Last night was the series premiere of yet another of Bravo's lady-destroying enterprises, this one set in the formerly classy California neighborhood that is supposedly home to our glitteriest stars. Too bad nothing glittered last night.

I will say the one kind of notable thing about this version of the show is that some of these women really are very rich. Like, really rich. Like enormous mansion-dwelling, basketball team-owning, kept slaveboy-having rich. So good for them! I don't see too many foreclosures or bankruptcies in their futures, so that is a nice change of pace. That said, it's sort of confusing why any of them would want to be on the show in the first place. What do you ladies need from this show? Most of you have more money than Gandhi (he was very rich, yes?) and yet you need to do sixth-version reality shows to prop yourselves up? That is a shame. A dirty shame.

Anyway. How best to talk about inaugural episodes? Probably to just go character by character, dissecting the misery and unpleasantness bit by bit.

Vanderpump
 Ohhhh gosh, Vanderpump. She's a little like Joan Collins mixed with some struck-it-rich East Ender who can't help but buy all the crystal-draped ornaments and tiny yipping dogs she can get her hands on. She lives in a ridiculous Loire Valley chateau with her wispy-haired husband and drapes herself in various pink fabrics and blankets of hairspray. She's not exactly classless, but she's certainly not Brooke Astor. The best thing about Vanderpump (other than the as-yet-unseen Pandora) is that she has a kept boy named Cedric (or something). Cedric is a deer-eyed fellow with a mysterious accent whom she met while he was working as a doorman at a gay club she and her husband used to own in London. He became "part of the family", except the kind of "part of the family" that you move across on ocean to get away from only to have him follow you and stay at your house for a year plus and counting. But, o ho ho, Vanderpump doesn't really mind. She works out with the dashing, muscling, fretfully aging fellow, and they make sweet goo eyes at each other and Vanderpump's vander pumps red hot blood. It's a good arrangement, and Vanderpump's husband doesn't seem to mind. So long as Cedric is actually gay! (Don't worry, he is.) When Vandy and Cedric are done exercising, she chains him back up in his enormous gilded birdcage and she flits off to go do something else, like feed her dog fancy meals in bed or drink pink wine with her husband on their football field of a pool patio. Yes, it is a good arrangement.

Camille Grammer
 Camille Grammer is (was) the wife of Kelsey Grammer, hilarious comedian. She doesn't do much beyond that. Kelsey was on the show for a little bit last night, pretending that he figured it was Camille's time to "get a little attention", but really I think he was just plugging La Cages aux Folles (playing now at the Longacre Theater!). So Camille picked out some gay shirts for him and sent him on his way to New York to do his little show and she just sorta stood there and blinked. Honestly, did she do anything else? I don't remember. I think she might have done that lip/finger burble thing for a while. She maybe drank some wine. Oh she gave us a tour of her 17-acre hideaway estate and said, wistfully, "We had horses... once." So. Yeah. I guess her story will heat up once her marriage to America's greatest film star begins to crumble, but for now... Now she's just Camille, with her four nannies for her two kids, and her horse ghosts, calling to her out of the night.

Goof the Maloof
 The Maloof showed us her enormous mansion, that is basically the exact same thing as Vanderpump's and is right next door. The Maloof is a small creature with lots of strength, and she roams around her manor tackling teenage boys wherever she can. She spoke to us of her dynasty — casinos and dreadfully performing baskets-ball troupes — and we met her husband, an unpleasant man who predictably votes Republican (maybe he and Kelsey are best friends!) and is, of course, a plastic surgeon. Not like a curing cleft palates kind of plastic surgeon, like an injecting horse goop into rich ladies' faces plastic surgeon. So they're there in their (three in a row, all different!) big mansion, talking about things, and then Maloof decides she wanted to take her "friends" to Sacramento. Haha. First Prize is a week in Sacramento. Second prize is a week in Sacramento with tickets to a Kings game. Of course, because they would be taking a fancy private jet, all the girls agreed to go. Clearly no one in the world cares about the Sacramento Kings, but they were losing to the Lakers that night, so there was at least an LA connection. Zoom! Whoosh! The Maloof is rich. That was the whole point of that excursion, and the whole point of the Maloof. The worst Maloof thing was her little introductory title card thing, y'know where the ladies swing and lurch into a sexy pose. In hers, at the very end, the Maloof tried to smile and it was... highly unsuccessful. Sad thing, that.

Kyle Richards
 Kyle is one half of a sister duo and boy is she boring. She has a hoarse voice and horsey hair and likes to talk about movies she did a million years ago that no one remembers her being in. That she is the "sensible" one of the two sisters is somewhat distressing for the other sister (more on her in a second). Kyle lives in one of the show's "dumpier" houses, meaning it is not the size of Teterboro Airport. She has kids that she is really into and a husband who is, I think, supposed to be some sort of sex symbol and who sells houses for "upwards of $100M". Because, right, you know that busy market in 2010. That's a job you can do day in and day out. "Just workin' the ol' $100m house game. It's a living." So he basically doesn't actually have a job, which is too bad, because Kyle likes to spend money. Or so she said. Or so all of them say. Ugh. Isn't that a cute conversation topic? How much someone likes to go shopping. Gosh, I could talk about someone shopping for hours. It's just so interesting. "Oh, you like to buy things? Do go on..." What else happened with Kyle? Oh, she fights with her sister about being irresponsible with babies and money, which I can kinda feel her on. And she is scared of flying, which I can def. feel her on. She was in the original Halloween, which, duh, who wasn't. Totally feel being in the original Halloween. Otherwise Kyle seems vain and shallow and her two older daughters seem somewhat dreadful. The one girl's story about a Malibu sleepover was just so dynamically told, wasn't it?? "Like, sleepover party or whatever in like Malibu, and like, god, yeah, like, whatever," with a lazy toss of hair and that terrible teen drawl. Kids on these shows (especially the ones in California) are always so interesting! Where are you Pandora???? Beyond all that, there was one really annoying thing that Kyle did. She went to the Kings game in Sac-town, as a guest of the Kings owners, and yet kept whooping and cheering and clapping every time the Lakers scored in this obnoxiously showy way. Then she'd be all "Oops! I keep forgetting where I am! I just loooove the Lakers." Shut up, Kyle. No you don't. You just want to seem cool and sports-chicky and funny and Cameron Diazy. That was so obnoxious. I wish the Maloof had judo kicked her like a teenage boy.

