‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ recap: Awwwwkward!

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So much of this week on ‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ was cringe-worthy. Not funny. Not enjoyable in that guilty-pleasure kind of way. Just awkward. Really, really awkward.

There was the odd contortion display when Camille Grammer was ‘stretching’ in front of her tennis coach. Then, there was Camille shamelessly flirting with the husbands of her fellow Housewives (except for poor Lisa Vanderpump’s Rod Stewart lookalike husband).

And, then, Camille again — dancing, gyrating, borderline stripping at the club.

‘I think all that’s missing was the pole,’ Lisa commented.

If Camille didn’t have viewers squirming enough, Taylor Armstrong and her husband, Russell, also did their part to make us uncomfortable. First of all, Taylor should never, ever eat cotton candy on television again. It was frightening, like a brontosaurus craning its neck to reach into a hot pink tree.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about Taylor and her situation. She, like Camille, wants to escape the shadow of her husband. If it weren’t for the money, it wouldn’t be all that hard to outshine her husband. He’s about as dull as they come. Even at the dinner with that wax museum of Housewives, he came across as lifeless. And as the rest of the women enjoy time with their significant others in Las Vegas, Taylor is left all alone as he jets off for Scottsdale for a three-hour meeting.

Lisa, who was on fire this week, summed it up pretty well. ‘Taylor’s a bright, vivacious woman,’ she said. ‘Obviously, opposites attract.’

I think it’s fair to say I told you so. I said from the beginning that Lisa and Kyle Richards would be the bright spots on this show. If it wasn’t for them, plus watching Camille while knowing that her marriage was close to imploding without her seeming to have a clue, this show would be a snooze. The scenes with Taylor are either boring or creepy. Adrienne just talks about how humble and so-not-a-show-off she is, as she shows off her family’s holdings — whether a basketball team or the Palms in Las Vegas.

And Lisa and Kyle have decided to sink their teeth into Camille. But it’s such an easy target, like lionesses going after the zebra with a bad leg. (If that zebra also lived on easy street and flirted constantly, that is.)

Camille complained that her two kids had been sick and it was difficult for her to tend to them with Kelsey being away. Kyle commented on Camille being a ‘single mother’ in an interview: ‘With the
four nannies? It must be pretty hard!’

In a later conversation with Lisa, Camille accused Kyle of telling her, ‘Why would anyone be interested in you without Kelsey there?’

Honestly, I think it’s more likely that this was a case of Camille being a Hector Projecter putting words that have been floating around her mind in the mouth of a woman she’s in a spat with. Camille constantly tries to cash in from the cache that comes with Kelsey Grammer’s name while also running away from it. And if Kyle said that, it would definitely be below the belt. She can be snippy, it seems — but with the Housewives you can barely believe the things that have been manufactured for the cameras, and there’s no way to believe claims of things done off-camera.

If the hour couldn’t get any more painful, the reason the women are in Vegas is a Jay-Z concert. Yes, middle-age white women at a Jay-Z show. It was as terrifying as one would imagine. Lots of fake gang signs being thrown up, looking like spasms of arthritis. And the nightclub was even worse. Camille went to town like a stripper with nothing to lose. Rod Stewart Vanderpump had on his club gear with a shirt that needed to be buttoned up more. And Russell Armstrong did little to allay our fears that he might actually be dead as he shuffled across the dance floor like a zombie.

Eeekk!

-- Rick Rojas