Remember that feeling of visiting your grandmother and running out of things to talk about, so you would just start asking her about things around her house? Her collection of vintage plates, the strange little knick-knacks that adorned her mantle, the assortment of dolls that—for some ungodly reason—sat atop the bed in the guest room, eyes following you as you moved about the area?
You love your grandma, but at a certain point, you’re just throwing out adjectives to propel the conversation forward? “Amazing,” “Incredible,” “Just gorgeous!”
Dorit Kemsley of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has never had this problem.
The multicultural wonder from Connecticut may speak with an untraceable accent, but the last thing you can call her is fake—at least when it comes to her love of useless crap from a goodie bag.
On Thursday’s episode of RHOBH, the cast gathered at Kyle Richards’ (fun)house of horrors for a fundraiser to benefit Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles by way of My Hand in Yours. My Hand in Yours is a company founded by Jamie Lee Curtis that employs small businesses to make collections of charitable gifts—everything from baseball caps to bath salts—and donates 100 percent of the proceeds to Children’s Hospital LA.
Naturally, Curtis attended the fundraiser alongside her Halloween Kills costar to peddle some of her wares. For every other Housewife, Curtis’ appearance was just another day inside the sparkling gates of Beverly Hills. But for Dorit Kemsley, it was one of the most exhilarating moments of her life thus far.
“Jamie Lee Curtis! Oh my god!” she exclaims in the confessional, pinching herself. How or why Dorit became such a Jamie Junkie is anyone’s guess, but it feels awfully relatable. Who among us, dear reader, wouldn’t have to compose themselves upon seeing the star of Freaky Friday, True Lies, and the trauma supercut video in person?
But for Dorit, the only thing that could be better than Jamie Lee Curtis showing up to lunch is Jamie Lee Curtis showing up to lunch with a bunch of useless tchotchkes. As they sit down to eat, Curtis begins her spiel, pulling increasingly random items out of a Mary Poppins goodie bag and sending Dorit on a manic frenzy of near-orgasmic adulation.
The 70 seconds that followed made up one of the greatest sequences in Housewives Her-story yet.
Jamie Lee Curtis pulls a gray tumbler cup with a plastic lid from her bag and shows it to the group like a YouTuber recording a haul video. Dorit, mystified, leans in. “It keeps things hot and cold?” Jamie confirms, “Hot and cold!” Dorit is inquiring about the majestic qualities of this tumbler with the vivacity of someone who just learned about thermal technology for the very first time. “Amazing,” she says with a look of contented astonishment as if Jamie Lee Curtis had just received the patent for this engineering moments before. For all of Dorit’s purported world travels, she’s never perused the drinkware section at a Hudson News?
But the tumbler was just the start of Dorit’s fantastical journey down the My Hand in Yours rabbit hole. Up next, Jamie Lee frames her face with a branded license plate cover, and Dorit practically has to stop herself from choking on the crudité she’s chewing. “Wooooah!” Dorit had no idea such a thing could exist—that’s what happens when you have a private driver. But a license plate cover may as well be a piece of dog shit when compared to the monumental piece that comes out of Jamie’s bag of tricks next.
With a familiar rattle, a whole entire wind chime emerges into the frame. Hit with memories of breezy mornings on the Connecticut ranch, Dorit can barely contain herself. “Jamie, let me just say, that is the chicest wind chime I have ever seen.”
It was here that I could no longer control my fit of laughter, nearly falling off of my couch and breaking my neck. A night in the ER would’ve been completely worth a CVS receipt-sized itemized bill had I been able to tell the nurse, “I’m here because Dorit Kemsley saw Jamie Lee Curtis hold up a piece of raggedy outdoor decor and said, in complete earnest, ‘Jamie, let me just say, that is the chicest wind chime I have ever seen.’”
At this point, Jamie Lee, Kyle Richards, and the rest of the cast are trying to hold back their laughter at the spectacle unfolding across the table. You’d think Curtis' husband Christopher Guest was lurking just out of frame, scripting the whole scene for his next mockumentary. “Jamie has found herself a new best friend in Dorit,” Kyle says. “She’s really going over the top with her love for these items.”
If those things weren’t enough, a dog leash with matching tags is about to send Dorit over the table, foaming at the mouth. “Stop. It. Right. Now.” At the mention of customization, Dorit throws her hands up in the air and starts to clap. Candles (“very chic”), baseball caps (“so chic!), and baby snugglies (“really very chic”) complete the assortment of gifts. She is nothing short of stupefied at the miscellany of hodgepodge trinkets she’ll be taking home today.
But how can you blame her? Just a few weeks earlier, in one of the glossy franchise’s darker moments, Kemsley was robbed at gunpoint while her two children slept across the hall. Having just had her jewelry, designer threads, and other valuables taken from her, it would seem that she’s learned to value life’s more simple, inexpensive pleasures.
“You can take all my things,” Dorit says in her tagline for this season, “but you won’t have taken a thing that matters.” Just don’t come for the wind chime, then there will be hell to pay.
