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Arts & Entertainment

'The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' Season Finale Recap: A Nice Day For A Pink Wedding

'The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' Recap: S*#t Gets Real / Read the post here

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Last night was the season finale of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and as much as it pains me to say this, it was, as an episode and especially as a finale, an epic disappointment. Nothing was wrapped up in any meaningful way except Pandora’s wedding, which was at best a sub-sub-plot throughout the season, so it was like, Oh, a wedding! Oh, a wedding I don’t care about. Because weddings are boring when they involve people you love. But when they involve the daughter of a C-list reality star, on a show in which the wedding likely became the focus of the finale because another character committed suicide, you are played against a stacked deck, and Bravo, in this case, you lost.

That said, instead of a traditional recap, I’ll do this as a bullet-pointed list of highlights and lowlights. Here you go:

Highlights
1. Paul's fart-fest. Well-played, camera crew. As the anesthesia wore off from Paul's colonoscopy, Adrienne stood over him laughing as he let fart after fart rip, followed by little gasps of "oh no!". Fart, gasp. Fart, gasp. This was an epic moment of reality television.

2. Lisa’s princess gown. Lisa's mother-of-the-bride dress had rhinestones covering one entire breast. Try to imagine that catastrophe of a gown on anyone else. You probably can't. And that's for the best.

3. Ken’s sudden capacity for emotion. During his wedding speech, Ken demonstrated that somewhere in Beverly Hills, people have feelings. I got genuinely choked up when he told Pandora that she would always be his little girl and asked her for the next dance.

Please note that he didn’t have anything at all to say about Pandora's new husband Jason, and honestly I think that’s fair.

4. The cocaine-fueled after-party. I’ve always suspected that behind closed doors, everyone in Beverly Hills has their face buried deep in a bowl of cocaine. How else could they forget that they've permanently altered their faces, or that if anything ever goes wrong in their professional lives they'll likely be either tens of millions of dollars in debt or on trial for white-collar crime?

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I believe this suspicion was confirmed last night. My opinion might be skewed because of Bravo's decision to shoot the after-party like “Dateline” and “60 Minutes” shoot re-enactments of raves, but if not, between the slow-motion dancing, the flashing lights, and the sweaty old men with their shirts half open, Beverly Hills is just as I always imagined.

5. Bravo’s dig at Kyle at the end of the episode. After Kyle tried to force her co-dependency help on Kim by essentially telling Kim that she was a failure at life, the producers included a note at the end of the episode informing the audience that Kyle published a self-help book for women containing a chapter about “sisterly love.”

And here’s the big, fat lowlight:
The final scene at Kyle’s house. Because nothing happened. Nothing at all. I mean, we in part have ourselves to blame for that, since our insatiable appetite for news about the housewives fuels constant tabloid updates. For instance, we already knew that Kim checked herself into rehab, and that Taylor is publishing a book. (I admittedly did not know about Camille’s ripped new boyfriend, but honestly, does anyone care? Show of hands. That’s what I thought.)

So there you have it, and so we'll close this season with one final thought:

Rumors have swirled that Bravo is considering re-casting the housewives. The finale left a lot to be desired, but it seems like we're just getting to know these women -- as if they’re becoming our very own frenemies, you know? Like we might see them when we walk into Milk Café and have beef with them, but we’ll still air-kiss like everything’s cool, and then they'll be back on our TV screen next year.

So here’s my plea: Bravo, I don’t think you should recast the show. I think you should keep it as it is. Just maybe turn the microphone down when Kyle is speaking, and instead turn the cameras onto Mauricio, who happens to be standing there without a shirt.

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