A long time ago, in a galaxy not completely controlled by amazon.com, people used to go to bookstores. It was actually a really lovely way to spend some time. You could browse for hours while good music played at the perfect volume overhead and, should you feel a little pang of hunger, you could wander into the café and procure yourself an almost perfect latte and a Rice Krispie treat the size of your head. One of my boyfriends and I used to spend a lot of time at our local Borders. We were young – in our very early twenties – and we didn’t really have a whole lot of money. Both of us were just months out of college and we each lived with our parents. It was tough returning from the freedom of college and entering homes that were no longer places we wanted to be, so it became borderline essential for us to get out of the house as often as possible. We'd spend a lot of dark evenings and some rainy Sundays perusing the Travel and Self-Help sections in an effort to help us retain what was left of our fleeting sanities.
More often than not, my boyfriend would eventually head off to the Music section to rifle through CDs and he always contemplated buying some Led Zeppelin box set that was so pricey, it was kept behind the counter. I’d be off in the Book section, almost always in one of three areas: Fiction, Biography, or Cinema. I only ended up in the Cookbook or Religion sections if I took a wrong left turn caused by a spiking caffeine high rushing through my bloodstream – and the consistency that was my browsing pattern was helpful because it meant that my boyfriend could always eventually find me, even if the store was bustling. I was the one who'd always lose track of time and it was incredibly common that he’d finally stumble upon me and implore me to get myself together so we could go home, reminding me that I probably didn’t need to buy all seventeen books I’d convinced myself had to be mine immediately. He’d pry about twelve of them out of my hand and promise he’d buy them for me for Christmas and, even if it was March, I’d be somewhat comforted by that statement and he could usually get me out of the store before I tripled his chances at one day having to file for bankruptcy.
It was on one of those balmy evenings when I had an epiphany: Wouldn’t it be fun to not just visit but also to work at the bookstore? To be clear, that kind of random thought should be grounds for the closest loved one in the vicinity to have pelted me hard on the head with a hefty eastern philosophy textbook in an effort to get me to stop from compromising a place that only brought me joy by bringing shit like mandatory hours and bosses into the equation. Still, I was just getting started on my Master’s and my school hours were all over the place. Some classes were during the day and some were at night and getting an employer to understand and work around a schedule that would fluctuate from semester to semester was already causing me great bouts of stress. Obviously, I reasoned, I could only work part-time while getting my degree so within about twenty seconds of the idea initially formulating in my scattered head, I’d scored myself a job and Borders changed instantaneously from being my happy place to a place of work.
Let’s just say I don’t always make the best decisions.
It’s not that working at the bookstore was the worst job I ever had – that distinction belongs to the two whole days I worked at Old Navy, where I spent my morning trapped in a crowded elevator and my afternoon being scolded by a former Marine who ran the section I was placed in who told me repeatedly that I was the worst fucking folder on the planet – but there were some troubles I noticed right away. Customers either thought you were an uneducated fool because you worked in retail or expected you to have read every book in the entire store. Creepy men would ask you to help them find a particular title and then follow you to the section, walking slowly enough behind you that you could feel their eyes boring into your ass. The music that played – once so lightly atmospheric – played on a loop and slowly started to drive me insane. But maybe more than anything, what I couldn’t help being bothered by was the knowledge that so many wonderful books always went unread while others (and not always the best ones) flew off the shelves.
I actually liked many of the books Oprah chose for her massive book club. She’s Come Undone became a real favorite of mine, but it was bizarre that all it would take was for the woman to declare to the masses that they should read it and scores of people would come flying into the store as though programmed. We couldn’t keep those titles in stock. Anything with John Grisham’s name sold out quickly, too. But perhaps our hottest commodity was the entire collection of those yellow books with the soft cover – the Dummies series. Yes, there was Investing for Dummies and The Bible for Dummies and Writing Fiction for Dummies. Dummies were being taught how to train a Lhasa Apso. Every single day, I would stumble onto yet another title in the set. Music Theory for Dummies. Organizing for Dummies. My personal favorite was the one called Mindfulness for Dummies – the title alone was fucking hilarious.
