VoR does RHOBH

VoR

VoR

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So last night it finally happened... I cracked and watched Season 1, Episode 1 of Beverley Hills. :shy:

I know everybody says I should do Melbourne or Auckland first, but I kind of feel like I've seen all the best bits of those shows anyway thanks to extensive clips and dear departed wurst's incredible write-ups. Also I'm a sucker for a fucked up family dynamic so i was kind of intrigued by the whole Richards sisters angle.

ANYWAY I'm not sure how long I'll persevere but here are my initial thoughts.

Lisa VanDerPump
I gather she's one of the true breakout stars of the franchise. In this episode she didn't have loads to do but they were clearly setting her up as sort of the matriarch of the group. She certainly seems the most stable so far, and I enjoy the fact that she has a LIVE-IN GAY who is clearly shamelessly sponging off her wealth and success. :D

Adrienne Malouf
Appears to be being set up as the connective tissue between the women, and the obligatory one who actually somewhat works for a living. Her Republican husband is bad vibes, she herself didn't give me loads but I enjoyed the random scene where she demonstrates her martial arts skills by violently HURLING her teenage son(?) over her shoulder and onto the floor.

Taylor Armstrong
Lots of red flags with this one. Grew up poor and clearly married into wealth through sheer desperation, getting unnecessary (and HORRIFYING) face work in her second ever scene, openly admitting it's because she fears being left by her gross middle-aged husband who appears to despise/ignore her. I can't see this ending well for her.

Camille Grammar
Loved how she quite clearly had NO connection with the other women and was purely cast because of her famous husband. :D Does she even live in the same neighbourhood? UNCLEAR. "Do you know Camille Grammar?" 'No but of course I know OF HER..." :eyes:

I'm going to predict that Kelsey's grumpy contractually obligated cameo this first episode is more or less the last we'll see of him? Also her poor children! FOUR NANNIES? I presume by now they have all grown up to be complete sociopaths.

All that aside, she seems quite fun. I liked the deeply uncomfortable moment when they were all lightly making fun of Lisa VanDerPump's English accent and out of nowhere she awkwardly blurted out "DON'T GET YER RAT OUT!" :D

Kyle & Kim Richards
Obviously I go into this knowing that many fans consider Kyle to be the living embodiment of pure evil, so maybe that's colouring my initial perception, but she does not come out of this first episode particularly well. I gather Kim's demons are going to become much more apparent over time, but in this episode she seems like a rather sad but ultimately harmless figure who just needs a friend. I can totally relate to the need to warm up to people before I'm comfortable in a social situation, especially when surrounded by so many TYPE A's. Kyle inviting her to the basketball game and then sitting as far away from her as possible really smacked of doing the absolute bare minimum / production telling her they wanted her sister on the cast so she reluctantly plays along.

I will say that they seem like they probably had a super fucked-up childhood / a monstrous stage mother, which probably left significant scars on them both. So I'm open to seeing a softer side of Kyle, but not particularly holding my breath based on the group consensus. :D



Anyway those are my thoughts. If I stick with it I might add more.


*cut to 3 months from now and I'm midway through my definitive top 100 Housewives of all time countdown thread
 
You're in for quite a ride, if you choose to persevere - and I hope you do.
It's not actually a bad choice to start with BH to be honest. If you start with any of the American franchises from S1 the best choice would actually probably be BH.
I do hope you will be hooked in because truly BH is probably the consistent and there's drama even at S12 where we are the moment (in fact probably peak drama!)

Make sure you stick around for this iconic moment at least
house.gif.5a69ac41d24508435575cb6bf6ac4eab.gif

One of many :disco:
 
Well, in for a penny...

S01E02

This episode centred around that famed family holiday - Easter Sunday. :D

Kyle & Kim (feat. Lisa)
Oh my God, I am only two episodes into this and already I am 100% in the 'Kyle is a MONSTER' faction. The gaslighting! Forcing POOR KIM to cook for her entire extended family PLUS a couple she barely knows, and spending the entire time sniping at her at every turn. I was so stressed on her behalf during that trip to the mall, sorry 'farmer's market' :D.

