Last night's episode was all about people reaching out and trying to grab something — a mate, a finish line, a cause. Did anyone succeed? Let's take a look and find out.

OK, so normally I would bury this lede in mountains of preamble and pondering, but today I just can't. I really just can't. Let's just be up front here, let's be honest about our own wants and desires, and talk about Single Gary. I mean, we were all headed there anyway, right? You were probably going to click open (is that how you access a blog post? "Click open"? I don't know if there are descriptive verbs for this new robot horror yet) this blog post and scroll down to the Single Gary section because obviously Single Gary is the single (jokes) best thing to ever happen in this Housewives franchise. If only it wasn't such a brief moment! Oh it was so painfully brief, this Single Gary adventure. But what little we had was beautiful, I think you'd agree.

As is true of most great relationships, Single Gary and Kim's (of course this involved Kim, it could only ever involve Kim) storied romance began while fighting over chicken. You know how that is! "Oh sure, ol' Bruce here, my big man. Huh huh huh. Well, boring story, we're there fighting over chicken like everyone else, you know how it is, and this big lunk walks into my life." That's the story you tell at every holiday party about your husband Bruce. It's just how regular people meet, fighting over chicken. In Kim's case she was shopping at the local supermarket, buying provisions for a big family cookout she was having at her eerie, drafty house. Naturally her cookout involved lots and lots of chicken, so she went to the chicken department and was going to buy all the chicken but there were some guys there, buying all the chickens first!!!!! "Excuuuuse me," Kim told us she told them, "I need that chicken. And I am getting my chicken. That is my chicken!" Kim related this story to us in an interview, and then she said the word chicken a few dozen more times and sort of laughed and then stopped laughing and looked off, looked down, let the old clouds and weary weights flood back into her head. "Chicken," she said once more, quietly, to herself mostly, all of her warmth and brightness disappearing once again like steam. But yes! Chicken! So I guess after the chicken incident, in which Kim got all the damn chicken she damn needed, one of the chicken guys walked up to her and was like "Hey, I'm Single Gary." !!!!!!!!!!!!! Yessss. So Kim said, "Hi, I'm Single Kim," which is so true! She IS Single Kim!! Oh my god is she ever Single Kim. I don't know that it's possible to be more single than Kim is single. Like, I'm pretty single. As are most of you, apparently. But Kim? Kim is basically standing on a faraway cliff overlooking a cold, dark sea, where there is no one else and just a tiny little cottage where Kim lives by herself and she takes lonely rainy ways along those cliffs and imagines the sting and stab of the water if she were to jump in. That is how single Kim is. So when she introduced herself as Single Kim, it was very accurate.

That was the story of Kim meeting Single Gary, and then WE got to meet Single Gary! Everyone was at the cookout, Kim's three hundred children plus one weird Kelly Osborne-ish friend with a rat-frizz mane of hair and some unironic ironic sunglasses (she was the worst/best!), enjoying the delicious chicken (there was so much chicken, nobody needs that much chicken), and Kim started talking about Single Gary. And then, wouldn't you know it, like magic, Single Gary called her on the telephone! "It was so nice meeting you at the grocery store when we fought over chicken and then I got the chicken in the end," Kim said, strangely retelling the entire story to someone who was there, who was in fact the other protagonist in the ChickenFight '10 story. That was odd and it made me slightly concerned that this whole chicken story was cooked up by the producers to explain Single Gary, but let's banish those terrible thoughts from our heads and just accept it as gospel. They met through chicken, OK? So yeah, Kim was on the phone with Single Gary, being all weird, and then for some reason she said "Here, talk to my daughter," and put her on with one of her seventy five googol children, and the daughter sort of giggled (googoled) and said "Come over!" Kim's face did a strange sinking ballet at that, but then she shrugged those bony chicken wing shoulders of hers, because what was there to do. Single Gary was coming over.

