Holy shit at the utter humiliation of Adrienne Malouf in that final! Absolutely brutal
I guess when you come for the queen, you better not miss!
Whew! Where to begin...
The last two episodes are built around two highly contrasting parties. At the first, Adrienne launches her vodka line with an impossibly tacky soiree which proves the final death knell for her marriage. It is hard to overstate just how FOUL this party setup is - it genuinely looks like something Kendall Roy would throw together during a particularly cringe episode of Succession. Naturally, queen Camille can barely contain her palpable disgust as she sashays in
Spare a thought also for these POOR models, who clearly came to LA with big dreams of Hollywood stardom and instead somehow found themselves doing THIS.
Anyway, the party is also notable for Beta Marisa making a last desperate bid for relevance with the reveal that Brandi may or may not have propositioned her for a three-way. In more qualified hands, this might have been fairly explosive, but even with Brandi herself uninvited from Adrienne's hellish jamboree, Marisa finds herself on the wrong side of the terrifying Yolanda Foster and instantly collapses like a deck of cards.
This alpha-dog body language
Anyway, Marisa remains strictly an afterthought despite this pitiful effort, but the threesome reveal does have repercussions at the main event of the season finale, Lisa and Ken's wedding vow renewal. Brandi is obviously in attendance on this one, and having been fully briefed by Yolanda, the stage is set for a showdown. Except, once again Marisa immediately descends into a babbling mess. Thankfully there's a backup fighter waiting in the wings...
Oh God, this exchange! Faye certainly has more chutzpah than Marisa, but beyond that she makes an utter, delicious fool of herself here, stumbling over the above, clearly pre-scripted takedown to Brandi's visible amusement, and being so generally belligerent and high handed that even Marisa, who she had ostensibly stepped in to defend - more or less tells her to fuck off.
My favourite part of this whole exchange though is, once again, Camille watching from the sidelines with everything but an open bag of popcorn.
Give that woman a promotion in Season Four, for fucks sake!
Anyway Faye flames out spectacularly not once but TWICE, stumbling straight from her mortifying attempted fly-by on Brandi to a frosty exchange with Capo Vanderpump, who accuses her of being Kyle's mouth-piece.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, the news breaks that Adrienne and Paul, have separated. This of course leads to the operatic conclusion of the episode, as a tearful Adrienne staggers into the party and sobs about how her life has completely gone to shit, while a radiantly beautiful Lisa completely ignores her and glides out to renew her own vows with mega-rich, dotingly obedient husband Ken.
It could only have been more of an abject humiliation if she'd been fired from the show onscreen immediately afterwards.
So farewell Adrienne. For the most part you were a dour, nouveau riche bore, but as reality TV flame-outs go, that really was one for the ages.
Final Season 3 Power rankings
1. Lisa Vanderpump - From likable quip-machine to cold blooded assassin in about three episodes. That, ladies and gentlemen is how you enter your villain era.
2. Camille Grammer - Look I don't care. She did more this season than Taylor or Kim and I will be agog if she's never back as full cast. An evil icon!
3. Yolanda Foster - I was skeptical at first but what a find! A malevolently insane DEMON disguised as a prim Dutch woman with retrograde ideas about gender roles. Long may she terrorise!
4. Brandi Glanville - Solid first season on main, but she's very hit or miss in an argument and I suspect she lacks the true intellect to stay on top for long.
5. Kyle Richards - Mostly sat on the fence this season, but now that Adrienne's been dispatched, Lisa and Brandi are going to need a new adversary...
6. Kim Richards - Poor Kim. She was mostly a nonentity this season until the late run of episodes of her WHITE KNUCKLING sobriety which I enjoyed far more than I should have.
7. Taylor Armstrong - a
deeply strange individual. I can't rank her any higher because aside from being a messy drunk and briefly forgetting she had a daughter, she didn't do much this season. But I do still feel a strange degree of affection for her and hope her life got better after this.
8. Adrienne Maloof - I mean Jesus Christ, even RUSSELL got a more dignified exit than that!