Then she gets wind that Kim's daughter wants to spend the summer out of state with her father, and she just goes in for the kill! It's one thing to empathise with the niece, but to very vocally side with her and then undermine her mother right to her face! No wonder poor Kim is heading for a nervous breakdown. I'd be reaching for the hard stuff too...

Lisa's contribution to this episode was mostly just spending $1,000 on a hideous chocolate rabbit and being mildly passive aggressive about potatoes. I'm guessing low-key SNIPING is going to be a theme with her...

Camille
I love how it is immediately apparent once again that she has zero connection with the rest of the cast, as her screen time this week is mostly just doing her important producing work for Kelsey's company, which she is VERY ACTIVE IN as an independent woman who is not at all defined by and borderline obsessed with her husband. In addition to four nannies, she also appears to employ a 'household manager' whatever the fuck that is? I realise this is very far from an original observation, but the sheer POINTLESSNESS of these women's lives is quite staggering. :D

Adrienne
Meh, I'm not warming much to this one. She flies off to Vegas to do a 'sexy' photoshoot for some tacky-sounding Australian magazine, which I suspect might be a front by the producers to give her a storyline because the result was HILARIOUS. She appeared to be filming in a motel room and the end result was like something out of a RuPaul's Drag Race challenge. :D

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Taylor
Barely in this episode but the aura of constant low-key panic and anxiety is quite compelling. There's some phrase I heard somewhere about how real wealthy people never actually talk about money because it's just a fact of life to them. Taylor seems like she talks about money CONSTANTLY.

I also wasn't clear on why she needed to bring in her personal stylist to help her to pick out an outfit this week - they never mentioned any kind of special occasion she was attending. Gotta stay presentable for that husband though! :eyes:
 
Pffft obviously indoctrinated by the masses. Kyle is a martyr just wait till the end of the season.
 
She was still vile about
the Amsterdam incident
in BravoCon last week; and
wouldn't defend her sister like Kathy would. She is awful and we all know this crying act in S12 reunion was just to make her safe for S13. She's repugnant honestly.
Oh, and did you know that
Mauricio's mother is a crazy Trump supporter and apparently he is also a Republican but then again so is Kathy. But we like her
 
To be fair I’d just finished re-watching Succession and there was a hole in my viewing schedule that only TOXIC PRIVILEGE could fill.
 
Based on what I’ve seen so far:

Kim = Kendall (no brainer. The former golden child turned BROKEN BIRD)

Kyle = Shiv (Outwardly moralistic, but completely bankrupt beneath the veneer)

Taylor = Roman (I sense deep wells of trauma and self-loathing)

Lisa = Caroline (Mumsy Brit who wields passive-aggression like a surgeon’s knife)

Camille = Willa (Failed creative type beholden to her other half. Possible prostitute)

Adrienne = Gerri (Brain for business with a body for… well… business)
 
Should I keep doing these here or split them into a new thread?

S01E03 - Vegas Trip/Jay Z Concert

I wonder if, when Jay Z was first coming up in his hard knock life 90s, he ever imagined that one day his gigs would be attended by obscenely wealthy middle-aged white women who blithely admit they can't name a single one of his songs? I did find it telling that clearly no footage/audio of the show was allowed so we just got a bunch of grainy mobile footage of them all making complete fools of themselves in the VIP section. :basil:

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Anyhoo...

Lisa
I really enjoyed Lisa this episode! She was giving great catty talking head pretty much from start to finish.

"Taylor is a BEAUTIFUL, CHARMING, VIVACIOUS woman. CLEARLY opposites attract..."
"Camille's dancing... all that was missing was the POLE :eyes:"
"All I've heard from Taylor is that her husband is this BIG, SEXY, TEXAS COWBOY. And then IN WALKS RUSSELL..."

