Photo: Nicole Weingart/Bravo
There’s an incredible moment during Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’s latest dinner party from hell — the final meal out in Tuscany, but close enough — where Dorit goes around the table addressing every woman by name (even Natalie) and forgets Amanda completely. Amanda’s “Hi, I’m Amanda” may be her funniest moment all season. Well, at least tied with her inability to walk in those thigh-high disco boots at Rachel’s Studio 54 birthday party later in the episode. The reality is that after a whole season of driving conflict simply by being herself (insufferable), Amanda is a complete non-entity during “The Last Supper,” which at last depicts the destruction of the final remnants of the Fox Force Five. Yes, our long national nightmare is over, and I almost feel guilty that Brian Moylan passed off recapping duties to me this week, and I get to dance on the grave of the alliance that has dragged this show down for years.
We pick up right where we left off last episode, with Kyle popping a vein and telling Dorit to “quit riding my ass all the fucking time.” The crux of the fight remains the same. Dorit, who bought a Kelly bag with the advance for a book I’m sure we will all be running out to buy, would like Kyle to stop talking about her spending behind her back. Kyle continues to defend herself by saying that everyone else feels the same way about Dorit’s erratic behavior and lateness, which is sort of true but also not helping Kyle’s case. Much of the argument centers on the word “erratic,” one that Kyle admits she might not be using correctly. I think that’s a bit of a cop-out — she knows what she meant, and at this point, she might as well double down. It’s true that Dorit holds Kyle to a different standard than everyone else, and it’s also true that Kyle has been trying to rile people up against Dorit all season. They’re both right, and, more importantly, both wrong. Still, I’m a little more Team Not Dorit, because the pathological lateness is unbearable. It’s gratifying when Kyle points out that they have all given Dorit grace by not calling her out when she’s 90 minutes late, and the rest of the table confirms that they never even got an apology.
Dorit says sorry (belatedly, though that comes with the territory), but she won’t let the mouse go when it comes to Kyle talking behind her back. Kyle is “tired of being the punching bag.” In a confessional, Rachel reflects, “I think that you are the hardest on the people you love most,” which is a nice thought, but we’re well past that point. Kyle, meanwhile, wonders in her confessional if Dorit is simply using her as a “scapegoat” for the “misery in your life right now.” (Unfortunately, none of Dorit’s frenemies have managed to approach the brutal simplicity of Sutton’s “you’re not angry at me, you’re angry at your life” last season.) Whatever the reason for Dorit’s antipathy, Kyle has clearly had enough, declaring that if Dorit wants to keep looking for the negative in Kyle, they no longer have to be friends. Everyone gasps at this; you’re allowed to say the nastiest imaginable shit to each other on Housewives, but as soon as you say a friendship is over, a line has somehow been crossed. See also: Heather Gay telling Meredith they’re no longer friends after haranguing her for half the season. The rest of the table tries to calm the tensions. Erika asks if Dorit can look past her defensiveness to see that these women support her. Boz wonders how they can all better show that support. Natalie hopes she doesn’t get called on again. But when Dorit tries to solidify her strongest alliance — “You have shown me, in this group, more support than everyone put together,” she tells Boz — the shit really hits the fan.
“Motherfucker. Really?” Erika asks in her confessional. “Are you forgetting history?” We’re gifted flashbacks from seasons past of the support Erika has shown Dorit — through the robbery, through the separation, through (God help us all) Lucy Lucy Apple Juice. She has listened to this woman drone on incessantly for the last decade, and it’s frankly thrilling to watch Erika finally snap. A hint of the demon voice creeping into her throat, Erika demands to know why Dorit was so late to dinner, why she never bothers warning them, and why all the other women at the table are suddenly so quiet. “I don’t owe you anything other than the truth, which is, we don’t like it,” Erika growls. “I’ll say it because these motherfuckers won’t. We don’t like it. How ‘bout that?” Dorit doesn’t seem all that surprised by the sudden turn. I’m pretty sure she knew how declaring Boz her one, true friend was going to land. And Erika, much like Kyle, is not finding many vocal allies around the table. Even Rachel, who admits she doesn’t do lateness, is deferential to Dorit, because she’s “going through a fuckton.” “We’re all going through a fuckton,” Erika snaps back.
I’m going to be honest. I’ve never heard the word “fuckton” said as many times as it was at this dinner, and at a certain point, I’m not even sure they were saying “fuckton.” When Dorit challenges Erika with, “You’re going through a fuckton?” she might actually have been saying “fucktime.” Which is not a word, but does sound more fun than a “fuckton.” Dorit — who lives to prove Bethenny wrong about playing smart and stupid at the same time — is being ridiculous by suggesting she can’t possibly know about the hardships Erika is facing, though I take her underlying point that the two of them aren’t actually that close. Erika is also right that Dorit is working hard to be the most aggrieved and put-upon party at the table. And the competition is fierce! Erika doesn’t want to do the “pain Olympics,” at least not without live commentary from Johnny and Tara.
