Originally published in print February 2021.
The only episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (or of anywhere else) that I’ve ever seen is the director’s cut of season one episode nine. As much as I love it, I have no desire to watch anything else in the series: it’s a perfectly satisfying experience all on its own. The only reason I’d watch another episode is if I knew that it too involved the wives dipping their toes into the supernatural. Season one episode nine, ‘The Dinner Party From Hell’, is the episode where the wives dine with a woman who believes that she can communicate with the dead.
With discussions as relatable as “how soon after your friend is murdered is it appropriate to pose for Playboy?” and “is it impolite to ask someone at a dinner party to do their job for free when they’re off the clock?” (even if their job is speaking with the dead), the episode starts incredibly well. This is what I assume happens in every episode: proof that being rich makes you completely inscrutable to normal people. But the introduction of ghosts, into what would have been an explosive row even without them, is just genius. I haven’t watched the episode that deals with the argument they’re referencing, and since they aren’t desperately trying to exorcise Lisa Vanderpump in it I will probably never watch it. Maybe Kyle Richards really did slight her frenemy and purposely make her feel that she wasn’t wanted, or maybe Camille Grammar was pulling the whole thing out of thin air. Honestly, I think having that mystery as the backdrop for the ghost whisperer choosing violence fits the tone of the episode perfectly. Congratulations to whatever hardworking producer thought the wives should get to meet the medium who inspired the TV show Medium.
Best of all, they got the medium drunk, and introduced her to people she believed to be taking advantage of her friend, a deadly combination for this woman. The duality of a person who can talk to those who have passed on and also vapes is dizzying enough. To then watch her say to the woman who she believes to have insulted her friend that the spirit realm informed her that said woman’s husband will never emotionally fulfil her and that, once the kids move out, they’ll have nothing in common is honestly astonishing. How do you rebuff something like that? If you don’t have a direct line to the divine, you can’t fact-check. Your only proof is ever having met your husband and having seen the two of you together. Watching these two verbally spar renders every other episode of this show obsolete to me. If Kyle can go toe-to-toe with a woman who can momentarily raise the dead, why would I bother watching her take on those whose only superpower is wealth?
The more I watch this episode, the more I wish we lived in a universe where it had impacted the plethora of ghost hunting shows we have available. Imagining the impact the show could have had fills me with glee: Shane Madej of Buzzfeed Unsolved fame proclaiming that he doesn’t believe in ghosts, with Ryan Bergara vaping and archly stating that “Lucifer has many faces” in response. Or the Finding Bigfoot team holding enormous cocktails, cursing out a ‘squatch witness whose image of Bigfoot didn’t match their own. Using a Ouija board not to gather evidence over whether ghosts exist, but to call out dead relatives for saying that your new show Ghost Hunters was going to crash and burn. That version of reality holds a special place in my heart. In an alternate reality, I’ve seen every episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, because Kris Jenner believes the show’s existence is due to a pact she made with the devil.
The premise of ‘The Dinner Party From Hell’ is simply excellent for reality TV and fiction alike. In a world in which some people, for reasons unknown, can contact the underworld, why wouldn’t they use those contacts for petty drama? Imagine, if you will, a world in which some people have extraordinary abilities, and they use them while saying things like: “I can tell you when she will die and what will happen to her family. I love that about me!” Why should the confirmed existence of supernatural elements force a show to be about the nature of good and evil and saving the world against the forces of darkness? Is it not enough to watch a fairy and a demon televise their wedding, only to divorce 72 days later?
I’m not a massive fan of the ‘chosen one’ trope. I like things a little messier than that. The idea that someone who can see beyond this mortal world would use the knowledge gleaned from her phone calls to the undiscovered country to say that her enemy’s husband “likes his nannies”, when their family doesn’t employ any nannies, is deeply pleasing to me. Rich bored housewives wouldn’t be any better with extrasensory perception or superpowers, they’d still be just as embarrassing and petty, except that they’d force ghosts to get in on the action with us. There’s something real about that. And, as I’ve already said, incredibly entertaining.
