Photo: Bravo/Nicole Weingart/Bravo
This week Crystal finally checked in on our favorite show, Crystal Clocks In! She accompanied her husband to an event for The Brave Little Toaster, for which he designed the characters. (Boy, are these Minkoffs rich?) (Plus, you stream this shit with your kids.) She went to République to meet her brother, to buy overpriced apple-date tarts, and to learn that both she and hers Mother was bossy with her brother's friends that she might have to back off if she ever wanted this man to be happily married to a grown human. Finally, she called Annemarie Whosiwhatsit a “bitch” right to her face, and everyone watching at home cheered and cheered, making Crystal our new hero.
It's crazy that Annemarie, one of the worst housewives in modern history, not only got the best of Crystal, but also made me support Sutton in a fight. Who is this transformative figure and how did she right everything that was wrong with the franchise with one evening of complete ineptitude? This is a rhetorical question because I really don't want to waste time and energy examining Annemarie, a woman who is as useless as the extra syllable in the middle of her name.
The episode begins with Crystal… Nope. Wait. Let's go back for a moment. The episode begins with Sutton doing “hot Pilates” on her in-house reformer with the gas fire stove on, while Josh, the fill-in assistant, holds the phone as she FaceTimes Avi, the full-time assistant on vacation. Two twinks were injured in the making of this footage.
But things really get going when Crystal is on the phone with Garcelle and talks about how Annemarie has come in again about Sutton's small esophagus. At the Real Housewives Institute, we have a section dedicated to the dumbest fights of all time in Beverly Hills. Here are the panties Dorit gave Erika when PK, an eczema patch on your penis head, saw that she wasn't wearing any. Next to it is a framed portrait of Lucy Lucy Apple Juice, the dog we've never seen but who continues to lurk in our nightmares. Next to that is Sutton's esophagus, which I hope I never hear about again, but I'm sure we'll be dealing with the throat all season long.
Crystal says she googled “small esophagus” and discovered that it was a real condition and that it could just be a genetic condition. I also googled for five minutes and came to the wrong conclusion that Sutton is an alcoholic. Since all three of us have different diagnoses, maybe we should, I don't know, believe that Sutton knows what's going on with her body and just listen to her?
The rest of the episode is taken up by Dorit's benefit film “Homeless Not Toothless” starring Paula Abdul and Taylor Dayne. It says a lot about Annemarie that everyone but her knows who Taylor Dayne is. I feel like every time I meet a new person I just sing “Tell It To My Heart” and if you can't join in with the chorus, I don't even want to meet you. I would like to add that it fills my heart with joy that the stupidity of the Bravo community has not abated in the face of this charity's terrible name, and we still need to take a moment to consider whether these people have teeth, a At home, have both. or neither.
Heading into the big party, the show does its best to sow what few seeds of discord it can muster about Kyle and Mauricio's marriage. Sutton talks in the confessional about how he didn't show up to her celebration of her dead best friend's life, but he could come to the Untoothed and Unhoused gala. Kyle then opens a box of shoes, but they aren't her shoes – they belong to Morgan Amelia Wade, the homewrecker. (That's a made-up middle name, but I like it.) Finally, he asks about her schedule and she tells him she won't be there. She goes to Spain to work. She says it's a taste of his own medicine because he does it to her all the time. I'm sorry, but if we've reached the stage of marriage, you'd better hire a pro bono divorce lawyer because I'll give you six months to a year.
Everyone at the party looks absolutely amazing. Wearing a pink dress with a long train, Erika is so gorgeous that she gets hit on by her own dentist (Erika, get dressed, he looks good!) and then takes a photo with Pink Lady, a random little old woman a pink dress with pink hair. Crystal and Kyle both wear black dresses that look like they're made of one piece but are actually two, with all sorts of beads, jewels and embellishments along the waist. Even Sutton looks good for a change in an ombre pink and white dress. Congratulations to all the stylists.
The women all look great in front of the step-and-repeat machine, which bears the logos of many of the brands sponsoring the event, including Neuro Drinks, a beverage line from none other than Diana Jenkins. Is she here? Did she get a ticket in return for her financial support? Couldn't she have looked into the camera one last time to lick her lips?
All the women know that things are coming to a head with Annemarie and Sutton, and as they stand around a high table, Annemarie approaches them. Sutton tells them not to be afraid. “No one is afraid of her,” Crystal says, setting off a series of attacks that are a miracle to witness.
Sutton tells Annemarie they need to talk, and AM immediately goes on the defensive. Sutton starts spitting out a “No, ma'am” line like an entire South Florida fraternity just showed up at Chipotle and asked for free guacamole. Annemarie says Sutton lied to her multiple times, including when her doctor told her she could drink and take medication at the same time. Did she ever think that wasn't a lie? Did she think that maybe Sutton's doctor had told her that and he was a bad doctor? Instead of defaulting to, “This woman is lying to me,” shouldn’t she have defaulted to, “This woman was given bad medical advice and I should help her”? That never happens because Annemarie sucks.
Then Annemarie says that Crystal is the one who says Sutton has an eating disorder. Even Garcelle, who was present at the conversation, believes that this lady is crazy. If any of these women have Sutton suffering from an eating disorder, it's Crystal, who is very open about her struggles. Crystal then tells Annemarie that she was so obsessed with Sutton's neck that she talked about it for hours and they got so bored that they had to leave.
The part that really struck me was when Annemarie said that she was a critical thinker and that Crystal wanted to study medicine and if she had, she would be a critical thinker like her. Crystal has the best defense: “You didn’t go to medical school.” Exactly! She is a nurse! Nurses are amazing, necessary, undervalued and underpaid. However, they don't go to medical school, so Annemarie does exactly what Crystal accused her of: trying to look like a doctor even though she's not. (Again: nurses are great, but misrepresenting yourself is not.)
As the fight becomes more heated, Garcelle says she feels like everyone is watching her, like these people are in the zoo and they are the animals. Phew! Of course they are. People didn't pay $1,000 a ticket and bid in a silent auction to give a home to the loose teeth that plague our neighborhoods. They came because they knew the housewives would be at each other's throats, and they're fed up.
The rest of the episode consists of a series of phone calls discussing the party, her upcoming trip to Spain, and whether Annemarie can get along with enough women to attend. She says she wants to apologize to Sutton, but comes up with an apology so weak she couldn't even lift a raisin from a bowl of Raisin Bran. She says to Sutton: “I'm sorry for my part in what happened.” I'm with Sutton. Your part is the entirety of the argument. Without Annemarie we wouldn't be discussing this.
But at the end of the episode I'm taken back to the fight at the gala. When Annemarie tries to respond that Crystal is making fun of her career, which Crystal hasn't done, Crystal calls her a slut. Thank you, Crystal. It took three years. Three long years and you've finally done it. I feel like a mother bird who has just thrown her youngest from the nest and watched it soar to great heights, watched it float on the updrafts of rumor and the crosswinds of disagreement, watched it fly through the ravines and valleys of Southern California, past the brush and corpses in shallow graves, over shattered dreams and sun-drenched parking lots, over the mansions and manicured lawns of Beverly Hills, until it dropped a giant poop directly onto the glass walls of Villa Rosa.
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Dame Brian Moylan breaks down all the gossip and drama on and off screen for dedicated students of the reality TV arts and sciences.
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