Kim Richards
 Oh dear. This woman is a little loco nuts, isn't she? There was this amazing, tour-de-force opening scene with her where she first said: "My mom gave me some really great advice. Don't make your kids your whole life." Who says that to a person, let alone THEIR OWN CHILD? "Don't make my mistake, daughter. I shouldn't have spent so much time loving you." Not that parents SHOULD make their children their entire lives, no of course not, but why say it? If you have to say it, you have a problem. If you have to say it TO YOUR CHILD, you should be devoured by Camille's no-horses. Then, just after that awful bit, amazingly in the same scene, Kim did this incredible reenactment of going out with her niece Paris Hilton that was just the saddest, most glorious thing I've seen since the last sad-but-glorious thing on one of these shows. "It's funny, I went out with Paris and the photographers were like 'Kim! Kim!' And Paris was like 'Huh?' And I was like 'I was here first!' and Paris was like 'Wha?' And the photographers were like 'Kim is an icon!' and Paris was like 'I'm an icon!' and I was I like 'But I was an icon first!' and the photographers were like 'Kim! Kim!'." OK, I'm not really doing it justice. But it was so devastating. If the person you feel insecure about is your NIECE PARIS HILTON, you should feed yourself to the phantom-fillies. And did you notice how she clearly realized midway through her bizarre, spastic reenactment that it was a stupid, empty, braggy story and yet she couldn't stop? There was this cold bit of lightning in her eyes as she realized that she wasn't telling a very good story and you knew she wanted to just stop talking, but she couldn't. And then she laughed awkwardly as if it was no big deal that she, a grown woman with children, had just spent three minutes explaining how the paparazzi think that she is as relevant as Paris Hilton, her sister's daughter. Good work, lady. Some other good work is that Kim is looking for a new mansion to lease, rather than, I guess, buying a smaller more reasonable home. She's pretty post-divorce broke, yet wants to live in a mansion and have another kid, at 46. Good thinking! She showed us her acting real, especially a clip from CHiPS, and man that was some good acting on a ledge. It must have been so hard for her to walk away from that huge acting career. So very hard. Anyway, at the Hoop-Ball match, Kim was stuck sitting next to Taylor, and because Taylor is an arguably prettier than Kim blonde lady, Kim doesn't like her much. So she just sat in stony silence like a stupid baby and we all whispered in the creepy-colts' ears that they should go eat her.

Taylor Armstrong
 Oh heavens. This lady is just sad. She has bubblegum duck-bill lips and a brow that would be worried if it still had that functionality. She kept talking about her dashing husband who will likely get carried away by some 20-year-old chippy very soon, and I kind of pictured some rakishly handsome playboy of the western world. You know, a man that girls would see at a bar and say "Mama like." And then we met this magical, greased watermelon of a husband, and he was just... a bespectacled nerd who seemed really dull. Yay. Taylor then said "I'd say our marriage is 80% business, 20% romance. But that's OK, it's what I signed up for." Terrific work, Taylor! Way to hold onto that man you're so terrified of losing. "I'm in it for the money and saying so on national television. I hope he doesn't leave me!" Another good way to make people like you is to go to plastic surgeons' offices (in this case she went to the Maloof's husband) and get needles shoved in your face, thus causing ENORMOUS BUMPS TO APPEAR ALL OVER YOUR HEAD. Ohh lord that was gross. It was almost as gross as Ramona Singer's de-armpitting procedure. The Maloof was terrified and the ever-so-slightly trembling look of concern on Taylor's immovable face as she saw her friend hork and heave and vomit into a bag was priceless and miserable. Afterward, Taylor looked in the mirror, her face lumpier than a bedsheet over an egg crate, and she said "Looks good!" Right. Yeah. Sigh. Sad. Taylor is mostly just sad and seems lonely and weird. Her husband is a jerk ("How's your little company?" he asked her about her consulting firm. "Please don't call it little..." she said meekly) and yet she's terrified of losing him. (And probably will lose him.) It's the most depressing kind of Housewives relationship, and you mostly see it in California. In some ways, California has the saddest kind of ladies.

OK. I don't really think I have anything more to say about these women today. Once we get into the actual plot lines we can go exploring a little bit further, but for now, here they are. Obviously my favorite characters were the disappeared horses and the missing Pandora. (Might she be one of the horses?) You know in the old myth, when Pandora, the world's first woman, opened the jar and let all those terrible ills and miseries out and then closed it quickly? Well, as I'm sure you know, the only thing left inside the jar was hope. And haven't Andy Cohen and the rest of Bravo done the same thing to us. Pulled off the lid, sending banshees of fear and unhappiness screeching out all these years, then dumbly, or cruelly, sealing the thing back up before the one thing that could save us can fleet its way out.

This isn't the worst Housewives, not yet anyway. But it's still pretty hopeless. Every successive season of this franchise gets more and more hopeless. Not really for them, no, who cares about them, who cares to have any hope for them? It's us that could really use the light at the bottom of the jar. Because we're going to watch, aren't we? And so that's us, isn't it? Utterly hopeless.