I thought about those books today, especially one that was an often-purchased one in the series: Travel for Dummies. While I never actually opened the book, I imagine that it lays out some helpful hints about how to make a trip more pleasant. I’m sure there are tips about how to pack and how to get shit like lotion onto a plane and how to make reservations when you don’t speak the language and how to organize an itinerary so you are able to hit the spa and go horseback riding in the same afternoon. I also have not a doubt in my mind that there’s a chapter – or at least a long paragraph – devoted to choosing the right companions with whom to go trekking all over the world. Travel compatibility is not a small thing! If you’re someone who likes to sleep in, fuck going away with the friend who is going to pound on your door just as the sun rises with a green smoothie in her hand and a grand plan to get you to that yoga class that's taking place beneath the sunrise. If you’re someone who wants to experience life like the locals, don’t hop on a plane with a guy whose greatest experimentation involves going to TGI Fridays instead of Chili's. If you're single, always travel with at least one very hot wingwoman. And for fuck's sake, if you're a Real Housewife, do not get on a plane to Dubai with a gaggle of women who seem intent on destroying you.
I like consistency in my relationships, even the ones I have with strangers on television. I'm open-minded and all, but I don't particularly want to change my mind about the person (or character) you are once the thoughts have grown solid in my head. Do you know how complicated it was for me when I started to contemplate that maybe Benjamin Linus on Lost wasn’t constructed out of pure evil? I didn’t sleep for weeks! So when it comes to banal reality television, I really don’t have the energy for this shit. My opinions have been formulated by watching the show closely and I’d like those opinions to stand unless one woman randomly decides to run another woman over with a monster truck that spits fire out of the ignition. Lisa Vanderpump? I've loved her from the very start of this show. I responded immediately to her cheeky wit and her steely strength and her love for all things furry, including her adoring husband. Kyle Richards is someone I decided long ago (based on her televised actions and reactions) is only loyal if it's convenient for her and disloyalty is something I'm not even going to try to stomach. She might not cause me to tear at my own flesh like just the shaky sight of her worst sibling does, but I'll probably never like her unless she buys me my very own pony. But Eileen Davidson? She's muddying things and it's really starting to annoy me. My actual relationships are complicated enough. I don't need some soap actress to cause me to rack my brain in an effort to decipher where it all went so very wrong.
When she arrived on this show, I found Eileen to be calm, contemplative, articulate, and just a wee bit dull. I was more than willing to embrace a dull Housewife, though. After all, she wandered into our lives during what I now think of as The Days of Cheap Wine and Dead Roses and Brandi Glanville and I was open to the possibility of someone normal gracing my television screen. I liked how warm Eileen was with Lisa Rinna and the ways her very presence caused Kim Richards to quake in her probably stolen shoes. I enjoyed how she was able to explain her concerns about the others and then seemingly move on.
That Eileen seems to be missing in action these days and Eileen 2.0 is full of mental viruses. I get that she was offended when Lisa Vanderpump described the beginning of her relationship with her husband as an affair, but I truly cannot understand the residual bitterness that she has since embraced. Lisa apologized. She hasn't even said a word that rhymes with "affair" since. She never reacted to Eileen's annoyance by striking back. And all Eileen has done is bring that awkward moment up again and again as though there will somehow be something new and nefarious to uncover about Lisa's motives. Here's a suggestion – and it's a genuine one: can't Eileen decide that, for whatever reason, she doesn't quite care for Lisa and just peacefully coexist beside her on these paid luxury excursions instead of working to achieve some vague resolution she doesn't even seem to really want? I mean, they're essentially coworkers, no? I work with a lot of people. Some have become incredibly close friends, some are just friendly acquaintances, and some I just nod at with a small smile and I think that dynamic is nothing but normal. The thought of stopping a meeting I'm in by declaring, "There's a lot that's not being said here and we have to resolve everything right now!" would probably lead to instant bloodshed because some things between adults will never be resolved. Eileen needs to either move on or just lynch Lisa over cocktails so we can all finally be put out of our misery.
