Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a show ostensibly meant to fill us in on the latest antics and happenings related to the Kardashian family, has had a problem for several seasons now. The family has become one of the most scrutinized in the world, with every outing photographed and analyzed in real time to an almost absurd degree (one Kim frozen-yogurt trip can sometimes generate up to 72 hours of blog content). Additionally, the family posts obsessively on Snapchat and Instagram, essentially scooping the show months before it airs. Many times, last year, it felt like the holiday celebrations or birthday parties featured on the show were decidedly old news—we had watched all the snaps, and read all the headlines, months ago, when the events had actually taken place.

But this season, the 13th, has been more riveting than any recent installment, and during Sunday night’s third episode it clicked why this is the case: for the first time in a long time, Keeping Up with the Kardashians is actually making news. Last week’s installment explored Kim’s horrific robbery in Paris in depth—this week’s was focused on the aftermath: Kim coping, at home, surrounded by her family (the “B plot,” as it were, centered on Kendall Jenner testifying against a stalker who had trespassed on her property). These episodes cover a period when Kim did not use social media and rarely appeared in public. (While the rest of the family continued to post, they did so less frequently, and did not share much at all from family gatherings.) Most of the material covered on the show last night was completely new to viewers.

We learned how Kim handled things when an illegally obtained video taken in her Paris hotel room on the night of the robbery hit the Internet (she was on the phone with French attorneys, scouring through the details of reports with Kourtney). We saw her find out at the dinner table about the distasteful Kim Robbery Halloween costume, to her (and her family’s) disgust. “It really is hard when people sometimes don’t treat you like you’re human, and you’re going through such a real, raw experience that’s really traumatizing,” she said. “It just really sucks when you’re getting judged by the whole world.”

There were other wrenching revelations, as well. Khloe finds Kim crying at home one night, triggered by an incident involving husband Kanye West (West came up the front stairs in the middle of the night after a concert and was not able to hear Kim screaming “Hello?”); Khloe asks for the cameras to be turned off as Kim cries. Kim later explains that she is considering seeing a therapist to help her work through some of her feelings and fears post-robbery. Kourtney, Kim, and Kris discuss the “Paris jitters” they have felt since returning, making it difficult for them to sleep.

For months of rampant commentary, bad jokes, and reports about the robbery last fall, Kim remained silent. Now, it’s as if she is sharing her journal entries from that period of time. Remember when you were all talking about that? Well, here’s how I found out about it, how I reacted, and then what I did. Of course, we aren’t quite getting the unedited, raw journal entries. This is a television show, after all, and E! is no doubt counting on higher ratings for all of this. But there is a humanity to the show, evident in its sharpest moments, that is very palpable now.

The episode ended with the entire family surprising Kim at her house for her birthday party (they wait in her driveway so as not to shock her). No one posted about the party on social media at the time, so this was our first time seeing the low-key soiree. (“I can’t stop thinking about how that night could have left my kids without a mom,” Kim says in voice-over, as we see her with daughter North. “Now I just want to dedicate my life to my kids so they have all the great memories—I feel so lucky I had my dad for 22 years. I want to my kids to have me longer than that.”) In the trailer for next week’s episode, it looks as though Kim is going to be taking steps to get pregnant with a third child—the rare major Kim milestone that, when it apparently took place months ago, was not known at the time to the rest of the world.