The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season-Finale Recap: Saints Alive

This week, on the season finale of our favorite show, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things! They jumped into the Caribbean Sea because it is the only body of water they will swim in, and somehow, their intricate swimwear, which consists of a delicate constellation of straps, managed to stay on their bodies. However not all the rich women could go swimming because some of the rich women had so much fake hair and gold bling in their weaves that it would draw them right to the bottom of the sea like some kind of statue of Artemis that was at the center of Atlantis. The rich women also spent their entire day sitting in their suite, applying every sort of available cream, toner, serum, and mask with all sorts of different applicators that look like magic wands.

But mostly, the rich women wonder if Kathy Hilton is being held against her will. Actually, the rich women aren’t wondering that, but I am. It seemed like Kathy wanted absolutely nothing to do with this trip and was about as involved in it as PK, a three-wick candle made of melted-down boogers, is in the raising of his children. ZING! Maybe she was sick? At one point, she leaves dinner and arrives in a totally new outfit, saying that she peed in her pants. Or it was just the heat of being on a tropical island in July? Either way, Kathy looked miserable. The worst part is when they all go to dinner, and Kyle yells into Kathy’s room to ask what she’s wearing. “A T-shirt and shorts,” she answers, which I thought was a joke (it is not).

While the women are shopping at the night market, Kyle is talking to Sutton, and I thought, Wow, I can’t believe someone else on vacation is approaching them. It looks like a normie in a nondescript green T-shirt and frumpy white shorts. She had a portable fan in one hand, a bag in the crook of her elbow, and a rag wrapped around her neck. It is the sort of outfit you would wear to pick up your children from soccer practice and hope no one notices if you don’t get out of the car. But it isn’t a normie; it is Kathy who seems to have completely given up on the pretense that she’s on a television program. Then, when she sits down, she asks the waiters to bring bags of ice, which she promptly pops under her armpits. How the Kathy hath fallen!

Kathy was barely involved in the storyline of the episode, which was about the aftermath of Erika, Dorit, and Kyle piling on Sutton during the boat trip. Sutton thinks that the three of them have been trying to “break her” for years, but the other women will all point out the times that Sutton has been “volatile,” played the victim, or made every situation about herself. Thanks to the editors for giving us two very compelling packages, the first of Erika, Kyle, Dorit, and Lisa Rinna (catching strays long after her departure) gunning for Sutton and another of the things Sutton has done that maybe motivated the women to treat her like that. The show is saying, “Girl, you can all fight it out in the comments, on Twitter, in your group chat, and at contentious brunches where you only discuss your TV friends and not your real friends.” They are not picking a side, like Joni Mitchell’s worst song, they see both sides now.

Sutton initially refuses to go to dinner that night, leaving her allies Garcelle and Jennifer Tilly (always both names!) to do a little bit of cleanup. This is where things get messy. Jennifer accuses Erika and Dorit of coordinating an attack on the boat, and Garcelle accuses Kyle of not being loyal to Sutton. I don’t think that Erika and Dorit sat at breakfast like they were Skeletor and the Purple Pie Man, tapping their malicious little fingers together and saying, “Today on the boat, we’re gunning for Sutton.” No, that’s not how these things work.

However, they have clearly discussed this before. Erika has been saying this opinion in private conversations all season. Also, the women all talk about each other in their smaller groups, and Dorit and Erika surely discuss Sutton amongst themselves, just as Sutton and Garcelle talk about them among themselves. While it wasn’t a battle plan, these two had their points in order because they had been going over them individually, which is what made it seem like it was rehearsed by the time it got to Sutton. They weren’t colluding, but they were prepared.

The point about Kyle not having Sutton’s back is a little bit harder to parse. When Garcelle first raises the point, Kyle gets very upset and says, “This is Erika’s argument, and somehow it’s my fault. Fuck that.” Here’s the thing: it kind of is Kyle’s fault. As I said earlier this season, whether we like it or not, this is Kyle’s show. She is at the center of everything and the only one there since the beginning. She is also the bridge between Sutton and the remainders of Fox Force Five (feat. Boz). If Kyle sat Erika and Dorit down at any point this season and told them to take it easy on Sutton, they would stop. Also, any time this discussion comes up, if Kyle wants to shut it down she could. That is the power she has. So, yes, while she didn’t start this discussion, she could have ended it any time she wanted to.

The problem is, she does not want to and that is why Sutton has every right to feel betrayed by Kyle. First of all, I think Kyle is still upset with Sutton for how she went after her last season and this is her punishment. When Sutton asks Kyle (repeatedly) if she thinks Sutton attacks women when they’re down, Kyle answers (repeatedly) in her confessional that she thinks she does.

But there’s another reason, too. When Kyle tells Sutton that everyone has to take a turn in the hot seat, Sutton says that no one has ganged up on Kyle like they have ganged up on her, which is true. (Again, like it or not, it’s her show.) Then Sutton says in confessional, “If [Kyle’s] too self-absorbed to see this, we have a problem.” Um, yeah. Kyle is that self-absorbed! Even casual fans of the show know that is essentially her defining trait. Kyle is always only thinking about herself and how she is going to come off and she would much rather Sutton take the heat than her.