Speaking of misery, tonight's show begins back in New York with Yolanda schooling all of us in some statistics: she hasn’t worn makeup in eleven months, gotten Botox in three years, and she’s spent the last three hundred days in a bathrobe. Once again, I find it necessary to reiterate that I really believe this woman is sick, but I’m also finding it necessary to venture forth and express an opinion. I think it’s idiotic that someone who claims to be fighting for her life has chosen to continue to appear on a show like The Real Housewives. I mean, at what point did this series become anything resembling a public service announcement? I fear that I'm sounding callous and I truly don't mean to, but let’s call this show for what it is, okay? This is not educational programming. This is a series about women who fight over brunch and then discuss that very fight for the next seven months.
She is still on this show, though, and she needs to get ready for the party where she will be honored so Yolanda gets her face painted for the first time in forever. In another hotel room, Erika is getting dolled up, too. Tonight is the event for the Global Lyme Alliance and that means that her diamonds better sparkle! As any human being who is an enigma swathed in diamonds and deep fried in cash understands, the evening simply cannot begin without your makeup artist first photographing you while you crawl atop a table. I hope Erika sends that picture to her father/husband and he's so impressed by her range that he allows her to go on spring break this year. Is that a snarky sentiment? It sure is, but I’m more than a bit concerned that Erika seems to have bought into the fact that the dominant trope of feminism is wearing a bedazzled pink necklace that spells out “cunty,” yet she is not permitted to speak freely in her own home. At any rate, into the milieu of Erika crawling across a table walks Kyle, who is covered up like a schoolmarm in comparison, but the white collar and cuffs no longer matter once a Jonas brother wanders onto the scene. He’s there because he was the boy-bander Yolanda's daughter was banging at the time before she moved on to the ex-One Direction guy my twelve-year-old niece truly believes she’s going to marry. Yes, the event brings out the best and the brightest and Kathryn for one is very impressed that someone she knows is being honored at "a gahhhhhla in New York City” while I'm more impressed that Kathryn has yet to revert back to the monster she showed herself to be only a few episodes back.
As Kyle listens to the speakers, she appears grave. She is hearing about the pain people with Lyme experience on a daily basis and she explains that she's always felt kind of dirty about listening to Lisa Rinna suggest that Yolanda's illness is something Munchausen-adjacent instead of something real. Being in that room, Kyle has finally hopped on board with the belief that Yolanda is truly sick and it's right about then when the most famous of Yolanda's kids walks onstage. Gigi is the chosen one who gets to introduce her mother and she mentions in her speech that so many were quick to doubt the legitimacy of her mother's illness and brandish those beliefs all over social media. (Technically, those reactions might have been less frequent had her mother not documented every time she took a pill on social media, but I suppose that's really neither here nor there.) Yolanda is overwhelmed by her daughter's speech and she thanks her family, including her husband for always standing by her. Every time she showers that man with affection, I can’t help but cringe. She also mentions that two of her children are suffering from Lyme and her speech is gracious and eloquent and Erika wishes that Lisa Rinna had joined them so she could finally see that Yolanda's disease is real and not simply an excuse or a pathology.
Back at the table, Kyle makes sure to make the moment all about herself. Sure, she's in a room full of sick people, but she's the one who is really suffering because she just feels so guilty. How guilty does she feel? Guilty enough to allow her good friend Lisa Vanderpump's name to be subtly dragged through the mud by Kathryn, who claims that it’s not just Lisa Rinna who doubts Yolanda's claims of illness. As for the woman of the hour, all she claims to want is for all the women to understand her pain and I suppose I get that. As human beings, we crave empathy. Still, why chase a connection with people you don't particularly care about in the first place?
