The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap: In the Cards

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
Star Signs and Bad Times
Season 15 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★
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This week, on our favorite program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. Of the five black vehicles parked in their palatial driveways, they walked to the Range Rover, but had the G Wagon keys, so then had to get into the G wagon … Oh, who am I kidding? We can’t do that this week. We need to talk about Amanda Frances. That’s all I want to do and that is what you people came for. Ever since she debuted on the show, she has been straining the limits of the Eileen Davidson Accords like Gwendoline Christie trying to fit into a youth medium. This lady. This Chanel-backpack-wearing, ceremonial-grade-matcha-ordering, fashion label-covered woman. I can’t with her and the LVs all over every item of clothing she wears. To paraphrase a member of the European aristocracy, even Louis Vuitton and Bravo casting directors make mistakes.

Before we really rip Amanda to shreds, there is a story that I’ve been dying to tell you since episode two. It goes back to when I was recapping season four of Selling Sunset. Amanda appeared in episode five when Davina Potratz was trying to sell her house, and she wanted to price it higher than the market could bear because our Amanda is great with money. Jason Barbenheimer told Amanda that she redid a brand-new house, but it was too specific to her standards, making it more difficult to sell. This is what I wrote back in 2021, “The house has a bar with a marble wall with a neon sign that says ‘Vibes.’ That’s all you need to know. If someone is drinking rosé at Coachella wearing a flower crown, it would be this house. It’s the avocado toast of houses, and I’m sure the driveway is paved in millennial pink.”

Amanda did not take kindly to my making fun of her house. In fact, she DM’d me on Instagram to voice her dissatisfaction. “What’s your prob with neon signs? .. .And yes … it sold furnished. The new owners happen to like the signs. Lol.” Well, congratulations, Amanda, on finding someone with taste as terrible as yours. 

The reason I tell you this story is to show that Amanda Frances has absolutely no sense of humor about herself. When she walks into a coffee shop in the desert and orders a matcha with half oat milk and half almond milk, she means it. She is being dead for real serious and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem with Amanda Frances. Delusion is usually a great personality trait in a Real Housewife, and all the best of them have a healthy dollop of it. But it’s not fun when Amanda does it because there is an equal amount of thirst along with it. She cares so much about being liked and being right that she’s going to DM a reality television recapper, the lowest rung on the media food chain, to try to make him understand? Also, if she’s that peeved about a joke about her neon sign, wait until the reviews start pouring in for her appearance on this here program, where she is a main cast member. 

The women are very skeptical of Amanda. In the opening scene, Boz makes fun of her job, saying she figures someone teaching others to make money would have made a lot more money at a regular old job. “If I could roll my eyes any harder at Amanda, I would,” Boz says. Rachel says she can’t tell whether Amanda is authentic or not. But I don’t think there are undiscovered depths to Amanda. I think this is who she is, and she believes it. She has manifested herself into this basic-ass idea of what a rich person looks like and she is faking it until she makes it. Rachel and Boz are also right that she brought up Sutton and Avi to either score points or cause drama. She’s so craven and guileless that she can’t even plot against the women without us seeing every single puppet string she’s trying to pull. 

Her next hiccup comes when the ladies all go to Rachel’s house, which has no power, for a tarot card reading party. Dorit trots out her new Mini-Kelly, which isn’t a new AI-powered home assistant; it’s one of those stupid bags they all have that they can’t get the clasps closed. Dorit says she got a book deal, and Erika asks if she has a co-author as handsome as hers. Dorit says no, such a thing does not exist in the universe and she didn’t even try. Dorit says that, instead, she got a mother-daughter team, and I have no idea how any of this will work. How is she going to be interviewed by two people? Who decides to ask the questions, and who decides to write? More importantly, who decides when to tell Dorit to shut the hell up, that they only scheduled 7 hours for this conversation, and she has gone over by 18 days? Amanda, the consummate one-upper, tells the ladies that she didn’t use a ghostwriter; she just sat down and started writing — well, good for you, Aviva Drescher. Anyway, Amanda brings it up again, pretending to be curious but really just making the distinction known between the other women, who used ghostwriters, and herself, who didn’t but should have. 

When Amanda is gone, the women say how weird it was that she said that. Erika says she didn’t write her book, but she’s a New York Times best-selling author. She doesn’t mention me by name, but I am certainly there in spirit. Rachel says she’s a two-time NYT best-seller, but that isn’t a one-up; that is a statement of fact to prove to Amanda that she has no freaking idea what she’s talking about. Dorit gets in a good quip: for someone who claims she’s an author, Amanda sure doesn’t know how to read the room.

