The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season finale aired this week and trying to find the right word for it is difficult, even for a writer like me whose specialty is reality TV. Between Erika Jayne’s comeback, dazzling in that outfit (it’s expensive to be meee-e-e-e-e-e-e!), Dorit making yet another appearance sans PK, and the most dazzling white party Kyle has ever thrown, it would appear things are getting back to normal in the 90210. But they’re really not.
Toward the end of the episode, viewers watched on as Kyle and Mauricio (and the rest of the cast, quite frankly) read the headlines about their separation. And while Mauricio’s focus was on who, in either of their camps, could’ve planted the story, Kyle was worried about the more important thing – her four daughters and how they would take the news.
Throughout the season, their looming separation was so obvious. But to Erika Jayne’s point, even she was oblivious to just how bad it was. It’s one of those things where when you watch it back, you can see the writing on the wall, but at the time, it kind of just looked like art.
If I can toot my own horn for a second, it appears my speculation that I made back in October was entirely correct. It became more and more true throughout the season, but in recent days, when news that Kyle and Morgan Wade have become extra affectionate, including at the reunion where Kyle was reportedly annihilated over speculations from the cast that she kept her separation from Mauricio and the true nature of her relationship with Morgan from cameras, I realized that perhaps all the years I’ve watched what many others refer to as “garbage” has given me a sort of sixth sense.
I was steadfast in my claim that Mauricio had been unfaithful first and that Kyle had turned to Morgan as a source of comfort, and maybe to try and make him a wee bit jealous. And based on Kyle’s remarks during the finale, that appeared to be true. When the producer asked her what specific event was leading to their separation, she said:
“There’s just some things that happened that I can’t recover from.”
Kyle has really pissed me off in recent seasons. But my heart ached for her hearing this. It was an absolute surrender. The look in her eyes made it clear that she had tolerated everything she possibly could in order to keep her family together, but that she had to take a stand over whatever it was that transpired most recently.
What made me ache the most was seeing her have to pick up the pieces in only the way a mother and wife can, even when that mother and wife has been scorned by her husband and father of her children. Mauricio got to sit there in the living room, cool as a cucumber, while Kyle’s shoulder became the resting place for the head of their youngest daughter, absolutely distraught by news of the separation.
It's poetic, almost, then, that in all of this, Kyle has also found her comfort in a woman. In the piece where I asserted my speculations, I wrote that it must’ve been assumed that this was some hot lesbo fling and that Mauricio was going to come to his senses seeing Kyle waltz around town with someone else, even if it was a woman. But instead, he doubled down on his doggish ways, partying shirtless in Aspen with a much younger Brazilian singer, Anitta, who was caught on camera twerking for him.
The speculations surrounding Kyle and Morgan’s relationship will likely continue. But there are a few people who don’t need to ask questions because we understand. We get it. Whatever it is was that Kyle once found in Mauricio - comfort, companionship, camaraderie, and perhaps looked for over and over more recently but wasn’t able to locate, she’s now finding in someone else. Not because she wants to but because she has to.
I think that as we get older, we realize that sometimes love doesn’t look the way we imagined it to. And love becomes less about a person or a gender or an absolute, and more about a feeling. More about the meeting of a need. And despite my personal issues with Kyle, it’s so obvious that she gave her everything to her family and to her kids. everything to her family and to her kids. And though Mauricio couldn’t be the one to give her what she needed in return, I’m just glad that she’s found someone who can, at least in the meantime.