Back in California, we head over to Lisa Rinna's house where she’s packing for Dubai while remaining blissfully unaware of the amount of shit she's about to be in for once the Lyme Crew makes sure that she knows that she's a total asshole for ever having said one shitty thing about Yolanda. Meanwhile, in her dark house, Eileen is sitting on top of her husband to give him a massage (and possibly as a way to prevent him from hopping on the computer to gamble away a portion of her fortune). Yes, it's the get-ready-for-the-vacation montage where we get to watch our ladies obsess about what to pack, especially for a conservative destination where a woman must cover up, to say nothing about not being able to tell one another to go fuck themselves. Should they screw up and violate international law, each one has an idea of who they'd want to be their cellmate. A few choose Kathryn because she looks like she swallows steroids like I swallow chocolate on Halloween. Erika chooses Lisa Vanderpump because she'd “spin a web" and get them out of there. Lisa Rinna chooses Erika because her husband is a lawyer (Oh, has that been mentioned yet? Yeah, Tom's a rich lawyer, but that has nothing to do with why Erika is with him, so stop being judgmental!) and he'd at least get them released on bond. Nobody chooses Kyle because these women might be bitches, but they're not crazy.
At Erika's house, she calls in her posse of paid friends to help her pack. She needs options! She needs to get into character! Fashion, fashion, fashion! She's bringing her entire glam squad with her to Dubai, but shhhh.... it’s a secret! I tell you, I had high hopes for Erika. At first glance, she struck me as deadpan and fun and uber confident and I respond to people who have a little bit of ego. I haven't written her off just yet, but she's starting to feel like walking shtick to me. Sure, she says interesting and thoughtful things every now and then and it always makes me reconsider her, but she'd better start talking more frequently about shit other than diamonds and webs and patting the puss or she’s gonna lose me completely.
Arriving at the airport, Kyle finds out that the flight is way longer than she expected and then the rest of the ladies show up soon after. Most are in comfy travel attire that makes sense for a flight that seems endless, but not Eileen! No, Eileen is in overalls – full on fucking overalls – that Erika tells her make her look like "a 70s dream.” That settles it! Erika is either a liar or she has the single most hideous taste on the planet besides Eileen, who actually bought those overalls, stuck them on her body, and left the house in them knowing all the while she’d be photographed. Is this woman just toying with me now for sport? They eventually get on the plane and many hours later they arrive in the glittering land of Dubai. They're amazed by the glitz they see from the window of the car taking them to the hotel, and that's when Kyle brings up that it's time for them to divvy up the rooms. All I know is that I'd slice someone's throat to snag whatever "the underwater suite" is and I'd probably also gut whomever made it come to pass that I’d end up sharing a room with Kathryn. It's Erika who draws the shitty stick there, but she's okay with it. After all, Kathryn's several million missteps are in the past and besides – if her glam squad can extricate their mistress from Pervert Night at a club, they can certainly send down a rope ladder from the starlit sky and get her the fuck out of a hotel room in Dubai.
Back in California, Yolanda and David prepare to finally leave their exquisite house in Malibu. The house is extraordinary and I feel badly for her that she has to lose it and I feel badly for myself that I will no longer get to gape at it when it appears on my television screen, but I guess what’s worse here is that she’s about to lose her creepy husband, too. Yes, all of that is upsetting, but it's not nearly as awful as what comes next. That's right, everyone: Brandi is back. She's been such a supportive friend to Yolanda that she is even willing to make a paid appearance on this show as an act of pure kindness! You know why Yolanda loves Brandi? Those of you who venture that it’s because Yolanda constantly gets to feel superior just by being in the same airspace as this asshole are only half right. See, Yolanda loves Brandi because she's real. I think the cultural lexicon might have been fiddled with without my knowledge because, by Yolanda's explanation, "real" apparently now means “hideously confrontational” and “self-sabotaging.” Let's hear it for the ever-shifting power of linguistics!
