The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap: Hot Diggity Dogs

This week on our favorite television program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They invited their cousins over for difficult talks about fertility while their assistants toiled away at the kitchen island, putting 1,347 tiny little crystals on the back of a hand mirror for a prop for one Instagram photo. They said good-bye to their withholding mothers, who managed to eke out one “I love you” on camera so that it can’t be said at their funerals that it never happened. They brought out their red, white, and blue Birkins for a Fourth of July party that was attended by at least a dozen kids and their parents but who were also conspicuously absent from any of the filming whatsoever as if Dorit gave them a hot dog and a watermelon vodka drink and showed them to the door.

But mostly, what the women did was eat a hot dog. No, wait. That was just my girl Erika Jayne. I have never identified with a Housewife more than I did with Erika Jayne in this episode. Much like her, I do not love a hot dog, but once a summer, I want a full American-style barbecue with hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, corn on the cob, watermelon, and banana pudding. Erika was at this party not for drama but for her annual hot dog, a full-fat Coke, and making everyone else move on with their bullshit because she is sick of listening to these same damn discussions every damn week. Erika is me, especially because we both love to show up dressed as “slutty American” to just about every party.

Most of the confrontations at Dorit’s July 4th party (which is especially patriotic considering her accent still doesn’t have a passport) have to do with Dorit herself. It starts when she goes upstairs to untangle her body chain. Let me tell you, if you have ever owned a body chain, and I think that is most of us here reading this recap, if you have ever owned a body chain, you know just how pesky and tangled they can get. Anyway, she leaves Sutton waiting downstairs for almost 45 minutes while she gets her body chain in order. That is both longer than she made Kyle wait when she was in glam but not as long as she made Teddi Mellencamp wait at a bistro sipping only room-temperature water.

Dorit and Sutton aren’t on great terms, but Dorit makes it weird almost immediately when she tries to take Sutton’s tiny baby blue Kelly bag (like a Birkin, but smaller) and says, “I think you owe it to me.” It’s obviously a joke, but like that Toronto Delta flight, not one that lands. (Way too soon.) Sutton says she doesn’t think she owes it to Dorit, but Dorit insists she does, keeps holding the bag, and is shooting this look at Sutton that says If you try to touch this bag, I will have Jagger and/or Phoenix come in here and gnaw your arm off. But, yeah, Dorit made it weird. She made it last too long, and even the little bit of fun was left behind to rot like forgotten Cheesecake Factory leftovers.

It’s another terrible joke that really gets this party started. As Dorit, Sutton, Kyle, and Garcelle are sitting outside in the heat. (94 degrees. That’s almost a boy band!) Garcelle asks Sutton what she’s drinking, and Sutton answers that it is a watermelon coconut cocktail. Garcelle asks her if there is alcohol in it. Dorit pipes up and says, “Didn’t you ask Sutton what she’s drinking? And you asked if there’s alcohol in it?” This is obviously a joke. It is not funny, phrased strangely, and off in tone, but it is a joke nonetheless. I think it was meant to be fun shade, getting a little ha-ha out of the fact that everyone thinks Sutton drinks a lot. However, it’s weighed down by whatever stupid joke Dorit was playing with the bag, by the tensions that’s been happening between these two all season, and by Dorit implying that Sutton drank too much for most of last season.

Sutton does not think this is funny because, well, she had her sense of humor lasered off somewhere around her 38th birthday, but also because the delivery of the joke wasn’t fun; it was accusatory. Sutton responds, “Oh, Dorit, shut up. You’re such a bitch.” Just as Dorit’s joke was terrible, so is this response. Sutton knows this is a silly dig, but she takes the bait and makes it far too serious. Why couldn’t Sutton have said, “Yeah, Dorit, that’s like someone asking you why you’re being so quiet.” She could have gotten out of this; she could have diffused the situation if she had just lightened up a bit, but Sutton is as light as black-out curtains during a total eclipse.

We all know what’s coming next, and it’s one of Sutton’s patented storm-offs, saying that she doesn’t feel welcome in Dorit’s home. She shouldn’t! Dorit is right, you shouldn’t call someone a bitch in their house. My old roommate had a porn star boyfriend who once peed in our apartment with the door open, and I yelled at him so hard his tight little ass bounced all the way down 9th Avenue until he ended up in the Hudson. If he had called me a bitch, well, he would have just gotten back from circumnavigating the solar system after I punched him upside his (admittedly hot) head. That’s just not nice, but still, Sutton is the one aggrieved, Sutton is the one damaged, and Sutton is the one hurt.

As Sutton heads for the door, Kyle rushes to stop her, and Garcelle yells to the barman, “Give me a watermelon and vodka, I’ll be right back,” but she never returns to collect her drink because Sutton tells her it is disgusting. As they’re trying to talk Sutton off a ledge once again, Kyle reminds us that Sutton got all pissed at her for storming out of Boz’s spa party, but now that Sutton’s doing it, she doesn’t care. But this is what Sutton always does. Remember Magic Mike Live? The moment Sutton feels uncomfortable, she heads for the door and then pulls focus away from whatever is happening at the event so that all the women can calm her sensitive nerves and return from a disaster that is entirely of her own making.