And when Single Gary arrived it was... I don't quite know. It was like Uncle Joey's "cool" older brother or uncle or someone showed up to the house. He looked a little bit like a character that Jim Gaffigan might do. He had that lovely SoCal man-of-a-certain-age (that isn't Scott Bakula) bloat about him, with the usual tented button-up shirt to cover it all up and funny glasses and weird wisp of combovery hair. He also had his granddaughter on his arm and it was just.... Ha ha? I mean, there is life. There is mortality sauntering in through your front door. One day you're bubbly blonde twentysomething Kim Richards, sun-kissed and vibrating with possibility, and then the next you're inviting strange men who you met at a chicken fight at the supermarket over to the house, and he's a grandfather. That's how time marches on, I guess. One day grampa walks in and that's that, that's your life. You'd better enjoy the chicken, 'cause it's all you're gonna get from here on out. Single Gary for Single Kim. Oooof. Anyway, Single Gary didn't really know that the whole Richards clan was going to be at the fiesta, so he seemed a little uncomfortable. After a few minutes of awkward child wrangling, Single Gary decided it was time to make his exit. Kim said goodbye to him at the door and he was basically like "Adios," and ambled off into the night, and you had to kind of respect him in this strange way, in the way that he is Single Gary who introduces himself to ladies at supermarkets, who shows up to strange parties with his granddaughter ("She's my favorite gal to have at a party, what can I say?"), who sees some kind of rescuable something in Kim, in that ghost-strewn pile of rubble. Where pretty much everyone else sees ruin, Single Gary sees the crocus poking up through the ash. You've got to like that about Single Gary, I think. You've got to like that about people, the way they are always reaching out for one another, even in the dark, even when there is little hope that the lights will ever come back on.

So that was Single Gary and he was great. I hope we see more of him, in a way, but I also kind of hope we don't! I sort of hope that was it for Single Gary, just a brief cameo in Kim's curtain-drawn life, a man that made her feel like she can still get dates on her own, that she doesn't need Lisa's help, that she needn't date men as old as Martin, the last living Civil War widow, no she can get younger men, men who are... grandfathers. It's a good thing for Kim to know this, for her sanity's sake, and that's the gift that Single Gary gave to her. Knowledge. Power. He basically handed her a card that read "You are Kim Richards" and whispered something mysterious in her ear that we will never know. That is the blessing of Single Gary.

What else happened in this episode? Hm. Well, Kyle and John Turturro went for a bike ride or something and Kyle was all stressy about it, even though it was in Napa Valley and it was a romantic weekend getaway. Kyle and John seem genuinely in love, even when they are sorta fighting about having another baby, and that is nice to see. I sort of hated Kyle in the beginning, but now I don't. Maybe it's just all the Single Gary love emanating in white hot grandfatherly bursts from the Kim storyline, but I'm feeling pretty good about Kyle these days. EXCEPT. First rule of Mom Club: Don't get bikini waxes in front of your 14-year-old daughter. Second rule of Mom Club: Ever. Like, really never ever do that. Actually, don't get a bikini wax in front of anyone who's 14 years old, daughter or not. If you're at some creepy spa place where the employees are children, go to a different spa place. 14-year-olds should not be present for your bikini wax, ever. Yiiiiiikes.

What else. Well, Camille is still a heinous monster. She had friends over for dinner. She was all "You know, I'm really lucky to have such great friends," and all of her weird sad friends came creaking in (one of them looked really familiar, the blonde one? Who was that?) and when they sat down Camille was like "I have something to discuss." Was it politics? War? The arts? Philosophies? No, of course, it was all about the Kyle situation. Of course it was! Everyone at the table tried not to groan or roll their eyes or visibly gag, but it was hard. It was very hard, because who the fuck cares Camille, honestly, in 2010, who cares? No one. But Camille doesn't care that no one cares. She laughed her dull afternoon laugh and half-closed her purpley eyes and droned on about how she was going to have a dinner for all the girls and hopefully it would go well and, y'know, hopefully she'd be the center of attention for that episode. People responded meekly, so in an effort to regain focus, to shock and titillate and just be an all around vile hellbeast, Camille said "Ohhh, is it hot in here? Or maybe I'm just sitting next to Nick!!!!" and then she grabbed at Nick, that tennis instructor guy she clearly wants us to think she's fucking, and he smiled that sad faraway smile and dreamed of the day when he finally cashes in and gets the money he's been working for all these years.

The next day Camille went running with Nick's wife, because Camille's awesome, and on the way to the beach she said that though she was supposed to move to New York that summer, maybe she wouldn't now because things have changed, and clearly the divorce was beginning just there, just then. That's how these things happen, little cracks in the dam. Camille then decided she'd poke at Kelsey a little by telling us that "Kelsey feels like his career in Hollywood is over. He says they appreciate him in New York" and it was such a mean thing to say, in such a mean way, about one's husband. I'd like to say it was shocking, but Camille is literally a piece of shit that someone found on a stray dog's grundle, so it's really not surprising coming from her. (And, mind you, not that Kelsey Grammer is a saint in all of this. He's an asshole too, clearly. It's not really the treating of one's spouse like dirt that irks me here, it's the tackiness of it all. In my day people cruelly undermined each other in civilized, discreet ways.)