1667520488029.png


:D

Taylor
Poor, poor Taylor. You're all telling me what a dark psychodrama this show is, and obviously I know from wurst's thread that Kim is going to spin out at some point, but without spoilers I'm getting a bad feeling about Taylor's future too. She really DOES seem to be charming, sweet and vivacious, but that husband is just a walking RED FLAG.

I became quite interested this episode in the different approaches to the husbands - Adrienne's other half clearly wants to be a character on the show in his right, possibly moreso than she does actually :D. Ken and Mr Kyle seem to sort of benignly tolerate it all, while Russell seems to be barely suppressing MURDEROUS RAGE every time he's forced to be on camera. The story of how they met is quite clearly a CROCK too. I can well believe she started out as some kind of call girl which, just own it lady!

Anyway I like her, she seems the most genuinely nice one in the bunch, but I also fear for her.

Kylie & Kim
Not much to say this week. They're clearly setting Kyle and Camille up as the key rivalry this season, to which I say TEAM CAMILLE. Again I keep noticing that Kyle and Kim never seem to be together in group scenes, with poor Kim and her social anxiety pushed to the sidelines. Kim's sad sad singleton moping was admittedly a bit of an eyeroll, and I enjoyed the way Camille just sort of blithely nicked that storyline from her too. :D

Camille
I really like Camille and the way she riles up the other women. It's the most obviously staged element so far - particularly the (gay?) tennis himbo who JUST HAPPENS to show up at dinner, but she seems fairly self aware about her role on the show. Her wanging on to all the husbands about her perfect natural boobs while Kyle quietly fumed on the sidelines was a comedy highlight of this episode. And of course the DANCING :basil:

Adrienne
Considering this was kind of her episode on paper, she once again didn't make much impression other than her husband seeming distractingly thirsty for camera time. She seems nice, level headed and clearly she's there to serve as the one with all the connections, but she's not really giving me much at this stage.
 
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Suedey said:
Sadly Auckland was a single season but WHAT a season it was.

Melbourne is part of Moopy iconography at this point and I’m surprised we haven’t got Gina and Janet in our banner

And by surprised I mean shocked and appalled.
Click to expand...
I don't do the banners any more but they're both there, aren't they? Janet is at least, and Gina was definitely in the Christmas banner but I think the normal one too.
 
VoR said:
Should I keep doing these here or split them into a new thread?

S01E03 - Vegas Trip/Jay Z Concert

I wonder if, when Jay Z was first coming up in his hard knock life 90s, he ever imagined that one day his gigs would be attended by obscenely wealthy middle-aged white women who blithely admit they can't name a single one of his songs? I did find it telling that clearly no footage/audio of the show was allowed so we just got a bunch of grainy mobile footage of them all making complete fools of themselves in the VIP section. :basil:

View attachment 13771

Anyhoo...

Lisa
I really enjoyed Lisa this episode! She was giving great catty talking head pretty much from start to finish.

"Taylor is a BEAUTIFUL, CHARMING, VIVACIOUS woman. CLEARLY opposites attract..."
"Camille's dancing... all that was missing was the POLE :eyes:"
"All I've heard from Taylor is that her husband is this BIG, SEXY, TEXAS COWBOY. And then IN WALKS RUSSELL..."

View attachment 13772

:D

Taylor
Poor, poor Taylor. You're all telling me what a dark psychodrama this show is, and obviously I know from wurst's thread that Kim is going to spin out at some point, but without spoilers I'm getting a bad feeling about Taylor's future too. She really DOES seem to be charming, sweet and vivacious, but that husband is just a walking RED FLAG.

I became quite interested this episode in the different approaches to the husbands - Adrienne's other half clearly wants to be a character on the show in his right, possibly moreso than she does actually :D. Ken and Mr Kyle seem to sort of benignly tolerate it all, while Russell seems to be barely suppressing MURDEROUS RAGE every time he's forced to be on camera. The story of how they met is quite clearly a CROCK too. I can well believe she started out as some kind of call girl which, just own it lady!

