Let’s get Carlton’s scenes out of the way first because they didn’t add anything to what could loosely be called a storyline for this week’s episode.  She went shopping for a swimsuit and some thongs at the Hustler store with her husband and her mother-in-law.  Carlton spots some shirts with the word “f**k” on them and tells us that it’s her favorite word – which just might explain part of her attraction to Brandi.  She also gave her mother-in-law a lap dance.   Back at her goth mansion, she and her nanny, Elizy, meet with the men who are building her little shop of fetishes.  I hope Elizy is getting paid more for the extra-curricular work because we’ve yet to see her anywhere near her young charges.  Carlton wants to make sure that the crew are clear as to where she wants them to put the pole.  Cheeky stuff, right there – “cheeky”, that’s British, right?  Okay, good.

Yolanda is getting ready for dinner with her husband, David, to celebrate their second wedding anniversary.  Due to Bravo’s time machine, it’s November 11, 2013 already, which makes some of the later conversations seem a little out of sync.   She’s got a zit on her chin and calls Brandi to find out the best way to cover the thing up.  Brandi tells her to put Visine on it to get the red out.  It seems to work and Yolanda meets up with David at Nobu for an intimate dinner.  She presents him with a book, labeled “For Your Eyes Only” which is filled with pictures of Mrs. Foster wearing nothing but Visine.  David’s eyesight improves immediately.

Kim finally hears from Kingsley in the form of a video made by his captors who are still waiting for the ransom to be paid.  Kingsley seems happy, happier than when he’s with his Mommy.  Her son explains that it’s because the dog is getting to act like a dog and not somebody’s baby.  Everybody on this show seems to have a baby – okay, maybe Brandi doesn’t, but she’s got issues with that word.   Kim is learning how to become Alpha Kim and thinks that a few spins around a racetrack will do the trick. 

Vavoom! Shabang!  I love turtles and brussel sprouts!

Kyle’s plugging her store and is about to hold a fundraiser for the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital.  She’s asked Brandi and Joyce to model her clothing during the event.   Now, anyone who’s watched 15 minutes of this program knows that’s a bad idea, but anything for camera time.  Of course, the two adversaries show up at the same time to try some things on with their respective entourages.  Joyce has brought her beauty queen buddy, Ivette, and Brandi has brought along her “see,  I’m not a racist” friends, Jennifer and Erista.  Jennifer greets Joyce and Ivette and the three of them start speaking Spanish.  Uh, oh, Brandi just hates when people speak Spanish.  That could be because she has a real problem communicating in English, beyond telling people to “f**k off”, “go f**ck yourself” or “shut the f**k up”.  After holstering their weapons, the ladies try some things on but every outfit is too big for their size 0000 bodies.  Kyle wonders if the dresses should come with a cheeseburger.

Now for the main event, and the part that forced me to watch some of Vanderpump Rules.  I normally avoid that show like the plague, but Bravo thought it would be fun to combine the two programs, so I watched what I could and spent the rest of the time with my finger on the fast forward button of my remote.  Lisa thought it would be a good idea for the group – minus Carlton, Kyle and Kim – to get together at SUR for a “why can’t we all just get along” dinner.  She also invited Mohamed and Martin, who know Joyce and Michael, in the hopes that they could referee whatever fights ensued.  It didn’t work.

Before I go on, I just want to say that there are some terms which shouldn’t be used by anyone on Bravo, and maybe by Bravo viewers, too.   I’d like them to stop using “bully” as a way of portraying someone’s victimhood.  It’s over used and, all too often, misused.  Being involved in a catfight in which barbs are being slung in both directions does not a bully make.  Another phrase that should be banned from ever leaving the lips of Bravolebrities is “moving forward”, “moving on” or any variation of same.  Let’s be honest,  none of them are ever going to move forward as long as the grievance du jour is good fodder for a season-long storyline.  Lastly, they can just drop “unfiltered” from their vocabularies.  It isn’t a healthy or responsible character trait.  It shouldn’t be a line on a resume.  Filters are good.  That’s why they make them for our cars and coffee pots and heating and air conditioning units.  They keep the bad stuff out of our lives, and should keep the mean and stupid things from ever leaving the brains of the Housewives  and spilling out onto our TV screens, like some verbal diarrhea.   This goes for Twitter, as well, but that’s a whole different blog.

The dinner guests arrive and it looks like the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones, only slightly less bloody.   The initial greetings are lukewarm at best and any attempts by Mohamed and Martin to assure a peaceful dinner are quickly shot down.  While the wait staff, including the girl made famous by her hairless nether regions, take the guests’ orders, Brandi and Joyce quickly lock horns.  What Brandi didn’t count on was that Joyce’s husband was going to rally to his wife’s defense, like any good husband would.  He’s not going to sit there and watch as Brandi calls his wife stupid.  He’s also not quite as tolerant or charmed by the “truth cannon” as the other men are.  She tells him to “bring it bitch”, cuz she’s all gangsta, and Michael asks her to watch what she says, again.  Lisa and Yolanda were no help, whatsoever.  Instead of telling Brandi to knock it off,  Lisa asked Joyce to just let it go, in the spirit of starting anew.  In Lisa’s defense, she did say that trying to rein Brandi in is an exercise in futility so she may have been reaching out to the more rational of the two women.  Yolanda has no defense – she’s claiming that her heart-less place cards were just a little joke.

It’s a funny thing to watch how Brandi argues.  She’ll drop one of her expletive-laced bombs right in the middle of a conversation, then act as if she has no idea why the other party doesn’t care for what comes out of her mouth.  That’s not “owning” it – that’s deflecting after delivering a sucker punch.   She’s shocked, shocked, I say, that Michael isn’t going to stand for her gutter gums.   After about the third “f**k”, he asked her to stop and then said that he was glad he didn’t live on her planet.  She told him to go back to where he came from. Take that for what you want.  She’s unfiltered.  I’m going to send her the address for the closest Midas Muffler before someone finds another way to filter her.  I’d do it on Twitter, but I think we know how well that would go.

This is also why I said that I couldn’t follow Bravo’s chronology.  Are we supposed to think that this dinner happened around the same time as Yolanda’s and David’s anniversary?   If we are, then why the hell is Brandi still yapping about her lost dog?  That should have happened months ago, right?  The same goes for Joyce and the racism accusations.  Palm Springs was months earlier, yet she’s carrying that torch like a lifeline – or a storyline, at least.

From what little I saw of the second hour, it seems that the staff at SUR did have some funny things to say during the dinner.   I can only imagine that it would have been a little like watching the inmates running the asylum in several different languages – or the Beverly Hills version of the movie “Babel”.

I’ve figured out how these women stay so skinny.  Every damn dinner turns into a cage match before they ever get to eat anything.

Empress

UPDATE:  A very smart reader was kind enough to pull me aside to tell me that the Fosters were not celebrating their wedding anniversary, but were marking the day they first met.  I’d like to thank her for clearing that up for me and I hope it eliminated any confusion my mistake may have caused.