What better way to celebrate Suicide Prevention Week — which began yesterday — than to open the new season of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” with a suicide reunion show?
Tonight, immediately before the season premiere, the ladies will reunite on-air for the first time since the suicide of Russell Armstrong, late real husband of the fake-looking “Real Housewife” Taylor.
The only Housewife missing from tonight’s reunion gang bang-up, however, is the widow herself. Talk about restraint and good taste!
I say bravo to Bravo for figuring out how to integrate a genuine human tragedy into a national holiday! All that’s missing are the white sales.
While Bravo hasn’t sent out the reunion special for review, it did send out a version of the premiere episode, which was filmed before Armstrong’s suicide, a death that has been attributed in the media to the pressures of life under the microscope of “Housewife” TV.
Well, that or a reported secret gay life that was about to be exposed, what with Armstrong’s new-found fame and all.
Tonight’s season opener has been re-edited since the advance screeners were sent out to the press before the suicide. And Bravo is not saying what was cut.
But, since you will not get to see what the press has seen, I thought you might like to know just what the producers decided to edit out.
The show begins with Taylor and a friend visiting the Trashy Lingerie shop in Beverly Hills because, Taylor says, “We are talking about increasing our intimacy.” Huh? Since when does a couple get more intimate with one another by announcing it in front of millions?
No matter, because it gives Taylor a chance to try on said trashy lingerie for the cameras, perhaps fulfilling a longtime fantasy to become a giant-lipped pin-up.
What the crew was actually filming, however, was not a pin-up but a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown — and it’s tough to watch.
Later, at a dinner party hosted at the incredibly tacky home of Adrienne Maloof and her husband, the relentlessly annoying plastic surgeon, “Housewife” Lisa’s tactless husband Ken tells Taylor — who admits she and Russell are in marriage counseling — “I would feel weak if I had to see a therapist to work on my marriage.”
Ken says this while he and his creepy dog sit at the dinner table and drink from the same wineglass.
It’s enough to send Taylor over the edge, and she runs to the bathroom crying, “[He’s] carrying a dog around Beverly Hills — in clothes! And my husband’s in therapy and that’s weak?”
Lisa and Ken leave in a huff, and everyone remains upset.
In short, the unedited episode revolved around the deteriorating marriage of Taylor and Russell.
Watching it knowing that the man committed suicide shortly thereafter begs the question, not just of how far people will go to gain fame and unwarranted attention — but how low Bravo will sink to show it.