The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season 5 finale ends in a twisted sport. The ladies are having an already tense dinner in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, when solid member Heather Gay means that they pull out their telephones and share the meanest issues they’ve written about one another as a “healing” train.
This second is clearly designed to arrange subsequent season’s feuds, however Gay, the artful ringleader of the bunch — virtually a producer on the present — frames it as a obligatory launch for the paranoid group of pals. Naturally, the scene ends with Gay’s castmate and cousin Whitney Rose tricking frenemy Lisa Barlow into studying a sexually graphic rumor about her and her husband, John, which results in Barlow reactively blurting out a sexually graphic rumor about on-and-off pal Angie Katsanevas’s husband, Shawn. Any rebuilt belief among the many group shortly unravels, and the ladies are, relaxation assured, again at sq. one.
With a much less outrageous and colourful solid, this clearly produced second could have landed with a thud slightly than a bang. But the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City solid has found an efficient and refreshingly easy option to strategy battle because the tenth installment within the Real Housewives universe: Give the viewers what they need, regardless of how pre-meditated or contrived.
Meanwhile, the ladies of the Real Housewives of New York City reboot have struggled to create recent, compelling storylines as the latest present within the 20-year-old franchise. Their second season additionally just lately concluded with a jaw-dropping finale, though it was finally extra surprising than satisfying. After a season of failed pranks and boring arguments, the finale took a pointy and disturbing flip, specializing in a solid member’s sexual assault and bringing out some troubling racial dynamics within the group.
Both RHOSLC and the RHONY reboot have demonstrated the tough enterprise of becoming a member of a actuality franchise so late within the sport. However, after a couple of unbalanced seasons, RHOSLC has managed to carve out its personal identification whereas leaning into essentially the most basic Real Housewives tropes. Meanwhile, the extent of self-awareness of the solid of RHONY is among the causes for its downfall.
Salt Lake City proves that actuality TV might be theater
Since The Real Housewives of Orange County premiered on Bravo in 2006, there have been 11 totally different exhibits, nearly 200 Housewives, and quite a few tell-all books, all forming an exhaustive handbook on the right way to succeed (and fail) on the favored franchises.
RHOSLC, which premiered in 2020, is an instance of a present that has clearly taken notes, generally feeling extra contrived than earlier exhibits like RHOC and Real Housewives of New Jersey. The group of principally practising or excommunicated Mormons arrive every season with trivial beefs, recent gossip, and even gimmicks (i.e., Angie Okay’s literal scroll of grievances in opposition to Meredith Marks this season) able to argue with anybody at any second. But 5 years in, this setup has confirmed to create actuality TV magic, producing immediately repeatedly one-liners, like “high body count hair,” and indelible pictures, like Mary M. Cosby unintentionally lurking within the background of a middle-aged lady’s bat mitzvah. Finally, a coterie of girls who’re all the time able to play the proverbial sport.
Even beforehand tough solid members have come a good distance in serving the present’s funniest moments and largest fights. Cosby has gone from ditching group outings for the McDonald’s drive-through to being a main participant on this season. Additionally, Marks dropped her “disengaging” act; now she is totally lunging at castmates from the again of vans. It’s honest to say that the collection has all however changed the unique RHONY because the campy, theatrical franchise, proving {that a} stage of staging and blatant engineering can work on a actuality present when everyone seems to be equally dedicated.
This extra staged strategy didn’t all the time work. The present’s first three seasons had been closely dominated by the collection’ overpowering antagonist, now-felon Jen Shah. Every time the doubtful advertising maven entered a scene or spoke in a confessional, it appeared like she was studying instantly out of a Housewives handbook, whereas additionally missing a much-needed humorousness. She additionally weaponized “receipts” — a basic trope — till it turned exhausting; to the purpose the place the ladies had been strolling on eggshells round her when they need to’ve been confronting her. Her closest pal within the solid, Gay, was notably held again by her allegiance to Shah.
It’s no coincidence that the present has lastly been allowed to breathe with Shah not current. (In 2023, Shah was sentenced to 6 and a half years in federal jail, although it’s since been lowered.) Notably, Gay has emerged in a extra dominant function, because the voluntary guardian of the group. She appeared to assign herself this place after she uncovered the surprising revelation in season 4 that new solid member Monica Garcia secretly ran a gossip account that uncovered grime on a number of of the Housewives. Now, it’s develop into her job to side-eye the newbies and ship a monologue about friendship at any given second.
