lunastartron

Erika isn’t all that smart from my perspective, which is why she defaults to thuggish outbursts when confronted with even mild pushback. She supplied ample fodder in the first episode of this season alone to any authorities who end up critically reviewing her material possessions and the narrative inconsistencies vis-a-vis her abrupt filing a mere month or so after the scenes that just aired.

Mileage varies but Camille stands up for herself very robustly in confrontations with the other women if the past couple of seasons are any indication. She practically had Rinna running away from her at the Umansky fundraiser last year and held her own fine against Rinna, Teddi, and Kyle at the season nine finale party. She only backs off when her foundational manners and politeness compel her to extend (more than) fair consideration to the cast mates she finds the least offensive (ie desisting at the latter event when Denise interjected). All my subjective opinion.

Rinna and others posted on social media about filming around October 4; production had likely begun a week or two prior. Erika filed for divorce in November, which highlights how jarringly quick the turnaround was. Erika won’t be taken down this season by virtue of the fact that those in the cast shoring her up appear to outnumber those directing any skepticism her way. But that’s not to say legal consequences in the future are impossible; the case against the Giudices took several years to build, after all. ETA: If production had really wanted to lean in to an Erika pile-on, it would have been a rather simple measure to bring back Camille mid-season. She would have called bullshit on the spin and eaten Erika UP had she attempted to bully her the way she evidently does to Sutton.

As a fellow POC, I found the heat that Tiffany brought up to and at the reunion to be inconsistent and disingenuous. Brandi explicitly positioned Asian characteristics as a point of caricature and ridicule then proceeded to advance a mythology of self-victimization for months afterward. Aside from her exasperation with the latter component amid Brandi’s teary complaints about discomfort with expressing her true self, Tiffany shockingly minimized and soft-peddled that disturbing record to to a large extent. Particularly confounding was the pre-cast trip tete-a-tete during which she directed D’andra to apologize to Brandi for issuing a comment on the subject to the press, a move that did little except to bolster the poor-me-I’m-the-wronged-party-here sophistry from Brandi. Her contribution at the reunion that Brandi never intended to hurt anyone with the video and simply “made a mistake” was frankly kind of creepy in contrast the the comparative ire she reserved for Kameron, her dispute with whom originated when she continued to push the chicken feet after multiple demurrals (if intent to hurt anyone is the barometer here, politely declining food hardly meets that threshold). I also don’t think that it can be argued that Brandi differentiated herself by growing and/or demonstrating grace ... because Brandi did exactly the opposite with her initial response on social media (doubling down, then literally contending that she was a “victim” of Kameron in the aftermath of the video’s re-emergence) and the multiple attempts (that ever really abated) to portray herself as the most aggrieved person involved (efforts that were aided by Tiffany herself when the disagreement arose about the article quoting D’andra). The incongruity is pretty emphatic in my view. All my subjective perspective.

Because Kameron’s articulation on WWHL was ambiguous - she maintains that she was drawing an analogy between Tiffany’s domineering disposition and that of her season four co-stars when they either directed her not to attend/leave the sex show in Thailand (LeeAnne) or insisted that she participate in the group outing (everyone else). She referred to the “girls,” which is a term that she and the cast at large commonly apply to the talent.

I disagree with the overall premise here both abstractly and as a matter of historical evidence but especially far as this show is concerned. For one, there was plenty of documentary context - specifically, that Brandi repeatedly issued pejorative and offensive remarks deliberately calibrated to target, single out, and embarrass Joyce by virtue of her ethnic and cultural features. If that’s not “real racism,” I’m not sure what is. As such, I personally feel one hundred percent comfortable characterizing Brandi both as racist (adjective) and as a racist (noun); the latter term, after all, is one derived from patterns of conduct and behavior. With respect to Lisa (of whom I’m generally a fan), Yolanda, and Carlton, all concertedly strived to minimize and dismiss Joyce’s very reasonable and accurate articulation of Brandi’s actions/speech because of the sadly prevalent principle that it’s somehow a more egregious transgression for a person of color to call out bigotry than it is for a person of color to actually experience bigotry. That’s textbook institutional/casual racism. Because racism has many incarnations - sometimes it’s mouth-frothing, sometimes it’s insidious, sometimes it’s even nuanced and/or operates in contradiction to other aspects of a person’s character. For instance, Brandi clearly had no discomfort marrying a man of Latin/Hispanic descent yet her hostility toward Joyce manifested in a distinctly anti-Latin and racially charged way. Likewise, Carlton understood bigotry when it was directed at her religion but the same concept shot straight over her head as she shouted over Joyce’s objections to Brandi’s commentary. All too often, the burden is placed on minorities like Joyce to “rise above” (to borrow a popular phrase from the collective discourse), educate, enlighten, and otherwise respond to the various iterations of bigotry with politeness. From my vantage, this is baldly unreasonable and does little but saddle people of color with an unfair burden of expectation while mitigating (and thus often perpetuating) the racist behavior to which they were objecting in the first place. Bigotry should be called by its name and, if it were more often, then perhaps, say, Kyle would be able to simply express her disgruntlement with Carlton’s nastiness rather than heinously leveraging her faith for a vulgar punchline. All my subjective opinion.

