. That all sounds awful, but how do we know how many pages an email is? There aren’t pages in emails. Did she print it out? Is that how? And how is a divorce email somehow ten pages shorter than the one Kyle Cooke sent to the participants of Summer House?

The biggest takeaway from the dinner, however, is that they have been married nine and a half years, right before the ten-year mark when everything in California becomes joint property and Dorit would get half no matter what her huckster of a husband says. Dorit says this is not the man she married, but, come on, isn’t he? Isn’t this just what PK, a seven-page email, would do? This guy was always terrible, he was always talking down to her, he was always doing whatever he wanted and making her go along with it. Remember when he renamed her swimsuit line Beverly Beach without asking her? That is the PK she married and the one she is divorcing.

But she got great advice from around that table, particularly from Erika, the one other person there who has been divorced. First, Erika asks Dorit what she is waiting for and what she is holding on to before filing for divorce. Well, hopefully, she’s holding on for six more months for her financial future, and she’s holding on for one more day for Wilson Phillips. But Dorit says she’s waiting to see if she really wants to end it, and Erika tells her the hard truth: It’s over. He does not want her back. He is done, and the best thing she can do now is protect herself, be proactive, and make decisions for herself before he starts making decisions for her. And as the women around the table all look down into their lemon pasta and contemplate the bleak future that awaits them all, Kathy looks up a little cockeyed at Dorit. She opens her mouth as if to speak, then closes it again. She looks down at her pasta and back up at Dorit and then says, “Are you sure his name isn’t PJ?”