Anyway I like her, she seems the most genuinely nice one in the bunch, but I also fear for her.

Kylie & Kim
Not much to say this week. They're clearly setting Kyle and Camille up as the key rivalry this season, to which I say TEAM CAMILLE. Again I keep noticing that Kyle and Kim never seem to be together in group scenes, with poor Kim and her social anxiety pushed to the sidelines. Kim's sad sad singleton moping was admittedly a bit of an eyeroll, and I enjoyed the way Camille just sort of blithely nicked that storyline from her too. :D

Camille
I really like Camille and the way she riles up the other women. It's the most obviously staged element so far - particularly the (gay?) tennis himbo who JUST HAPPENS to show up at dinner, but she seems fairly self aware about her role on the show. Her wanging on to all the husbands about her perfect natural boobs while Kyle quietly fumed on the sidelines was a comedy highlight of this episode. And of course the DANCING :basil:

Adrienne
Considering this was kind of her episode on paper, she once again didn't make much impression other than her husband seeming distractingly thirsty for camera time. She seems nice, level headed and clearly she's there to serve as the one with all the connections, but she's not really giving me much at this stage.
Click to expand...
This every time please :disco: Glad to find you’re a Camille stan, but as one of my besties it’s NO SURPRISE :disco:
 
Hating Camille is something all Housewives Fans have to reconcile with themselves and repent for later down the line, so I’m pleased to see VoR will get to avoid that!
 
I, too, foolishly hated Camille on her first season! I have to live with the daily GAY SHAME of under-appreciating her Jesus complex, appreciation for mediums, exposé on Kelsey Grammar and, of course, her impressive vocabulary :(
 
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S01E04 - Warring Birthdays

Bit of a dud episode really, the women barely interacted at all, and it was mostly padded out with them individually planning various tacky events for their children.

Taylor
The red flags just keep flying with this one. I was getting major Mommie Dearest vibes at her HIDEOUS $60,000 party that was clearly all about her. My vibe with Taylor so far is that she's probably a nice person, but with some pretty deep rooted emotional problems which I suspect bleeds into her parenting style in a very negative way. I can picture an off-screen crying fit in which she demanded to know why her daughter didn't appreciate the BEAUTIFUL PARTY mommy spent months putting together. I imagine the little girl would have been happier with a HUG, to be honest.

Lisa
I've noticed Lisa V doesn't factor much in Moopy discussion of Beverley Hills and was a notable absence from wurst's top 50. Which is puzzling because she really feels like the lead character so far, and the most likable. I'm guessing a fall from grace is coming? Anyway, she was in voice of reason mode this week, I enjoyed her read of Taylor's horrible party, and her relationship with her own kids seems relatively healthy. There was too much of it, but her touring the music college with a face of thunder did tickle me. :D

Kyle & Kim
Kyle wins the party war by virtue of hers actually feeling like an event that would be appropriate and enjoyable for a small child - although she still spent $16,000 on a two year old so y'know, it's all relative. Big eye roll at her negging poor sweet Kim yet again for selfishly being too busy MOVING HOUSE to come and help her hand out paper plates. (Sidebar: Is this THE HOUSE?)

Also, personally I would never in a million years trust somebody who looks like THIS to plan an event for an infant.

1667938331288.png


Camille
Increasingly obsessed with this LUDICROUS woman. :D Once again her plot has nothing to do with anything else and just consists of her swanning around Hawaii getting her BOULDER LIKE tits out in front of gross old men and name dropping her husband like she's in the Molly Sugden sketch from Little Britain. There's not much else to say as she didn't really DO ANYTHING, like, at all. But her moaning about how overwhelmingly difficult it is to organise a holiday to Hawaii, to her house manager(!) who was clearly doing all of the actual work was quite something.

Adrienne
She was there I guess? Aside from her hideous taste in clothes, she's really giving me nothing for the fourth episode in a row.