When Kyle talks about this situation to Sutton’s allies Garcelle and Jennifer, Kyle is upset that neither of them had Sutton’s back either, but they’re laying the blame at her feet like it’s a dead squirrel in Sutton’s backyard. Garcelle tells her that when Kyle is silent, it hurts Sutton more. Kyle asks why, but they don’t know. Luckily for everyone, I have the answer. Again, it’s because it’s Kyle’s show. I think Sutton is upset that Kyle won’t end it, but I think Sutton is also upset that she wants into the inner circle.

I think so much of this season has been about Sutton trying to center herself as a friend and a Housewife. That’s what the sisterhood move was about, what the big fashion show was about, and what taking Garcelle and Kyle to meet her mother was about. Sutton wants to be center diamond and she will never be there without Kyle letting her in. Yes, the fans can stan her as much as they want (and there are plenty that do!), but without winning over Kyle, she’ll always be on the outside, she’ll always be the shit-stirrer, she’ll always be the antagonist. If she wants to cement her berth on the show and not be the one who gets pummeled season after season (deserved or not), then Kyle is the key and she is not playing along in the way that Sutton wants her to.

Since we’re talking about Kyle’s beach chat with Garcelle and Jennifer, can we just pour one out for Jennifer Tilley and the absolutely perfect season she had? I think she was spotlighted more her than any other episode this season, and it was great. She always had Sutton’s back, even bringing her a glass of water and a laugh when she had extricated herself from the other women on the boat. She also said, in confessional, how she can see both sides of Erika and Sutton’s argument, but she is standing behind her friend which is what we really want, even advocating for her when she was having a tough time and didn’t want to go to dinner.

However, the absolute crowning achievement of her season happens on the beach with Kyle and Garcelle when Garcelle once again brings up what is going on with Mauricio. Jennifer tells Kyle, who states she’s not rushing into a divorce, that even the nicest people turn into monsters when divorce happens. She says that when she was getting divorced from her first husband, he said that there was $700,000 in the bank account and he would give her $350,000. She says one of her girlfriends told her she needed a lawyer. Kyle asks if she got more money after she had used a lawyer. Jennifer says, “I got a piece of The Simpsons. I’m not buying diamonds on Chucky money. The Chucky money just pays for my snacks.” Absolutely perfect. End of discussion.

The rest of the episode is a little bit of an anti-climax, well, except for the Carnival outfits. I loved that they were all risqué but only showing off as much as they were comfortable with. Boz, Dorit, Kyle, and Erika (of course) showed as much skin as possible, highlighting all of their banging bods. But everyone looked amazing, even the slightly more demure. Jennifer and Garcelle go for a kind of ‘50s bathing suit aesthetic while Kathy Hilton was in a full-on muumuu wondering if anyone had put fresh batteries in her portable fan. As for the costumes themselves, I was a little worried at first that they weren’t going to a real Carnival party and that this was cultural appropriation, but then they did join the party, and, well, my white guilt had no idea what to do with itself anymore, so it just sent a bunch of smug skeets (barf) on Bluesky and shouted, “But her emails,” until it was hoarse.

There’s a little coda at the end of the episode where Kyle goes over to Erika’s house to talk about the verdict against her ex-husband Tom. There is little revelation here because, well, it’s hard to fit a 20-year marriage into a three-minute sequence on a reality television program. Erika tells Kyle that she has good memories of Tom and terrible memories of Tom and that they all live inside of her at once. It’s nuanced, something that reality TV fandom and internet culture are allergic to. She says she’s glad she gets some closure, but there are still plenty of lawsuits and cases in front of her. It may be over for Tom, but the aftermath, like an ornately dressed clown in a horror movie, is going to follow her forever, poking its head around the corner when she least expects it. She says she is sad and overwhelmed and that she feels like she is sinking into the ground again, with the earth closing around her, like it’s an early grave, like her brain is in a tomb. But her feelings are real and while they may not be appropriate, while they may not be how each of us would feel or how each of us think she should feel, that is her reality. Like all of us she’s just trying to get through the day, to wrench some scrap of meaning out of the never-ending torture of existence.

As Kyle leaves, Erika walks her out, closing the front gate behind her. She’s left alone on a sunny, August day and her cabana beckons. She sits down on the newly upholstered couch and surveys her pool, trying to take in the light, trying to take in the good things that have happened to her this year. As she stares into the middle distance, a female duck flutters down from the sky, landing silently in the pool, not even causing a ripple. Erika wonders where she came from, what her story is. Does she have a mate? Does she have children? Where does she spend her winters? Has she ever been captured? Even worse, has she ever been hunted? Erika stays still in the cabana and when the urge to move hits her, she grabs her ponytail at the top, near her scalp, and smooths it with a closed fist all the way down to the tip. That’s all she can do because she wants to rush to that duck, throw herself — fully clothed, with her phone still in her pocket — into that pool and grab it, pull it close, rest its little head in the crook of her neck to see if it can quack a secret or two. But mostly she wants to hug it, she wants to pull its little heart close to her own, feeling their flutters next to each other, for just one moment to have it, to possess it, to internalize the kind of animalistic innocence she hasn’t known in ages.