Your points about Lisa’s behavior during season four are accurate but Eileen had discussed the extramarital origins of her relationship with Vince the year prior at relatively substantial length on camera, way before TheAffairgate. Footage was memorialized on the Bravo website and OnDemand streaming thanks to Eileen and Eileen alone. Let’s not forget the dinner at chez Foster when Brandi slurred out “speak English!” and “we’re not in Miami!” at Joyce as well as called her “Hoysay.” Honestly, the treatment to which she was subjected convinced me that majority of the cast ranges from casually/institutionally to rabidly racist. Apart from Brandi’s overt ethnically charged hostility, you had Lisa and Carlton protesting “you can’t call people racist” even when they demonstrate a transparent pattern of racist conduct while Kyle and Kim, although superficially friendly, offered effectively no support or defense against the onslaught of Glanville anti-Latin animus. Kyle was openly and aggressively bigoted herself during season four toward Carlton. Giggling about Carlton’s religion and weaponizing her faith as a means to ridicule and caricaturize (refer to the “witchy poo” epithet at the reunion) is pretty commensurate with Brandi’s conduct earlier that year toward Joyce. Carlton and Yolanda had ample motivation to prop up Brandi’s fabrications and neither would do it despite Brandi insisting that they had directly witnessed Lisa’s villainy. Carlton was so close to Brandi that they were literally making out and showing up to events (i.e. Kim’s party) intoxicated together so her refutation of the tabloid narrative totally undermines its credibility.

Looks like another poster beat me to it with the links but that’s definitely Julianne. Rinna even posted a video clip on Instagram of the two of them at dinner with Julianne’s husband/partner.

Just as an FYI: the Julianne Phillips rumor has been incontrovertibly debunked in recent weeks by none other than Julianne herself. She posted in defense of Rinna on IG and I also caught a Snapchat or other social media video clip that had been shared on Twitter; evidently the footage featured Rinna and JP together.

I’d hazard a guess that the title and quote from which it derives likely have more to do with Camille’s “treachery” in characterizing Dorit accurately and declining to join the LVP pile-on.

Most of the posts that you describe (particularly a comprehensive overview in one of the earlier episode threads) have noted - based upon what I’ve seen - that Lisa has staunchly defended and robustly stood up for Kyle *when they’ve been on good terms* but that Kyle has never reciprocated irrespective of the state of their friendship. Whether superficially close friends or not, Kyle has consistently disparaged and taunted Lisa to and in front of their coworkers (see her poisonous “Maybe Lisa preys on weak people” suggestions to Taylor back in season two as well as her “you’re just jelly” jabs during the same time frame). Off the top of my head, I can recall Lisa declaring to Camille during the season one reunion (to paraphrase) that “Kyle is not a bully and I won’t stand to hear her called that.” In Amsterdam, she insisted to Kim that Kyle had in fact always defended her. She shut down Eden and Brandi at different points on the same subject. I honestly can’t recall an occasion when Kyle ever pushed back aggressively against pejorative commentary about Lisa. Even during season six when she declined to go all-in for the pile-on, she positioned herself as a domestic violence victim to Lisa’s abuser. None of which means that Lisa hasn’t sunk to low blows because her behavior during seasons three and four toward Kyle and Mauricio was absolutely petty and vengeful. But that’s a distinct failing from the question of whether she’s gone to the mat for Kyle repeatedly and vocally. Kyle, on the other hand, has been casting Lisa as a predator from nearly the beginning of the show’s trajectory. Viewers watched her devolve from that duplicity to the bizarre histrionics in New York last season when she shrieked and cried in the hotel lobby because Lisa wasn’t attacking Dorit to a degree Kyle deemed adequate. Also, I have no idea what to think about Lisa’s varying reactions when accused because I don’t think she’s perfect and she has certainly appeared to hedge when caught in pot-stirring but both Yolanda and Carlton explicitly contradicted Brandi’s account of the tabloid incident - Carlton at length despite her friendship with Brandi.

Michaele traded up, all things considered - she is now Michaele Schon, wed to the guitarist for Journey, with whom she had a long-term romantic relationship prior to marrying Tareq.

And that’s what the anger of Rinna and Co is all about from my perspective: they’re seething because Bravo demonstrably values Lisa to the extent that they permitted her to film independently of the cast at large for months, a concession unprecedented in the history of the franchise. The latitude that the network extended LVP this year in effectively dictating the nature of her own participation is as irrefutable of an indication (in my subjective opinion) of how much Bravo sees LVP as indispensable to RHOBH as the year-long delay on filming RHONJ season seven to accommodate Teresa’s incarceration. “[Andy] said, 'You know, I think we should've given you a year off when you asked for it,’” she shares. “He said, 'I don't think you were in a mental state where you were really prepared to deal with it,' it was very emotional … 'With hindsight, we probably should've given you the year off.’” https://www.etonline.com/lisa-vanderpump-wishes-she-had-taken-a-year-off-from-rhobh-exclusive-118906

Reports circulated during production that she continues to film on her own (showcasing charity pursuits and whatnot) as well as potentially some scenes with Denise and Camille after she ejects Kyle from Villa Rosa.

I have mixed feelings about Lisa in general - oddly enough, I find her behavior on Vanderpump Rules this season way more monstrous than anything she’s ever done among the housewives, largely because she’s been transparently stoking pile-on mentalities you toward the youngest member of the cast, exploiting his mental health issues, and humiliating old friends with addiction instabilities on national tv all while adopting a mantle of faux feminism to justify doing so. But she does have a relatively long-standing and close friendship with Joyce de Ohoeven of season four. Joyce, who was always headstrong from my perspective, has penned multiple defenses of LVP on social media and shared that she always shows up to support her undertakings and events. They both hang out with Mohammed. I also don’t think the lack of footage featuring friendships beyond the narrative scope of the show is unique to Lisa. For instance, I can’t recall Erika ever filming with a friend of any gender beyond her employees.