In the absence of anything else to talk about, a note on the infamous taglines. Did they make them all do it in one take? Camille and Lisa literally sound like they're reading words they've never heard for the very first time. :D
 
S01 E05 & E06 - The New York Trip

Combined these two since they were very much a two-parter, and I'm going to assume the first truly classic episodes of the show? I feel like I got quite a few of the Greatest Hits here, particularly from...

Camille
This was, of course, 100% her pair of episodes. She is SUCH a fascinating piece of work. :D

I actually think Kyle probably didn't directly imply that she was nothing without Kelsey, and Camille obviously *is* massively insecure about her marriage, but she's also perceptive enough to see right through Kyle's passive aggressive schtick and she clearly decided she was not having it. :D It helps that she clearly couldn't care less what the other girls think of her, so Kyle had basically nothing to throw back at her. It's not dissimilar to Willam from RuPaul's Drag Race, they seem to have similar narcissistic yet self aware personalities which really makes for reality TV gold, especially when they're paired against a much stupider opponent (Phi Phi/Kyle) who doesn't know how to deal with them. She basically had her own 'Your tone seems very pointed right now' moment when Kyle was screaming at her that she needed to see a therapist to an utterly UNBOTHERED reaction. :disco:

And of course this was the episode where we got the introduction of Camille's celebrated VOCABULARY. Pernicious, describing Lisa as MACHIAVELLIC, and the following golden quotes which I also wrote down:

"The more I stood up for myself, she just kept getting madder and madder. I knew I was winning. :)"
"I swear on my MOTHER who has CANCER!"
"She acted like a CRAZED HOMELESS WOMAN!"
"There's a pecking order. My husband is an A LIST CELEBRITY. Her husband is a LOCAL BEVERLEY HILLS REALTOR." :D:disco:
"I think she's just a MISERABLE HUMAN BEING" :disco:

What a woman!

Kyle
Obviously hopelessly outmatched against the haughty FROIDEUR of Camille, and of course she reverted straight to petulantly taking her rage out on the weaker Kim as soon as Camille left the table. Beside that embarrassment, my main realisation about Kyle this week is that she is 100% the straight female version of those gym rat gays who post topless picture of their rippling abs with tags like #thiccfriday and #dadbod. Also she does this really annoying head wobble in her confessionals which is getting right on my tits.

Lisa
Mostly stayed above the fray while subtly stirring the pot - again, it spoke well of Camille that she spotted this quickly and called her out on it. I feel like these two could be a much more evenly matched rivalry if Lisa really gets into it.

She did slip in the best non-Camille line of the night in the final act though: "I do have a man in mind for Kim. Unfortunately he's still behind bars..." :D

Kim
I loved the visible hand of the producers in randomly pairing her up with non-event Adrienne for the shopping spree scene at the start. Thank God the latter's uncle dropped dead before she could force Kim to buy that hideous leopardskin print jumpsuit. The random flare up with Taylor wasn't terribly convincing, again it seems like the producers want to manufacture a secondary rivalry there, which is a shame because I think those two broken birds would be much more interesting as friends than enemies. Knowing what I know about Kim's substance abuse issues, I did also have a dark chuckle at her staggering out of the ladies' room long after everybody else, looking completely out of it. :D

Taylor
See above really. Aside from the brief threat of a fight with Kim, she was mostly background.

Adrienne
Is she even going to last to the end of this season? What a (horribly dressed) DUD! The family death probably couldn't be helped, but I loved how they just had to awkwardly drag her in for the last 5 minutes for Lisa to basically summarise everything we as viewers had already seen, lest she actually have no screen time whatsoever.


Needless to say I'm addicted to this show now.
 
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There’s an amazing behind the scenes episode about this season where they break the fourth wall and you see the moment Camille realises she’s being given the villain edit in New York and loses it with Lisa.
 
jivafox said:
There’s an amazing behind the scenes episode about this season where they break the fourth wall and you see the moment Camille realises she’s being given the villain edit in New York and loses it with Lisa.
Click to expand...
Hook us up!
 
