The Actual Housewives of Salt Lake Metropolis season 5 finale ends in a twisted recreation. The ladies are having an already tense dinner in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, when solid member Heather Homosexual means that they pull out their telephones and share the meanest issues they’ve written about one another as a “therapeutic” train.
This second is clearly designed to arrange subsequent season’s feuds, however Homosexual, the artful ringleader of the bunch — virtually a producer on the present — frames it as a needed launch for the paranoid group of mates. Naturally, the scene ends with Homosexual’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 good friend 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 might have landed with a thud reasonably than a bang. However the Actual Housewives of Salt Lake Metropolis solid has found an efficient and refreshingly easy option to method battle because the tenth installment within the Actual Housewives universe: Give the viewers what they need, regardless of how pre-meditated or contrived.
In the meantime, the ladies of the Actual Housewives of New York Metropolis reboot have struggled to create recent, compelling storylines as the latest present within the 20-year-old franchise. Their second season additionally not too long ago concluded with a jaw-dropping finale, though it was in the end extra stunning 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.
Each RHOSLC and the RHONY reboot have demonstrated the difficult enterprise of becoming a member of a actuality franchise so late within the recreation. Nevertheless, after just a few unbalanced seasons, RHOSLC has managed to carve out its personal id whereas leaning into essentially the most traditional Actual Housewives tropes. In the meantime, the extent of self-awareness of the solid of RHONY is without doubt one of the causes for its downfall.
Salt Lake Metropolis proves that actuality TV might be theater
Since The Actual Housewives of Orange County premiered on Bravo in 2006, there have been 11 completely different reveals, virtually 200 Housewives, and quite a few tell-all books, all forming an exhaustive guide on the best 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 reveals like RHOC and Actual Housewives of New Jersey. The group of largely working towards or excommunicated Mormons arrive every season with trivial beefs, recent gossip, and even gimmicks (i.e., Angie Ok’s literal scroll of grievances towards Meredith Marks this season) able to argue with anybody at any second. However 5 years in, this setup has confirmed to create actuality TV magic, producing immediately repeatedly one-liners, like “excessive physique depend hair,” and indelible pictures, like Mary M. Cosby unintentionally lurking within the background of a middle-aged lady’s bat mitzvah. Lastly, a coterie of women who’re at all times able to play the proverbial recreation.
Even beforehand tough solid members have come a great 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. Moreover, Marks dropped her “disengaging” act; now she is absolutely lunging at castmates from the again of vans. It’s truthful to say that the sequence 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 method didn’t at all times work. The present’s first three seasons have been closely dominated by the sequence’ overpowering antagonist, now-felon Jen Shah. Each 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 traditional trope — till it grew to become exhausting; to the purpose the place the ladies have been strolling on eggshells round her when they need to’ve been confronting her. Her closest good friend within the solid, Homosexual, was notably held again by her allegiance to Shah.
It’s no coincidence that the present has lastly been allowed to breathe with Shah now not current. (In 2023, Shah was sentenced to 6 and a half years in federal jail, although it’s since been diminished.) Notably, Homosexual has emerged in a extra dominant position, because the voluntary guardian of the group. She appeared to assign herself this place after she uncovered the stunning revelation in season 4 that new solid member Monica Garcia secretly ran a gossip account that uncovered dust on a number of of the Housewives. Now, it’s change into her job to side-eye the newbies and ship a monologue about friendship at any given second.
Homosexual 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 Homosexual primarily change Shah because the authoritative determine for the solid, even when the followers don’t agree with it. As an alternative of blackmailing the solid into submission, although, she’s pulling their greatest performances out of them.
It doesn’t harm that this explicit solid, even out of all of the reveals 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 Actual Housewife. However 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 totally 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 drawback, except for the ladies not precisely being the funniest bunch. The present’s group of girls, together with style government Jenna Lyons, have been extra skilled and extra famend, and weren’t prepared to scream throughout tables at eating places and get excessively drunk on TV, like their endlessly amusing predecessors.
The second season was a bit completely different. A number of the solid, primarily Brynn Whitfield and Erin Lichy, have been extra wanting to get down and soiled, spreading rumors and inflicting (admittedly not that compelling) rifts among the many group. Nevertheless, Lichy and Whitfield struggled to acknowledge the distinction between embracing drama and fully manipulating the plot. Whitfield, the season’s predominant menace, appeared to imagine that the editors wouldn’t reveal flashbacks of her being informed 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 “perhaps sleeping with somebody” to get solid on the present. Nevertheless, Whitfield continues so as to add on to the comment, claiming that Hassan used extra graphic language and known 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 point this will get again to Hassan, it’s clear she had no concept about Whitfield’s assault and seems devastated by the information. On the finish of the night time, Whitfield finally tells the group that Hassan “might not have clocked” this anecdote inside a bigger dialog that they had.
With a gaggle of extra alert Housewives, Whitfield would’ve instantly been known as out for egging on Hassan and blowing up all the change. (Followers on-line additionally recirculated a scene from a earlier episode the place Whitfield tells her brother that he’s the “solely particular person she’s informed” in regards to the assault.) As an alternative, 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.
Whereas producer Andy Cohen excitedly teased the season’s “darkish” finale, it didn’t out of the blue 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 shortage of content material warnings demonstrated a careless perspective towards the episode’s subject material. It was additionally irritating that Whitfield, a white-passing biracial lady, was successfully capable of weaponize her actual trauma towards Hassan, a dark-skinned Somali lady, and briefly flip all the solid towards her, regardless of Whitfield’s well-documented historical past of fabricating tales to the remainder of the ladies. Your complete encounter made Whitfield unwatchable any further and revealed a colorist dynamic among the many remainder of the group.
Oppositely, on RHOSLC, the ladies are surprisingly delicate when discussing darkish subject material, together with household trauma and their scars from the Mormon church. The ladies, primarily Katsanevas, have 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 drawback and, later, went to rehab.
All in all, the foundations of being Actual 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 multitude. Everybody must be recreation and have a humorousness. Most significantly, everybody has to know the place to attract a line within the sand.
