This week, the rich women are doing things — mostly therapy and overspending.
Photo: Bravo

This week on our favorite television show, Rich Women and Their Birkins, the rich women had Birkins, or Kellys, or whatever the fuck they have. Dorit pulled a new Kelly out and showed it to Rachel and Kyle in the Hamptons. It was like a sip-and-see for the purse. Kyle said her sales associate wouldn’t let her get that one because she would have destroyed it. Then, at dinner in the Hamptons, Kyle put her teeny-tiny gold Birkelly on the table — unclasped, so her expectations could ooze out of it — and Rachel made her move it because she didn’t want to spill on it. I’m so sick of all of these fucking bags.

The best part of the episode is when Rachel tells Kyle she likes her outfit, and Kyle says it’s from Zara. Kyle tells Rachel she likes her earrings, and she says, “They’re vintage Dior.” Of course they are, bitch! Of course. I really love it, though, because what Rachel has is the opposite of the Birkin; she has real taste. The producer asks her if she only owns designer goods, and she says that most of what she owns is designer. But it’s not tacky Louis Vuitton (a designer known to make mistakes) with the logos all over it. It is vintage pieces, it is the best of the best, it is a fashion legacy. Rachel knows exactly what she is doing, and I trust her implicitly, and her designer goods aren’t soulless global luxury brands that she’s buying to show off her wealth; they’re art pieces to show off her impeccable eye, and I would say I live for it, but actually, I die.

To that point, I wasn’t nearly as critical as Kyle and Rachel when the trio went shopping at LoveShackFancy (which I know is a thing but is also something I don’t understand at all) and Dorit “bought half the store.” I think it’s because she got the full Rachel Zoe shopping experience. Rachel took a scarf and made it into an amazing headband. She styled Dorit with a hat, she picked out dresses, and she put together outfits. And Dorit did look amazing in all the suggestions. It’s kind of like when you go to the makeup counter and get the makeover and buy all the products because you are in a shitty mood and just looking so good. But you never use those products again, just like Dorit will never wear those dresses. So I get why Dorit spent $4,589.50 on clothes. (But when the dresses are $325 apiece, that’s a lot of freaking dresses.) However, I do not, even for a second, believe that her card got declined because of a fraud alert. I mean, the fraud alert should have come when she was walking down the aisle. (ZING!)

After the shopping trip, Kyle is FaceTiming with Boz about Dorit’s spending, her absentmindedness, and her inability to be on time, as if any of this is new. It would later manifest itself when Rachel’s parents (who themselves arrived more than an hour later) were kept waiting even longer because Dorit couldn’t figure out an outfit, even though she just bought $5,000 worth of dresses earlier that day. (And then comes downstairs in all black, looking like an Italian widow on her way to Pilates.)

Strangely enough, Kyle talking to Boz about Dorit is the only interpersonal conflict we see in the entire episode. Instead, this episode is marked by the women in smaller conversations, mostly about themselves. There are plenty of fans who say Rich Women Doing Things is boring, but I would disagree. Well, compared to the pyrotechnics of RHOSLC or RHOP, it is definitely sleepier, but what we really want from these women is not to fight, humiliate themselves, and rend each other limb from limb with false statements they heard from bloggers. What we want from them is to live their authentic lives in front of the camera, and that’s what all these ladies are doing. There are a lot of emotions and revelations in this episode, and I am happy to get a peek into the psyches of rich women rather than them just shouting names at each other over a dinner table.

The tamest of the conversations is between Sutton and Jennifer Tilly, who meet at a beachside restaurant so that Jen Tilly could show off another amazing bag, this one shaped like a ’70s cat tchotchke, and it is so cool that I am going to send her a DM and ask her to give it to me in her will. Or just give it to me now. Give it to me on a long-term lease. I will take very good care of it and return it anytime she needs it. The good gossip we get from this is that Sutton’s ex is trying to marry her old best friend. Neither she nor the ex told her about the relationship; she had to find out from her son. How is this the first we are hearing about this? I am not even a Sutton fan, but I will go down to Orange County and punch that lady right in her LoveShackFancy.

That conversation isn’t really that revelatory, but what about when Boz and her daughter Lael drive in the new Maserati all the way down to San Diego to have dinner with her boyfriend, Keely? I’m sorry, but living in San Diego is the first major red flag with this guy. However, I finally heard what I wanted to from him. When discussing Boz’s fertility journey, he asks, “What happens after this next round if it doesn’t work? Do you want to take a break?” Finally! Some care about what she wants to do rather than Keely just demanding a child from her.

