Well, we all knew it was coming: the day when everyone turned against Lisa Vanderpump, the queen of all Real Housewives and a mediocre dancer with stars. What we didn’t know is that when that day finally came just how incredibly stupid it would be. Seriously, has no one thought out this strategy at all? It’s like Tonya Harding and her crew (allegedly) trying to kidnap Nancy Kerrigan.

Of course this all happened on vacation, because things on the Real Housewives always really happen on vacations. I don’t know that they really should have been going on this vacation in the first place. The pretense for this trip was for Joyce, the brown dust in the bottom of a bag of Cocoa Puffs, to show everyone Puerto Rico, the place where she grew up. Well, ostensibly she did not grow up at the beach resort where she took them all, but you get the idea. Well, Joyce’s father died right before everyone was supposed to leave and while there was some talk of postponing, Joyce eventually decided that “this is what her father would want.”

Now, I didn’t know Joyce’s father (shit, I don’t even really know Joyce, an iPhone dating app for gay men that always crashes), but when I die and one of my friends/lovers/children/relatives wants to go party the next day and says this is “what I would want,” know that they are wrong. I want them sad and miserable and barely able to leave the house for at least a month — at least. A small and easily surmountable dependance on prescription pain killers wouldn’t hurt either. I’m glad we’ve established that.

While we’re on the subject of pills, we have to talk about Kim Richards. Because Kim played a Mexican rancher’s daughter on one episode of TJ Hooker back in ‘87, she thinks that she can speak Spanish. She speaks Spanish about as well as the average high school sophomore who thinks they are going to be authentic and orders huevos rancheros with the correct accents at their local Denny’s. Kim also tried to climb into her luggage, a move we have not seen since the Widow Armstrong had a meltdown at St. Camille Grammer’s Aspen estate in season two. All I have to say is that I am glad my beloved Kim Richards (who looked fetching in her white boob hole dress at dinner) is now the comic relief instead of the tragic anti-hero.

So, everyone goes to Puerto Rico and Yolanda Bananas Foster totally wins the body contest. Yes, Brandi looks slamming, but her ass is a little skinny for my taste. Also YBF is pushing 50 and she still looks that fucking good. Get me one of those fucking Master Cleanses!

Speaking of those two, before they’ve even gone on the trip they’ve decided that they have some vague beef with Lisa. It seems that Brandi is upset (or sad or jealous) that Lisa is hanging out with Kyle more than she is with Brandi? Or is she upset that Lisa is manipulating and conniving everyone? Or is she mad that Lisa mothers her too much? And what is YBF’s skin in the game? Usually sane and level-headed, she is just as lacking for a clear motivation. This is an assassination attempt with absolutely no ideology behind it.

First there is the confrontation on the beach. Brandi is always saying that Lisa gets other people to do her dirty work, so why is Yolanda the one to start things with Lisa instead of Brandi? In front of everyone, the two accuse Lisa of not being straight with Kyle and trying to pick fights and Brandi says that Lisa doesn’t call her anymore and Lisa has a very reasonable excuse, she has been busy.

Actually, I don’t think she even gave an excuse, but why should she have to? Brandi isn’t accusing her of anything concrete other than not calling her and that is supposed to be some sort of indictment of — what exactly? I don’t know. Lisa gets upset and storms off and goes and sits on her own.

Brandi is accusing Lisa of playing some sort of chess game, but when her plan of attack doesn’t work, Brandi does something. “I didn’t want to have to say this, but…” You ever notice how when public opinion isn’t swaying Brandi’s way she suddenly has some sort of secret about someone that she doesn’t want to share but then has to get off her chest? It happened with Adrienne and now it’s happening to Lisa. And who is the one playing chess?

Anyway, Brandi tells everyone that before they left for Palm Springs, Brandi had the tabloids that mentioned that Kyle’s husband Mmm was cheating on her and Lisa told Brandi to bring them and then Brandi was like “No,” so Lisa snuck them into her bag but then Brandi took them out. Those magazines did not come up that weekend. What did come up was Brandi getting absolutely hammered, making racists jokes, and behaving like a jerk to Joyce, a rainbow-colored umbrella with one broken prong. And guess what, after that weekend, Lisa defended Brandi. So much for loyalty.

Immediately everyone believes Brandi and Kyle confronts Lisa and Ken about it and then she tells Mmm, who believes Brandi as well and it becomes a huge incident. What I don’t understand is, what does anyone imagine Lisa’s motivation to be? How is she going to look any better or worse on TV because Kyle’s husband’s supposed affair was brought up because there were some magazines? Maybe she wanted Brandi to bring them so she could say on camera that she doesn’t think they are true and try to lay the rumors to rest? And why does everyone instinctively believe Brandi over Lisa when Lisa denies it. Brandi is clearly the one with an agenda — to turn everyone against Lisa — where Lisa hasn’t any clear motivation at all other than the vague “masterminding” she’s accused of.