Brandi’s recently come off a Tinder date with a guy who sadly has short arms, but as long as her new face didn’t frighten him, maybe the two of them have a shot. The two sit on Yolanda's bed and discuss first how Brandi has a crush on Yolanda's kid’s boyfriend and then Yolanda tells Brandi how annoyed Lisa Rinna was that she blew Erika's dinner off to be with Brandi and Kim. Brandi's response? She says that Lisa Rinna wears a wig. She says that Lisa Rinna should get a life. She says that the rest of them "went after Kim" because she's weak without ever considering that Kim’s cracked-out behavior impacted the rest of them constantly and she was in fact the cause of her own suffering. She uses the word "hashtag" in a sentence twice, both times without any trace of irony.
First: I fucking hate Brandi.
Second: #ILikedYourOldFaceBetter.
At the hotel in Dubai, the women are completely wowed by the glittery extravagance and Bravo makes sure to flash the cost of the rooms they’ll be staying in across the screen so we can see for ourselves just how luxurious this vacation will be in case the tables in the lobby carved out of pure gold weren’t enough of an indication. I'm certain our Housewives will be so grateful for these gifts being afforded to them that they will be on their very best behavior for the entire trip. I'm also sure an evil troll with one total brain cell just invaded my head and typed the previous sentence because the real me knows that possibility is pure horseshit.
When it’s time for their first dinner, Lisa Vanderpump appears in a caftan that she very well may have stolen from the set of Cleopatra and Erika walks into the room looking like a cross between Malibu Barbie and a pink marshmallow Peep. It’s very important here for me to tell you that I mean that comparison to be a huge compliment and I’m not kidding. Erika looks great. Kyle is wearing the kind of diaphanous thing she always wears but I have no idea what Eileen is wearing because I’m frankly too scared to look. Kathryn is ostensibly the only one who didn’t watch Sex and the City 2 on a loop before the trip because she is in a regular outfit and she starts to sweat once she realizes that she is different than the others. Luckily, Kyle brought them all gift bags stuffed with printed muumuus, so Kathryn excuses herself and throws the muumuu on so she can finally feel like she belongs somewhere.
They all start the meal on their very best behavior. Sadly, that joy turns to shit faster than you can say "OshKosh B’gosh." As they dig into some hummus, Kyle makes sure to mention how sad it is that Yolanda couldn't make it because she will go to her grave being Yolanda’s biggest fan now. She also reveals that Yolanda mentioned in her speech that her kids have Lyme. Hearing that, Lisa Rinna is stunned and Erika quickly says that she wishes Lisa had been in New York with them because maybe being at the gala would have answered any questions she still harbors about Yolanda. "I've never doubted that she's sick," explains Lisa. "But she uses her illness as a pass to not be accountable for things." Taking a beat so she doesn't strangle Lisa with the muumuu Kyle so thoughtfully picked herself from a rack at Kyle By Alene Too, Erika explains that she really believes Lisa is reading the situation incorrectly. She stands up for Yolanda and she does it pretty effectively. "I'm allowed to have an opinion," shrugs Lisa, but Eileen tells her that she really can't understand why Lisa still has weird feelings and doubts about Yolanda.
Why can't Lisa just say, "I don't really like Yolanda," and call it a fucking day? Why must everyone pretend to like everyone else? After all, this is a group of people essentially tossed together by casting agents and producers. It's not an organic thing! Not everyone will ultimately find everyone else to be charming. Do I think Lisa should let the lunch Yolanda had with Brandi and Kim go? Yup. You don't get to dictate what someone else – especially someone you don't really like – gets to do with her day. Is it fucking insane that anyone would want to share a meal with Brandi and Kim? Of course it is! But this is an idiotic battle and it’s not worth fighting and it’s not even slightly interesting to watch. Plus, every time Lisa brings it up, we get a screenshot of Kim and Brandi’s faces and I have gone through intense therapy to finally scrub that image from my tender psyche. As for Erika, it’s night one and she's already sick of these women. Why must they talk about every single issue ad nauseam until she feels nauseous? Can't they just have fun? And since they're going outside to check out the glorious view, where is her fucking rope ladder that’s been spun from pure gold?
Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon.com in paperback and for your Kindle.