The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap: Mo Better Blues

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
Hemlines and Headlines
Season 14 Episode 14
Editor’s Rating ★★
Previous Next
Previous Episode
Next Episode

This week, on our favorite television program, Rich Women Doing Things, the rich women did things. They experienced the universal right of passage: watching your son walk in his first semi-professional runway show on a hotel rooftop with a pool even though the fashion show is not swimwear. They waited and waited for their mothers to arrive for said fashion show but were thwarted thanks to some pesky computer outage at the airlines. Can’t the rich women afford private? They all sat and wondered, but never allowed, just what a “circular fashion house” is and whether it is like casting a hex.

Yes, most of what they did surrounded Sutton’s first fashion show for Sutton Brands. Oh, that, and they talked lots of shit about Kyle and Mauricio after the photos of him making out with another lady leaked. This first comes up when Kyle and Kathy go to get mammograms in their mother’s honor and find out (phew) that nothing is wrong with either of them. I take that back. There is plenty wrong with both of them, most of it due to their mother, but none of the things wrong with them are currently their breasts. From their convo, we learn that Kyle saw the photos with everyone else when they were on TMZ. 

Kyle also seems to like my theory that it wasn’t Mo who called the paps, but rather his new lady lover who showed up in Mykonos in the skimpiest outfit allowed by the Greek authorities. Kathy says there is a way to find out who leaked those pictures and says it would just take a couple of calls. Kyle tells her she doesn’t want to know, but we have enquiring minds, and enquiring minds want to know. You know Kathy has sources at all the tabloids, and she just needs to give them one crappy story about Paris’s baby spitting up on a private plane or some shit and we’ll have all the info we need. There is a little part of me that wants to believe Lisa Vanderpump set this all up as some elaborate form of revenge, which I wouldn’t put past her, but if she did, you know the pics would have been on RadarOnline.

The pictures put Kyle in an awkward position, and she says she wanted to text “Maurice,” as Kathy and Kim still hilariously insist on calling him, but then realizes it’s none of her business. In some respects, she’s right, and in some respects, she is not. Yes, he is a grown man who is allowed to date other women, and she doesn’t have a say in that. But not only are they still married, they haven’t even decided they’re getting divorced yet. Most couples need to DTR, define the relationship, but these two need to DTB, define the breakup, but they also need to SOGOTP, shit or get off the pot. If Mo wants to make out with girls in airports, whether or not the tabloids are watching, then someone needs to give the world’s slowest moving divorce a Red Bull and vodka so that it really starts moving. 

All of the other women are agog and aghast at the photos, but mostly they think that Kyle really needs to move on and start living her life like Mauricio is living his. They think she’s foolish for waiting for this pipe dream of him coming home. Maybe the symbolic gesture of her deleting “wife” from her Insta bio is enough to start the little snowball rolling that will eventually become an avalanche. Whatever it is, it seems the only steps either of them are willing to take are passive aggressive ones. The tabloids think Kyle retaliated by immediately going to one of Morgan Wade’s concerts and being photographed in the wings. Kyle says the gossip rags say she did this to make Mauricio jealous. “But the joke of it is, he doesn’t get jealous anyway,” Kyle confesses. Yeah, of course he doesn’t because, and we need to shout this from the fashion show rooftops, he has moved on!! Does Mo need to do his best Ken Todd impersonation and shout “Good-bye, Kyle!” at her so that she gets it?

In this episode, we also get Erika Jayne’s big house reveal, and all the décor looks …  great. It seems like lots of ornate wallpapers with neutral-hued furniture. It definitely looks more put together and Xx$pensive, and the flair is all Erika Jayne, down to the mural-size portrait of her hanging in her cabana. (Note to self: Get giant nude photos for my cabana, to the horror of most of the neighbors and all of my visitors.) The important thing seems to be a sense of renewal for Erika Jayne, who seems not only to be in better spirits these days, but I have never seen her look better than when she was sipping champagne with her mother in the cabana.

I also love the interlude between Garcelle and Dorit, where they finally have a meal together, and there is, shockingly, nothing Dorit has to apologize for. I love that they are both honest about their allies on the show. Dorit has to cop that Kyle needs to move on with her life, and Garcelle has the even bigger task of trying to explain Sutton. I almost choked on my Bolognese when Garcelle asked her point blank, “What is your beef with Sutton?” Sutton tells Dorit she was being a bitch at Caviar Kaspia, but Dorit gets Garcelle to admit that Sutton’s jab about Dorit’s wallet was both mean and cruel. It’s nice to see these two developing a bond and being very candid with each other, not sticking to their sides, and trying to really move some of these conflicts along to a long-overdue resolution. 

Finally, we get to the fashion show, and Jennifer Tilly makes fun of her assignment to walk in the show. JT says something along the lines of, “Sutton doesn’t know I’m a celebrity. I’ve been asked to walk before. But usually, I just show up 15 minutes before, and they slot me in and tell me where to stand.” This time around, she has to show up for rehearsal, learn how to saunter around a pool, and actually do a bit of work. Don’t ask too much from the celebrities, Sutton! They’re too busy sitting at home counting their Simpsons money to bother to work.

The fashion show itself seemed, I don’t know, fine. None of the garments seemed to cohere in any meaningful way. It wasn’t a collection so much as just a bunch of clothes on a bunch of models. I’m still not sure just how circular this fashion is, how and why it is green, or just when and where she intends to sell these clothes. Even more dreadful than a fashion show with no fashions is a fashion show with no direction whatsoever.

The real star of the runway, however, was not the fashions, it was our wacky aunt Kathy Hilton. She showed up to the show and talked about how she injured her leg in, I don’t know, some kind of mysterious box fan incident or something. You can never really tell with Kathy. Then she decides that Dorit, who is a fashion designer, should be narrating and announcing the show so she goes backstage to tell Sutton that her mortal enemy should have an elevated role in the proceedings. Sorry, but even if Oprah Winfrey herself was in the audience, you don’t go from attendee to emcee at the drop of a circular fashion potentially green but unclear hat. 

After Kathy is laughed out of the backstage, she tries to return to her seat and shakes Erika’s mother’s hand at the end of the runway when the show begins, and the first model smiles and pushes Kathy out of the way like she’s standing at the top of the escalator at the airport. Everyone is cringing and telling Kathy to sit down, and eventually she limps to her seat and lets the two dozen models walk in their two dozen non-coordinated looks. 

I don’t want to say this was planned necessarily, because I don’t think that Kathy is that skilled of a practitioner of the reality television arts and sciences. But I think she knew what she was doing. Right? We have seen her tell a chef how he should grill shrimp, so maybe she would be so bold as to tell Sutton how to run her fashion show right in the middle of it. But the way she deliberately took her time and hovered over Erika’s mother as if she was waiting for the show to start seemed, I don’t know, like your favorite Beastie Boys song. No, not “Intergallatic,” which is Angie K’s favorite Beastie Boys song. I meant like “Sabotage.” 

But as Kathy finally gets her flat ass in her seat, as Jaid rounds the corner and approaches the audience with a stare of determination, and as Jennifer Tilly and the rest of the models manage to navigate their way around the random swimming pool, Sutton comes out with a microphone and she asks for her daughter and her mother to be proud of her, for the models and the clothes to thank her, for the women to leave her alone and let her make fun of their finances, for the moon and the stars to keep shining down on her, for the universe to keep expanding, micrometers at a time, our molecules being pulled apart by forces beyond our control. She asked all of us to pay attention to her show, and we did, not because we wanted to, but because Kathy tried to destroy it.