The party progresses, and Sutton tells Jennifer Tilly that she hurt her feelings when she said she knew why Garcelle wasn’t friends with Sutton. They make up and it’s over. Cute but also [blows raspberry that never ends]. Amanda then sits with the tarot card reader and asks if she’s a medium too. The tarot card reader says sometimes, but she can’t predict it. Amanda wonders if she’s picking up anything on her, and the medium says no. This was so annoying to me. It’s like going to a restaurant and asking if they have whiskey, and they say, no, they only have beer and wine. Then saying, “Okay, but I’d like a whiskey. Do you have one?” No, sister! They just told you they didn’t. Are you listening? It’s not all about you and what you want in this very specific moment. 

Amanda is asking because it’s the third anniversary of her son Zion’s death, only a few days after he was born. She talked to Kyle about it on the car ride there, but says she thought that being around friends would be a good distraction. Did she feel that way, though? Of course, losing a child is a tragedy, and I don’t underestimate the grief that Amanda went through that day or every day since. But there’s something about either her behavior or the way that it was edited that made it look like she was walking around the party sighing, hoping that someone would ask her what was wrong so that she could talk about it. I get she’s upset, I get that she’s sad, but if she wants to talk about it, then talk about it. Just tell them that you’re sad. Why go around waiting for it to become a thing? 

That’s just what happens at dinner, when Dorit brings up that Amanda had opinions about Dorit talking shit about PK, a mustache that grows inside of your lips instead of on top of it, during their divorce. Here’s the thing about this fight: they’re both wrong, and they’re both awful, and they’re both terrible. Amanda didn’t really say this, though she did repeat it at Kathy’s dinner, but she was just parroting what Kyle said and taking it on as her own. These are Kyle’s feelings as reflected by Amanda, someone who wants into the group more desperately than a neon sign that says “Vibes.” Was Dorit right to go after her? Probably not. 

Still, when Dorit raises the issue at the dinner table, Amanda says, “Zion died three years ago today, and I’m holding on by a thread.” 

Kathy Hilton asks, “Is that your dog?” 

“That’s my son,” Amanda replies. 

Then Kathy says, “Your do…Your d…Your son!” Oh, Kathy Hilton. Never change. 

I have so many feelings about all of this, and I’m not sure which are the right ones. If Amanda really was that upset, she did not have to go to the dinner. Boz opted out because she just had her eggs retrieved on her IVF journey that I will have to talk about someday, but that day is not today. But Amanda chose to be there because she wanted to film and, I think, she wanted to bring it up on camera. Also, she’s using it here as a sort of trump card. Now that she’s dropped this news, they can’t confront her, which is what she’s being paid to do by attending this dinner. The point is for Dorit to challenge her about it and for Amanda to talk about it. But mentioning the anniversary of the death, she’s not only declaring that she doesn’t want to talk about it, but she’s also ruining what the show is supposed to be about. She’s declaring victory and rewriting the rules at the same time. 

Dorit is, of course, taken aback and says that they can revisit this conversation some other time, but then she barges right ahead, like a bumper car on the fritz, and asks her the question again without asking if she even wants to keep talking. Amanda is wrong about a lot of things and I question her motive, but Dorit should have dropped it right there. After some limp back and forth, Amanda gets up from the table and says she needs to go home and cry with her family. I mean, yeah. What are you even doing here in the first place, lady? 

As Amanda waits by the front door (not for an Uber or anything, because she drove), the gals convince Dorit to come and apologize. She is sincere and kind, trying to wipe the tears from Amanda’s eyes. Amanda asks her not to touch her, and Dorit says it was just a kind gesture. What is this? An awful-off? Are they just there trying to outdo each other right on Rachel’s doorstep? Amanda says that when she told Dorit about her son, it should have ended right there. “I told you my kid died and you kept going,” she says. She’s not wrong, but also, is she right? Amanda walks out to her Porsche in the driveway, with the top still down, and she pulls out from Rachel’s driveway and cruises down the straight boulevards of Beverly Hills. She feels the air moving through her hair, drying her wet face, rinsing all the stars in the sky of their powder until they’re perfect little glowing orbs. All she can feel is loss, but as she thinks she’s pulling away vindicated, she also feels a little bit like she won.