The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season Premiere Recap: Vanderpump and Dump

The women of Beverly Hills are wasting no time this season. None at all. After several lackluster years where I had to rename the show Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women come right out of the gate doing a lot of things, but mostly yelling at each other and wearing enough yoga pants to cover all of the targeted Fabletics ads in your Instagram feed.

The very first seconds of this season show an explosive fight between Kyle Richards, Lisa Vanderpump, and Lisa’s husband, a 90-year-old scarecrow that was once given a name but has since forgotten it. We don’t get much substance behind the fight, other than the fact that Kyle thinks that Lisa did something that Lisa claims she didn’t do.

At one point, Kyle says to her, “Maybe you care more about your image than you do your friendships.” Whatever the specifics of the matter, this seems to be the general criticism of Lisa that has been lobbed against her by various people over the years, including Brandi Glanville (say her name three times and she shall appear) during the “bring the tabloids on vacation” scandal, Lisa Rinna with that whole Munchausen’s thing, and Dorit last season when Lisa got mad at her and Kyle and stormed out of a restaurant.

What’s fascinating about this is that it seems like, no matter how winning Lisa is (and I do like her quite a bit), the cast seems to have been angry at her for at least a few seasons. This never came to a boil because of the ironclad treaty that Lisa and Kyle had together. It’s like they decided that they started this project together, they would see it through to the end, and they wouldn’t let anything stop them. It’s like The Craft with less eyeliner. But now, if Kyle has turned against Lisa, everything is going to go all to hell. If this fight happened only two months after filming started, that means there is going to be a whole lot of drama this season. Get comfortable, yoga goats, because this is the gift that we’ve been asking for.

Immediately we can see the fractures within the group when Teddi and Kyle go to see Lisa at Vanderpump Dogs. Lisa and Kyle get into a fight because Lisa is making digs at Kyle for not going to the opening of Tom Tom that we just saw on Vanderpump Rules. Kyle explains that she had just gotten home from a trip and was too tired to make it out to a raucous party that was going to be filmed for TV, so she couldn’t just like breeze by in jeans and a sloppy pony and make a quick appearance. I get it. That’s totally fair.

Lisa breaks into tears, not because of her fight with Kyle, but because she’s been having a hard time ever since her brother died by suicide a few months previously. I feel really bad for Lisa. Losing a family member is never easy, obviously (even Bethenny Frankel got upset when her sorry excuse for a father passed away), and suicide makes it even worse. It’s an unanswered question that Lisa is always going to have hanging over her.

So, Kyle’s pissed, Lisa’s sad, and it’s all bubbling up to the surface because Dorit screwed up with a dog. The story is that Dorit got a dog from Lisa and it bit the kids and her husband PK, a foreskin in search of a dick. I don’t blame that thing for biting him at all. If he held me up to his face I would bite the fuck out his nose too, and also probably his shaved hands and arms. Anyway, Dorit then gave the dog to a woman she thought would give it a good home rather than returning it to Vanderpump Dogs. The dog, Lucy, then ended up in a shelter and Lisa found out about it and it was a whole big mess.

This comes up when Teddi and Kyle go to visit Vanderpump Dogs and Lisa’s employees just happen to be hovering around the camera just dying to talk about this dog, for better or for worse. Lisa says she doesn’t want to talk about it and tries to put it to rest, but the guys at the shelter won’t relent. Lisa also brings it up at dinner with Dorit and PK, a hairball you have to tease out of your drain with a toothbrush handle. Lisa says she doesn’t blame Dorit and knows they meant no harm, but she warns Dorit that people are talking about and says she defended her.

I can’t see how Lisa did anything wrong in this scenario, and it seems like she was trying to protect her friendship with Dorit at every turn. The real problem is the thing that plagues Dorit at every turn. No, it’s not that her hair looks like a cup of ramen that someone dumped down a waterfall. No, it’s not that she insists on wearing needless accessories like a Gucci fanny pack or a Christian Dior visor, or that she seems to be dressing only in Gucci print this season. It’s that she can never admit that she’s wrong. If she could just say to Lisa (and thereby the audience), “I made a mistake. I’m very sorry. What ended up happening was horrible and that was never my intention, and I will do whatever I can to make it right,” then the matter would drop. But instead, both she and her husband are trying to weasel out of any discussion about it by deflecting things back on Lisa.

While this was all going down, Lisar had Dorit and Erika Jayne over to her house to not eat some cheese and crackers that flies had crawled all over and to meet the newest Housewife, Denise Richards. Right now the Eileen Davidson Accord protects quiet Denise, so even though she has been a public fixture for decades, we can’t quite yet pass judgment on her. I will say, however, that her man Aaron is a piece so hot that he would turn all of that fly cheese on Lisa’s lanai into a velvety fondue in three seconds flat. Move over, Mauricio, Aaron is here for your hottest Househusband throne.

While they’re all meeting Denise, Lisar tells them all that she was in a movie with Denise’s ex Charlie Sheen back in the day where Charlie licked her toes on camera. We see a little clip of the movie and Lisa Rinna’s hair looks exactly the same. It’s like her hair left that scene, got into a time machine, and came to the present day where it is peacefully living on Lisar’s head and whispering secrets from the past to her.

The final scene of the episode is Kyle having a pool party at her new house, which she didn’t want to stay in because it was burglarized. The crazy thing is, Dorit’s home was robbed too and they also took all of her jewelry and handbags, just like whoever broke into Kyle’s. I can’t help but wonder, Carrie Bradshaw style, did Dorit lie about the break-in just so she would seem on trend, or is there someone out there who is targeting the pocketbook collections of Real Housewives? Does the Real Housewives Institute need to open an investigative wing? Should we get retired detective Steve Lodge on the case?

Kyle’s house looks amazing now. Say what you will about the Morally Corrupt Faye Resnick, but she really knows how to give a house an expensive, tasteful, and yet entirely forgettable veneer. At the pool party, Teddi and Dorit put their differences aside as their sons bond, which is actually very sweet. Yes, everyone attends and it’s all sweetness and light as they ignore their sno-cone–emboldened kids because Kyle was smart enough to hire a lifeguard for her pool party. This is the time when they are getting along, but it will all change soon. It will all change two months from now and the Kumbaya bonfire they’re all currently sitting around will turn into nothing but the taste of ash in all of their mouths. Anyone want a marshmallow?