We then enter a section of the fight I’m going to call, respectfully, the “cunt”-off. I’m not sure how else to describe the lobbing of that word back and forth. (“Cunt” tennis?) “When I said you need to work and you need to contribute, I didn’t mean you need to be a cunt,” Dorit tells Erika. Erika wastes no time firing back, “I’m the one who brought the word ‘cunt’ to this group. You’re late.” To be fair, that’s sort of Dorit’s thing! As Jennifer Tilly notes in her confessional, the c-word is much more common and much less severe in the U.K., though I’d argue we’re also approaching that point on RHOBH. When you say something enough times in succession, it starts to lose meaning. Just look at “fuckton!” By the end of this exchange, Erika has been reduced to saying “Dorit, you’re an asshole and you’re a cunt.” It just doesn’t have the same impact, if I’m being honest, though I appreciated Rachel’s “I really save that word for very special occasions.” As your regular recapper is fond of noting, fights on these shows are usually about the show itself, and there’s a nice fourth-wall break when Erika confronts Dorit on two consecutive seasons of, I’ll say it, erratic behavior. Credit where it’s due, Erika sees the way Dorit wants to turn this into a competition where she gets the most sympathy, the most attention, and maybe even center diamond (over Kyle’s dead body). And while Dorit may think she wins the fight by walking away and leaving Erika in tears, we all know they both need their Housewives paycheck too much to not find a path forward eventually.
It does seem like Erika is actually wounded by the exchange. I’ve also been known to start crying out of rage, so who can say for sure? Regardless, her reaction in the immediate aftermath is far more sympathetic than Dorit’s, and yes, that’s partly because she looks so glamorous in tears. (Did anyone else feel extremely misled to discover that Rachel’s “she looks hot as fuck” from the trailer is about Erika mid-breakdown and not Dorit storming off?) Call me naive, but I believe Erika when she says in her confessional, “I’ve never really felt this angry or this hurt by her before.” The Pretty Mess has had two lasting connections on this show since Lisa Rinna left, and one of them has just blown up in her face. Dorit, meanwhile, cycles through a series of increasingly nonsensical and likely rehearsed lines when Kathy goes to check on her. “It’s the end of the road for the generosity, the care, the kindness, the support, the loyalty,” she says. “All of that shit, it’s done.” Note that the editors don’t pull up a clip package of Dorit being the kind of friend she describes herself as, because, well, footage not found. And sure, Dorit isn’t wrong that Kyle has it out for her, but she’s completely misreading the situation when she dismisses her castmates as “a bunch of fucking cunts.” In a confessional, she says, “If Kyle’s whole entire mission was to get the entire group to turn against me to somehow make herself feel better, well, you got your wish,” oblivious to the fact that Kyle has done no such thing. Kyle couldn’t even get the others to admit that Dorit’s chronic tardiness is making them homicidal.
It’s a dramatic conclusion to the Tuscany trip, complete with mournful confessionals about how the group is more fractured than ever. I assumed we’d be heading straight to the reunion, but there was somehow still half an episode left — and, even more bafflingly, two more episodes this season. The post-trip debrief among Team Dorit happens at the cover shoot for a book that Dorit’s team of ghostwriters haven’t finished writing yet. “Honestly it felt like there was an unprovoked attack,” she tells Boz and Rachel, which I guess makes sense if you don’t consider Dorit’s personality to be a provocation unto itself. It’s interesting to watch Boz and Rachel, two unequivocal alphas, fall in line as Dorit soldiers, but I think there’s a deeper motivation at play. Both women would love to wrest control of the show from Kyle, who has sat precariously on the Queen Bee throne since Lisa Vanderpump got banished to the Land of Spinoffs. Supporting Dorit is less about thinking she’s in the right and more about making sure Kyle is in the wrong. You can see the gears turning in Rachel’s confessionals when she throws out barbs. “I’m not saying Kyle’s being a mean girl,” she says at one point, midway through calling Kyle a mean girl. There’s a power struggle happening just beneath the surface.
But that will have to wait. For now, we must attend Rachel’s Studio 54 party, a celebration of her [redacted]th birthday. I respect Rachel refusing to say her age — something you can easily Google — in her confessional, as well as her “campaign against putting people’s ages next to their name.” But despite also being 37 forever, I’m nosy, and it’s important to know when there’s a millennial in the Gen-X lion’s den. Everyone at the party looks great in their ‘70s-adjacent attire, give or take Amanda’s sparkly pink robe and aforementioned boots. And so far, the dueling factions are keeping their distance. “The last thing I need right now is to be dealing with Kyle and her growing gang of minions,” Dorit notes. I feel a little bad for Sutton, who has spent the season trying desperately to ride the fence only to tumble right back into Kyle’s yard. We’re obviously bracing ourselves for another showdown between Dorit, Kyle, and Erika, but I think they all have too much respect for a Rachel Zoe party to actually make a scene. And ultimately, what more is there to say? The Fox Force Five as we know it is dead and buried. The only question now is what rises in its place.
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