Oh, Taylor. Sad Taylor. Sad Taylor was doing some charity thing about abuse and she'd been abused I guess, so that was too bad to hear about. The charity event was a hilarious mess, some weird daytime poker thing with "celebrities." Forty-four celebrities to be exact! That's what the lady organizing the charity kept saying. "Well, as you know, we have celebrities, forty-four of them, coming to the event..." Haha. Do you wonder if there was someone there who like mayyybe could have qualified as number 45? But the lady who organized it was like "No, unh uh, 44. That's all we're doing." And the celebrities? Um, Jennifer Elise Cox, who is definitely funny, but... yeah. Oh, and Kato Kaelin! Yeah, ha ha. Doesn't Kato Kaelin fit in perfectly on Real Housewives? We should have Real Housewives of Kato Kaelin, and it's just Kato Kaelin being himself. I mean, really Kato Kaelin and the Housewives are the same people. They're all murder witnesses. So that was good. All of the 44. The 44, coming next season to USA. The 44: We Couldn't Afford the Extra Zeroes Anymore.

But yeah, the charity thing was awkward because A) Taylor had to give a speech and it was very bad ("As most of you probably don't not know you don't know do you most of you...") and B) on the way over Russell decided to be the piece of shit that Camille's stray dog just licked off another dog's grundle by saying "You know, it's a shame you did it this weekend. Because a lot of the people I invited couldn't come this weekend. You'd have had a lot more people. Too bad." Which, what Russell? Why the creepy tone? And why even bother? I know that it freaks you out something fierce that Taylor is doing something that has nothing to do with you, but deal with it. Ugh, Russell is the worst. He looks like a pot roast that got left outside too long. He and Camille should get married and just lick shit off each other's taints for the rest of their miserable lives. Gross.

Oh, ha, the Maloof showed up to the poker thing dressed like a gay paint-huffing addict who works part time at a cowboy roller disco, so that was splendid. Her husband was there, also in cowboy regalia, and I don't know. They respectably do not seem to give one iota of a fuck about what anyone else thinks about them, because they're richer than Midas so why bother? They can wear Reno Freebaser Barbie outfits all they want. They are allowed to do that. Rock on with your repulsive selves, you two.

Lisa and Cedric went to a sexy DMV test where Lisa got hit on by Single Gary's dad, a weird old guy with a thicket of gray hair on his head and some cool dude sunglasses. Nice style, man. I like your moves. Hitting on ladies at the DMV. "My kind of lady has a strange driving problem, as she needs to take a driver's test in her 50s. That is my kinda gal. The DMV and traffic school, total muff markets, I tell ya." I'd like to meet the DMV guy and shake his hand, because I've never learned so much about how to pick up chicks when you're in your 120s. What is it with all the War of 1812 veterans on this show? There are so many of them! Is LA just full of old dudes who can't keep their shirts buttoned all the way up? Could be. It just could be.

I don't know that I have any more to say! We have our holiday party tonight and I have to do laundry so I can wear something clean and snazzy so Brian Moylan will finally fall in love with me the way I've wanted him to this whole year. It's why I came back to Gawker! So you'll have to excuse me while I dash off to go do that. Maybe you are going to your own holiday party tonight! Maybe you are hungover from last night's! Either way, the holidays are exciting, aren't they? Even if you have to spend them with hideous coworkers. Even then, they are great.

Though, of course, they'd be better if we all had our own Single Garys to take us to our holiday parties. To lean against walls and shoot us gun fingers and winks. To take a sip of punch (if there is punch at your holiday party) and say "Hey... packs quite a... punch, huh? Huh?" We'd all love our own Single Garys to feed us bits of chicken with their thick, ring-stained fingers. To rub the small of our backs, to give us his raincoat. We'd all like a Single Gary, I think. Or maybe you have one. Maybe you do! Maybe you fought your last chicken fight years ago.

Remember when you'd go swimming when you were a kid and the teenagers would do that thing with the girls on the guys' shoulders and they'd try to knock each other off? Remember that, that the kids did solely because they liked touching each other? That was called chicken fighting! Man, we've been doing this our whole lives, huh? Ham games and chicken fights. And cheeseburger throws! I'm not quite sure where the cheeseburger throwing comes in yet, but I think it's in a bad place, an end place. So let's leave that alone for a while. We've got miles to go before we throw cheeseburgers at each other. For now we're fighting over chicken, hoping for our own Single Gary. Or we're nestling up next to him already, drunk from the party, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" still ringing in our ears, the comforting firm hand of Gary, just Gary, single no longer, guiding us safely toward the next great thing.