‘RHOBH’ Reunion: Why Garcelle Beauvais Dramatically Walked Off Set

Some journeys end in a blaze of flaming glory, but that’s rarely the case on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Bravo’s most pearl-clutching offering is one that knows a thing or two about explosive, you-won’t-believe-this headlines that hype up the most benign moments as though they’re horrific displays of TV brilliance. That’s actually what you’ll find on The Valley, but it’s a mistake any of us could make.

After three weeks of mind-numbing theories and devastated fans outraged at Bravo, Garcelle Beauvais just walked off the reunion stage for entirely unexciting, yet wildly predictable reasons. The queen bee of backseat producing has had enough after a reunion where her feet were held to the fire over repeating Twitter conspiracies that Dorit’s robbery was staged, but maybe her final straw was watching Kyle dance around her marital drama for the 80th time.

Look, we love and respect you Kyle—Kathy Hilton has resigned her allegedly homophobic ways to teach her daughters that it’s okay to be gay, too—but did this reunion need to be supersized? I think that segment could’ve been nipped in the bud.

Let’s not rush to the ending, though. Reunions, like life, are all about the journey.

Part 3 begins with a continued Dorit vs. Sutton tennis match, although it’s less of a match and more of target practice. Sutton does not own a racket and she has no hand-eye coordination. Dorit has whacked her in every which way, and it’s crazy to think, given it’s so easy to hit her back. I’d give some examples, but I don’t work for free.

The funniest moment of all is Dorit quoting Sutton’s Bravo TV dot com headline, “Sutton Stracke Has Her First Cocktail of the Day at 10 A.M.: ‘Then I’m Nicer.’”

The subhead of the article: “‘Why give 5 o’clock all the love?’ The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills rookie asked.”

Sutton does opposition research against herself, and that’s why she’s a star. Maybe if these ladies served her breakfast cocktails she wouldn’t feel the need to ask questions they perceive as “kicking women when they’re down.” What happened to women supporting women?

Sutton gets knocked all around at every reunion, somehow ending up in a spot where she’s telling Dorit and Erika she’ll do better while her strongest ally, Garcelle, gears up to clock out for good.

Less than a quarter of the way into Part 3, Garcelle hits Andy with the claim that she’s not answering any more questions and she’s pissed at “all of it.” Clearly, Garcelle mentally resigned at some point during Part 1, and she spends the rest of this reunion just biding time.

You can see her struggling to care at all through the “horny Housewives” segment, although her ears do perk up for the Tom Girardi segment. It’s just wild that Erika still won’t flat-out admit Tom is guilty, even after the courts convicted him, but kudos to her doubling down on delusion. There’s something so fascinating about Erika’s purview in life.

The last big reunion segment is the aforementioned Kyle one, where she once again mourns her old life while dodging the truth of the situation. But that’s kind of the truth, in and of itself. Kyle’s clearly not ready to sit on this couch and shout from the rooftops “I’m a lesbian!” (or bi!), nor would she ever want to admit Mauricio cheated on her and broke her trust.

The nice thing about having Kathy Hilton (aside from her cackling throughout Kyle’s “am I a lesbian?” segment) on the show—and previously Kim Richards—is they help contextualize Kyle’s actions, all reacting to their messed-up childhoods in different ways. Kyle would rather have the world see her as the perfect wife with the perfect life, even if she’s miserable on the inside.

After years on this merry-go-round, I’ve reached acceptance with where we’re at. It’s not like Kyle’s tacit answers aren’t very clear. You don’t have a talk with your daughters about your sexuality if all the rumors are false, and you don’t shut down talks that your husband cheated if he… simply didn’t. But this is Beverly Hills, the hunky dory home of passive perfection. You’ll never get a direct answer, so you ought to get good at reading between the lines.

I mean, that’s exactly the case with Garcelle’s departure, too. Having stuck out the entire reunion, she leaves right as Andy excitedly announces they’ll finally get a cast photo.

It’s an exit that seems to be much less about this reunion, instead triggered by a light-bulb moment that maybe she’s simply stayed on this platform longer than she ever needed to. It’s not dissimilar to Carole Radziwill crashing out at her final New York reunion, in many ways. Like Carole, it’s easy to take Garcelle’s side in almost all instances… yet, there’s one glaring issue.

As she complains backstage about how she was treated for saying Dorit’s robbery was staged, it kind of reveals the most endearing thing of all about Garcelle: She really is a Housewife, delusion and all. She’s existed above it all for so much of her run, but deep down, she has her own blind spots and character flaws. Claiming your coworker (or her estranged husband) set up a robbery of this caliber is not excusable behavior, but when you’re gassed up as the moral compass of the show for five years, sometimes it’s easy to forget you, too, can make a mistake.

It’s sad to see that moment be the straw that breaks Garcelle’s back, although I respect that she gives us something a lot more exciting than a classy exit could ever. The edit of the women taking the cast photo as ominous music looms is perfect fodder for those “Beverly Hills mean girls” fan edits.

With that, Garcelle’s Housewives journey has come to an end—and so has the (first) post-LVP era of the show. It’s been a shaky era, defined by some wondrous highs and some catastrophic lows, but nonetheless, RHOBH has consistently punched above its Season 8 and 9 lows.

Much of that is thanks to Garcelle, whose inquisitive nature (or “passive provocation,” as Dorit once put it). In many ways, Garcelle is a great Housewife—and if she’d only stayed for the cast photo, she’d be a real professional too, in the eyes of Dorit.

Hopefully, next season is an all-out bloodbath, but I’ll settle for some PG-13 action.