No one gets this as well as Boz, who shows up mid-tantrum to find Garcelle, Kyle, Sutton, Erika, and recent arrival Kathy Hilton all hanging out by the front door with the umpteen pictures of PK, a papercut on the inside of your eyelid. Boz tells them all to come into the house because it’s rude to just sit by the front door, ruining their friend’s party and wasting the batteries on their portable fans in the AC. After Garcelle yells at Boz not to be Dorit’s spokesperson, Boz says, “It looks rude. If you all want to coddle her, then coddle her.”

Yes! Thank you, Boz, for finally saying it. All they ever do is fucking coddle Sutton. You would think her name was Molly with all the mollycoddling they do. They have to deal with her moods, assuage her tears, and make her feel comfortable in every situation when she is the one who starts it. Why are they always falling for Sutton and her tears? But it doesn’t help, and Sutton storms off, saying that she’s sorry that her business succeeded and Dorit’s failed, that she’s sorry that she had a clean divorce and Dorit’s isn’t going to be clean. Now wait just one damn second. Google says that the Sutton Boutique is temporarily closed. That is a business that is surviving, but is it thriving? Also, hasn’t Sutton talked at length about how terrible her divorce was, how she had to hire forensic accountants, and how her husband tried to make it miserable for her? That doesn’t sound so clean to me. Sorry, Sutton, but I don’t think Dorit is jealous of you; I think she finds you annoying and doesn’t want you to call her a bitch. But Nice try.

Even though Dorit tells the other ladies to remind Sutton that there is a sisterhood in this group, Sutton still gets in her black car and heads home, crying the whole way to let the mouse go. The heat then turns on Boz, and Garcelle tells her again to stop speaking up for Dorit. Luckily, Erika looks up from her hot dog long enough to say, “Mmmhhhfffaa hahh fffmmmhhaaaaa.” Everyone reminds her not to talk with her mouthful, and she says, “Hasn’t Garcelle been Sutton’s spokesperson for years now?” Sorry, G, but she got you on that one.

It quickly pivots, however, to how Boz said that Kyle has been cold to her. Kyle says that isn’t the case and would like to dispute it, but I’m on Boz’s side here. I don’t think what she said was malicious; I think she was saying that she hadn’t bonded with Kyle; she found it a bit difficult, and she was looking for Kathy’s advice so she could fix it. Yes, she was saying Kyle was cold, but she wants to overcome it. I think the intentions here matter. When Dorit tries to chime in to help her friend, then Dorit and Kyle get into it, and Erika sits next to them, getting a drink delivered and diving in for her second hot dog of the party.

Just as their squabble is about to boil over, Dorit takes Kyle inside so they can have a moment alone. Kyle surveys the house, the rolling racks everywhere, the shoes not in their boxes, the empty bottles of whatever the hell that Jake Paul drink is, and she’s horrified. She knows Dorit is going through it because she has become messy. (Note to potential Housewives: the first woman to bring us a full-blown hoarder storyline gets an instant entry into the Housewives Institutes Hall of Fame and Mental Disorders.)

Finally, these two women, these two friends, sit down and talk about some real shit. Dorit asks Kyle if she wants to get back together with Mo, and Kyle says she is sick of being stuck in limbo, and if they’re not getting back together, she wants a divorce. Kyle also tells us that Mo keeps saying it’s too soon to talk about divorce, but it’s surely not too soon for him to be making out with some wannabe model in a Greek airport. Dorit says that her separation took her by surprise, and she feels like the last few weeks haven’t even been about how she’s going to get divorced but just lessening the pain associated with the fact that she is getting divorced.

This is what we want! That is what we wanted all along, these two old friends leaning on each other, talking about their shared trauma, sharing war stories about these two dim-bulb guys who have left them for reasons we kind of know but can’t quite discern. We want to hear them roast Dumb and Dumberer all the way to that slutty Greek airport and back again. Kyle says she wishes the two of them were doing what the guys were doing: moving on with their lives, buying new furniture, and getting laid by every Bravo fan who can’t afford Lasik and whose glasses were broken. Dorit tells Kyle, “We have to live. We have to live!” And she’s right, just as sure as Sutton is going to storm out of a party, as Erika is going to eat her annual hot dog in peace or otherwise, as Garcelle is to defend Sutton and Boz is to defend Dorit, as the sun is beating down on all the revelers in Dorit’s backyard, as some kid is going to drop a Sno-Cone on the paving stones and it will melt leaving behind only a snail trail of dried up syrup. As sure as all of that they need to live, and as the two of them chum up next to all of Dorit’s belly chains, it looks like they’re doing just that for the first time in a long time.