Annoyingly it’s almost impossible to find online now!

It was called RHOBH Season One Uncensored and was shown just before Season 6? started, and was a documentary/behind the scenes look at the whole season with lots of unseen clips. Including some incriminating footage of Kyle demanding that the producers don’t let Kim leave during the finale party :eyes:
 
The specials go off/on Hayu so would keep checking. There's also a special uncut episode with new post-airing reactions/confessions added of the iconic dinner from hell.
giphy.gif
 
Another double bill because neither of these episodes was enormously interesting

S01 E07 & E08 - Kim Needs a Man

Kim & Kyle
It seems to me that of the Richards sisters, Kyle is much better equipped to be a reality TV personality. She annoys the fuck out of me, but she clearly knows how to stir the pot and generate drama, and can probably create a fairly healthy mental separation between the show and her real life. I'm trying to avoid too many spoilers, but I do know she's the only OG still in the cast and her marriage seems to have endured, so I guess that's probably a testament to her resilience.

I do not think the same is true for poor Kim. With that in mind, watching her struggling to navigate the horribly awkward 'blind date' (at a huge party hosted by somebody she seemed to barely know, populated by judgemental witches, with TV cameras rolling) was excruciating. Any other member of the cast would probably have embraced the unreality of it all and laughed it off, but Kim kept doing clearly un-TV friendly things like showing up dressed like an actual prostitute and then vanishing to the bathroom for long stretches of time ( :eyes: ).

I felt bad for her, even moreso on the following episode where she meets another guy and impulsively invites him over to meet her terrifying brood of children and comes off completely desperate and unhinged. It's undeniably compelling, but I kind of wish somebody (not Kyle) would take her under their wing a bit.

On a lighter note, this scene of Kim being unwillingly strapped into what appears to be a medieval torture device masquerading as a beauty spa treatment while Kyle smirks impassively from the sidelines is a moment of high camp that probably sums up their relationship better than any moment I've seen so far. :D

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Oh, and I have nowhere else to put it, but the offhand reveal that Kyle's live-in nanny appears to have FLED INTO THE NIGHT the day before her cycling trip really cracked me up. :D

Taylor
Did Taylor give her daughter Munchausen syndrome by proxy as an excuse to get rid of that dog? Because I feel like that's what happened. :D

There's a more subtle shade of crazy emanating from her compared to the open wound that is Kim, but it's really starting to come through as the weeks go by. That said, the revelation that she's a child of domestic abuse and now hosts fundraiser's for a women's shelter was actually genuinely touching, and her breaking down while talking about it felt very real for this show. The husband still gives me the absolute creeps.

Lisa
Lisa seems to have settled in nicely as the comic relief/narrator of the show. Still living for her catty one-liners, but there's not much else to say at this point. I feel she took a slightly MALICIOUS JOY in setting Kim up with a guy who was patently unsuitable for her, and I could probably have watched an entire episode of her torturing her house gay and being openly hostile to commoners during the whole driving licence B-plot.

Camille
OK so she is 100% on the outs with the other women after the New York fight, then? It was like every 20 minutes or so the producers would be like "Oh yeah, Camille is contracted on this show!" and cut to her randomly twirling in ball gowns and recapping scenes from previous episodes with un-named hangers on. :D

Adrienne
What the fuck was this outfit?

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That's all I've got really. She had an anniversary dinner? She got a dog? I dunno, she just seems grumpy and over it the whole time.

Next up... the Dinner Party from Hell :disco:
 
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I am so happy that you haven’t been spoiled on the finale (you’ve probably seen gifs and clips but not in context). It’s a great cap to the season (after the dinner party).
 
So much foreshadowing in your review - so interesting to read it from your perspective!

:D at "torturing her house gay"

You've got such gold to come imminently - know that.
 
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