Yes, Lisa’s defense is a little weak-willed, but she seems like she’d rather forget it and work through it than engage in a she said/she said battle which she knows will lead nowhere. I will say that the ladies are right when they accuse her of letting others fighting her battles because she lets Ken, a walking Benny Hill sketch, go on the defensive for her, telling everyone how stupid this fight is. Let’s face it, he’s right. This fight is idiotic. It’s about whether or not Lisa told Brandi to take tabloids with her on a desert vacation. I know that if one of the boys in my Fire Island beach house does not bring at least People and Us Weekly there is going to be a huge fight, so I don’t know about these bitches that fight about someone wanting to bring tabloids.

When on the bus to go to dinner, Lisa asks Brandi what this fight is all about, and she says, “Ask Schaena.” If you YouTube “passive aggression” there is a clip of Brandi doing that. Once again Lisa doesn’t know how to defend herself because she doesn’t know what she is accused of. Brandi has to elaborate and says that Lisa is really close with her. Lisa says that Schaenna (or whatever combination of letters will make this girl’s name come true) is good friends with her daughter and works for her (both at her restaurant and on the subsequent “reality” show). Brandi is not satisfied and continues to pout inexplicably.

This is the problem with all of these accusations. Lisa explains them away with very reasonable and logical excuses and they don’t satisfy anyone because — I don’t know, actually. Because they all want to believe the worst in Lisa? Because they feed off the churning bile and adrenaline these altercations create? Because they’re all so flawed and faulty that they can’t possibly believe that there is anyone out there without layers and layers of deviousness behind every move?

It happens again at dinner. Kyle asks Brandi and Lisa what is going on with the tabloids. Brandi says Lisa told her to bring them, which, again, I don’t understand how that is some sort of awful offense. Lisa says she didn’t even see them until after the trip. Kyle says she wants to figure out the truth. OK, here is the truth: one of them is lying. Either Brandi is lying about Lisa or Lisa is lying about not seeing them. Those are the only two options. Somehow it goes from a discussion of who is right and who is wrong to Lisa having to defend something she might not have even done because everyone has already decided she was wrong.

She shouldn’t have to do that. There should be no fighting. Ken should not be yelling at Kim and her boob hole. Also, Kim needs to shut up about Lisa and Ken missing her daughter’s graduation because she missed their daughter’s wedding because she was moving, but when “moving” meant crawling into the bottom of a bottle of pills and not coming out for three Tuesdays. I love Kim, but if anyone should understand forgiving transgressions, it’s her.

What needs to happen is that Kyle needs to make a choice: Brandi or Lisa. Only one of them can be right. It’s not Lisa who is trying to come out blameless here and is playing everyone, it’s Kyle! Kyle has such the awful child star desire to make everyone love her that she can’t possibly take a side and piss someone off, god forbid. Kyle’s inaction is what is making for Lisa’s destruction.

Now, I seem real Hashtag Team Lisa, Hashtag Team Lisa through this whole thing, but I really don’t care. Yes, she might be the master manipulator they all make her out to be, but, still, her argument is the only one that makes sense. Now I’m not going to be all, “They’re jealous she has her own show. They’re doing this for airtime. They have to stir things up to be relevant.” I don’t know why these ladies do or don’t do anything. I mean they’re as mysterious as a lone shoe lodged into a snow bank on a Sunday morning. What I do know is that the simplest explanation is almost always the right one and the one with the simple explanation in this case is Lisa.

She was so upset that she and Ken went back to their room and she did two things on camera that she vowed never to do: smoked and cried. Lisa is reportedly a chain smoker and the one major manipulation of her image she has allowed is not puffing before a studio audience (and don’t be so quick to judge because Barack Hussein Obama and Laura Bush did the exact same thing).

Several people (including my squirrelfriend Greg Bennett) have pointed out that Lisa and Ken are like Frank and Claire Underwood from House of Cards, sharing that cigarette at the end of the night. But I don’t really think that’s apt. Those two are master schemers, the Mr. and Miss Machiavelli 2014 crown winners. I don’t think that’s Lisa and Ken are at all. I think they are rich people who enjoy fame and did this because they thought it was a lark and they want to massage their image as much as they next person, but mostly they just want to have a good time and get a little bit of public adoration. I don’t think they have some deep-seated shark blood soul that they have to satiate with the chum of fallen friends.

And when Ken went inside he left Lisa out on the patio she said, “I’ll be in a minute, darling.” The camera had gone, the lights were off, she only had the cold glow of the stars and the moon and the moon on the water and the stars in the sea. She lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, feeling that familiar pang deep in her chest that made her feel at home. She looked out on the ocean and how beautiful it was, how nice and placid and fun. Then she thought of the storms. They come some time, don’t they. It’s hurricane season every year and this very beach is battered by the thing it loves the most.

She took another drag and ran her hands across the railing, feeling the stiff wood beneath her hands that could rasp a splinter into her skin at any moment. She exhaled and watched the smoke dissipate, like it was becoming one with the light, like they were both floating off to that great source in the sky that creates everything. She would go to bed, she would wake up in the morning and this would be gone. But the sea would still be there, bright with sun this time, but still waiting for the thunderheads to roll in. Still waiting to transform into something else and then come back to this. That is what she had to look forward to, a list of storms named after different ladies roiling past her. She wasn’t worried about it. Like this island, she would survive. She would weather. She took one final drag and then dropped the cigarette off the balcony, watching as it disappeared into the darkness and then the small red explosion as it finally hit the ground, like a volcano eruption seen from very, very, very far away.