Gay has additionally proven that she’s wanting to be the producer’s puppet, doing no matter it takes to maintain the momentum of the present going, together with main the group right into a remedy session the place they spew vile issues at each other. It’s fascinating to look at Gay primarily change Shah because the authoritative determine for the solid, even when the followers don’t agree with it. Instead of blackmailing the solid into submission, although, she’s pulling their greatest performances out of them.
It doesn’t damage that this specific solid, even out of all of the exhibits on Bravo, are clearly craving to be well-known.
There’s pot-stirring, after which there’s plot manipulation
On RHONY, the ladies are guided by the identical consciousness of what it means to be an iconic Real Housewife. But whereas the solid of RHOSLC is raring to be Bravo’s present ponies, the New York Housewives have been far more hesitant to play the sport. This alternative solid took over for a gaggle of iconic however completely exhausted housewives, together with Ramona Singer, Sonja Morgan, and Countess Luann de Lesseps, however after its first season, followers and Bravo pundits identified the brand new RHONY with having a PR downside, except for the ladies not precisely being the funniest bunch. The present’s group of girls, together with vogue govt Jenna Lyons, had been extra skilled and extra famend, and weren’t keen to scream throughout tables at eating places and get excessively drunk on TV, like their endlessly amusing predecessors.
The second season was a bit totally different. Some of the solid, primarily Brynn Whitfield and Erin Lichy, had been extra wanting to get down and soiled, spreading rumors and inflicting (admittedly not that compelling) rifts among the many group. However, Lichy and Whitfield struggled to acknowledge the distinction between embracing drama and utterly manipulating the plot. Whitfield, the season’s essential menace, appeared to imagine that the editors wouldn’t reveal flashbacks of her being instructed one factor by her castmates and twisting it into one other, or that she wouldn’t get caught telling blatant lies.
This all caught as much as Whitfield in final week’s season finale, the place her tensions with castmate Ubah Hassan come to a disturbing head. After spending most of their solid journey in Puerto Rico upsetting Hassan, Whitfield will get wound up over a hypothetical Hassan throws out about Whitfield “maybe sleeping with someone” to get solid on the present. However, Whitfield continues so as to add on to the comment, claiming that Hassan used extra graphic language and referred to as her a “whore.”
Whitfield tells the group that Hassan’s remark is especially triggering as a result of she had been raped, and that Hassan is aware of that. By the time this will get again to Hassan, it’s clear she had no concept about Whitfield’s assault and seems devastated by the information. At the tip of the night time, Whitfield ultimately tells the group that Hassan “may not have clocked” this anecdote inside a bigger dialog they’d.
With a gaggle of extra alert Housewives, Whitfield would’ve instantly been referred to as out for egging on Hassan and blowing up the whole change. (Fans on-line additionally recirculated a scene from a earlier episode the place Whitfield tells her brother that he’s the “only person she’s told” concerning the assault.) Instead, the ladies rush to Whitfield’s protection and take her phrase over Hassan’s earlier than later admitting that they’ve most likely been taken benefit of by Whitfield.
While producer Andy Cohen excitedly teased the season’s “dark” finale, it didn’t instantly make the reboot any extra compelling than it had been in its brief time on the air. In reality, it felt like a determined transfer for an already floundering present. The lack of content material warnings demonstrated a careless angle towards the episode’s material. It was additionally irritating that Whitfield, a white-passing biracial lady, was successfully capable of weaponize her actual trauma in opposition to Hassan, a dark-skinned Somali lady, and briefly flip the whole solid in opposition to her, regardless of Whitfield’s well-documented historical past of fabricating tales to the remainder of the ladies. The complete encounter made Whitfield unwatchable to any extent further and revealed a colorist dynamic among the many remainder of the group.
Oppositely, on RHOSLC, the ladies are surprisingly delicate when discussing darkish material, together with household trauma and their scars from the Mormon church. The ladies, primarily Katsanevas, had been particularly respectful in honoring the privateness of Mary Cosby and her son, Robert Jr., when he confessed throughout the season that he had a drug downside and, later, went to rehab.
All in all, the principles of being an excellent Real Housewife have by no means been extra accessible, however the disparity between RHOSLC and RHONY proves that there’s a fragile artwork to creating a large number. Everyone needs to be sport and have a humorousness. Most importantly, everybody has to know the place to attract a line within the sand.