Who won this season of The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills?

Season 12 of RHOBH has come and gone ... so which Housewife came out on top?

By Drew Gillis | October 28, 2022 | 10:04pm

TV Features The Real Housewives

Who won this season of The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills?

Erika Girardi, Sutton Stracke, and Kyle Richards Photo: Tommy Garcia/Bravo

The Real Housewives shows aren’t strictly competitions, but every fan knows that when it’s all said and done, every season has winners—and losers. It’s fun (and usually accurate) to imagine that all of these ladies are playing their own personal Game Of Thrones. But they can’t all be Cersei, and for every Margaery, there’s a Ned Stark head on a spike, or, heaven forbid, a Reek.

This season of The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, which came to an end on October 26, was no different, and while some of the ladies did come out ahead, it was bad for a lot of them. So where did Kyle, Lisa, Garcelle, Dorit, and all the rest land this season? Well …

9. Diana Jenkins

Diana lost this season. This is the easiest ranking of the year. It’s hard to even recall a good moment from Diana this time around, and she doesn’t even seem all that interested in playing the game. She doesn’t stay with the other ladies on cast trips and only showed up to the reunion, virtually, for a quick appearance. In the Housewives rulebook, skipping the reunion doesn’t usually spell good things for a cast member’s future on the series (unless it’s because they’re in rehab, which usually spells great things for their future).That’s not to mention her off-screen controversy, which happened to finally be addressed during the first episode of the reunion. It’s been suggested that she had something to do with the deluge of racist comments that Garcelle’s son Jax received on Instagram after his mother butted heads with Diana on the show. (It must be added that Diana has vehemently denied any suggestion of this and has filed to get to the bottom of the attacks.) If there is any justice in the world, Diana will go down as a one-season wonder.

8. Crystal Kung Minkoff

Crystal seems like a lovely person. She’s affable, handles conflict maturely, and appears to still have most of her natural features. These are wonderful qualities in a friend, but not so much in a Housewife. For the past two seasons, Crystal has felt like a bit of a non-entity.Her storylines this season—her tiff with Sutton, her revelation about her eating disorder—have largely become storylines for other wives. Still, Crystal does show some promise for the future; many fans have long wanted to see her form an alliance with Garcelle and Sutton, and by the end of the reunion, it seems like that is finally happening.

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7. Lisa Rinna

Oh, Lisa. Lisa attributed a lot of her erratic behavior this season to the death of her mother, and her pain about that is obvious. However, she has behaved in a generally asshole-ish way for years, so the reasoning doesn’t quite hold up. Depending on who you ask, Lisa has had some good seasons, but it’s hard to imagine anyone counting the most recent as one of them.The back half of this season was focused on what Lisa did or didn’t see during her time alone, off-camera with Kathy Hilton. What Lisa has described sounds like a pretty standard temper tantrum from a rich old lady—par for the course on RHOBH—but Lisa has said that the event “traumatized” her and left her with “PTSD.” Even Andy Cohen wasn’t buying this, reminding her that she’s seen some shit during her years on the show. Her social media behavior is her biggest liability, and she promised at the reunion to give it a rest—until she on Instagram as a means to get to Kathy. If this is what fighting to stay on the show looks like, Lisa needs some more training.

6. Kyle Richards

Kyle had one really good episode this season. In the final episode before the reunion, she managed to make Erika and Lisa stumble with her last-minute claim that the person who leaked the stories about Kathy’s behavior to the press worked for Erika. It was a fairly brilliant move from this game’s longest-tenured player.Otherwise, though, this season was not Kyle’s best work. Having either of her sisters on the show with her, while pretty gripping television, clearly isn’t good for her. At the final reunion, she immediately crumpled, reverting back into Kathy’s crying, desperate kid sister. House Richards is a deeply disturbed one, one that only seems to function with one person on the outs, and Kyle seemed pretty terrified that it’s now her turn. She doesn’t need to leave the show yet; undoubtedly, it would be the right move if she wants to work on her relationship with her sisters, but we all know that Kyle can’t help herself. She’ll be back.

5. Sutton Stracke

Sutton has an acute case of foot-in-mouth disease, but she’s starting to figure out how to turn that from a liability into an asset. As her (at one point, only) ally Garcelle told her in an after-show, she may as well stop apologizing, because she isn’t good at it. Instead, she has apparently taken toward congratulating, earning some goodwill from Erika by calling her to congratulate her on some good legal news. Sutton has figured out how to placate a one-time enemy and perhaps even turn her into a future ally.Sutton came into this season hot, earning a swift backlash for comparing her issues getting a French designer through immigration to Dorit’s experience during an armed robbery and for (thrillingly) starting beef with Lisa on Watch What Happens Live before the season even started. Sutton is too clumsy to ever really win, but she keeps the game moving. That’s invaluable.

4. Kathy Hilton

Lisa was gunning for Kathy as soon as she returned for the season. As the mother of Paris Hilton and the sister to Kim and Kyle Richards, Kathy is hardly a stranger to this game. No one was under a more sustained attack this year, and it’s hard to imagine anyone weathering the storm quite as well.It’s unfortunate that so much of Kathy’s major storyline happened off-screen, leaving us to fill in the blanks and decide who was right ourselves. It does seem like Lisa is telling the truth about a decent amount of Kathy’s behavior in Aspen, but if Lisa really was as scared as she claimed to be, Kathy should take that as a point of pride—she should, in Lisa’s words, own it.

3. Erika Jayne

Erika finally figured out how to play the whole Tom card she was dealt, and it was by going full-tilt villain mode. The other ladies were right when they told her that she didn’t really ever express sympathy for the victims of Tom’s (alleged) crimes—she was too busy declaring, “I don’t give a fuck about anyone but me” and dismissing questions about whether she should return six-figure earrings potentially bought with ill-gotten gains.Despite all the talk of victims, it’s clear who Erika thinks is the biggest victim: herself. At the reunion, she opines that no one has been as “ruthlessly persecuted” as her. She fights off some tears during the commercial break and returns to hold Kathy’s feet to the fire. Erika will fight til the bitter end—usually dressed as an evil stepmother-cum-Barbie.

2. Dorit Kemsley

Dorit started this season on a low note, falling victim to an armed home invasion. While it felt like she was sidelined for a decent amount of the season, it apparently gave her a birds’-eye view of what was going on, and she was often able to be, if not necessarily the voice of reason, at least a reasonable voice. At the reunion, she was able to talk to Kyle in a sisterly reassuring way shortly after asking if Kyle and Kathy could please move their conversation along because they had been sitting there for a while.Beyond that, though, no one could match the general pop culture infiltration that Dorit undertook this year. If you’ve heard the term “carcass out” or “chicest windchimes” this year, thank Dorit. This is what we like to call soft power; it won’t always win you the game, but it sure helps.