Though after this conversation, I think that’s a bit of an unfair statement. Keely tells her that life is full of what-ifs, and Boz says the one she’s most worried about right now is what if she can’t give him a child. He says that he will still marry her no matter what and looks forward to calling Lael his stepdaughter. She says in a confessional that she’s still worried that he might come to resent her, but it’s clear that so much of this is being driven by Boz’s insecurity. It’s not something we see often. She seems so in control, so self-determined, that it’s hard to imagine she has the twitchy heart of doubt inside of her just like the rest of us. Keely says he also worries about losing his job or all of his money. We all have it. We all have those things, those catastrophes, those asteroids always falling from the sky to land right on our houses, those beach umbrellas blowing down the sand threatening to impale us. But they never happen. The asteroid never arrives. No one gets impaled. (Okay, well, some do, but not many.) That doesn’t stop us from playing out the scenario so many times in our brains that the VHS tape starts to wear thin.

When Dorit, Kyle, and Rachel have dinner in the Hamptons, it’s time for Rachel’s revelatory conversation, and it’s because that day marks the anniversary of when she realized her marriage was over. She went to Aspen, where her (soon-to-be-ex) husband was, and he told her that he had been having an affair. She talks about feeling split open, crying more than she ever had, seeing red, and not being able to regulate her feelings. This is all sad and tawdry and tabloid-y, but what I love more is how she talks about the way he changed into a different person, how he used to be her favorite and morphed into something else. What really hit me was when she said he also realized he changed but was happy with the changes. She saw him getting worse, and he saw himself getting better. He liked what he had changed into, and she just wanted him to change right back.

Rachel tells the gals that, ultimately, she’s happy about the affair; she’s happy that he told her. She says that for the last six or so years, they had been fighting and reconciling in a terrible spiral. Telling her set her free, whether it was because he felt guilty or he wanted to hurt her badly enough to see how she would react. Either way, it showed her the person she knew was gone. She says she’s happy he told her because it saved her waiting another six years to reconcile with someone who didn’t exist anymore.

The most revelatory conversation comes from Erika Jayne and her therapist, Dr. Jenn Mann, who doubles up on the Ns because both of those second Ns are for nasty. She is the only therapist on reality television I’ve ever seen that’s any good. From the previews, it looked like Erika was going to talk more about the abuse she suffered, which she told us about when meeting with Denise last episode. But that’s not it. It’s about everything. How her life sucks. How she just wants to move on, but there are court cases, there are $10 million tax bills, there is public perception, there is Tom, still aging in jail, possibly incoherent, and unwilling or unable to finalize a divorce. Until that’s resolved, she can’t move on, trapped in a limbo that she’ll be paying for, financially and emotionally, for years.

Luckily, there is Jenn there to sort her out. Erika says that she knows what it’s like when the worst thing happens, but Jenn tells her that she’s still there with her, still alive, not in prison, living and breathing and carrying on to the best of her abilities. And then it gets really bleak. I’ll let Erika say it in her own words:

I don’t know what to do now. Not about [the abuse], just in life. I don’t know what to do. I feel so lost. I worked hard on getting here. I’m healthy, but at the same time, am I really living, am I really happy, or am I treading water until all of these cases are over? Everybody wants answers and [saying], “What do you think? And how do you feel?” It feels like I’m fucking crushed. I’m trying really hard not to be crushed. I’m trying to find the beauty in the moment and all those fucking clichés that everyone wants to throw at your feet. “Something good is going to become of this.” Fucking when?!

Dr. Jenn has such a great answer; it was sort of a breakthrough for me, how I look at life, the way my brain perceives everything. She tells Erika that we all dream about the day when all the bills are paid, all the laundry folded, all the embryos that we’re worried about safely growing, all the annulments filed, all the divorces finalized, all of the people we wanted back safely returned to their personalities. We all imagine that day of mastery, of happiness. That day is not coming. That is not how life works. It’s one disaster after another, like rain on your wedding day or a free ride when you already paid. It’s never how you think it’s going to look, and it’s never the meal that you ordered. It’s always something different, sometimes worse, sometimes better, but we have to keep fighting through, relying on our friends, finding the love that we can grasp and that we can share, the warm spots on the couch next to the therapist, and the BOGOs at LoveShackFancy that we didn’t even know were on. This is it, this is the best shot we get, and sometimes it’s going to be lawsuits and tax bills, and sometimes it’s going to be gems, jets, silhouettes, Champagne in the sky. But it’s always going to be ours, and the only choice we have is to grab it and hold on for dear life, to stuff it all in our Birkin and, for God’s sake, to clasp it all for safekeeping.

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