The Real Housewives franchise has grown into a reality TV juggernaut. It has become far more than the simple Desperate Housewives parody that is at the franchise’s roots. From sociological perspectives on female friendship and secret-keeping, to interrogations of reality TV as a space for con-artists and frauds to flourish (and in the case of Jen Shah, to fall victim to the justice system catching up with her), there are a wealth of interesting angles from which to approach the phenomenon.
The franchise’s success in each city is largely determined by the group of women the series is centered around. Their bond, how well these ladies get along with one another, or how well they feud with one another, is the backbone of the franchise. The longest running series that retain relationships with their OG cast, like Real Housewives of Atlanta, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and Real Housewives of Orange County have the draw of legacy on their side, but newcomers like Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and the rebooted Real Housewives of New York City often surprise with the way these ladies do reality TV their way.
As successful as the franchise has been, and as much of a cultural impact it has had, now that dedicated viewers have had nearly twenty years of Real Housewives series, the flaws that do exist tend to be glaring when they stand out. Viewers are extra alert when seasoned wives get too comfortable, when overzealous producers show their hand, when inexperienced newcomers do too much. Here are the top 10 flaws in the Real Housewives franchise that stand out now.
10 Fake Friendships
In a franchise where friendships are foundational, there have been many cast members over the years that have been guilty of taking the ethos “fake it ’til you make it” entirely too much to heart. The most recent season of Real Housewives of Potomac shows exactly what happens when Housewives who are not friends decide to put their enmity aside for the sake of a pay check. Dr. Wendy Osefo and Gizelle Bryant have been at opposite ends of the Potomac friend group since the Professor and her four degrees joined RHOP in Season 5. Gizelle had opinions on everything from Wendy’s plastic surgery to her marriage. Wendy, in turn, after years of swatting away Gizelle’s implied shade about her husband having affairs, has taken to pointing out that Gizelle herself lacks a romantic relationship in her life, for someone with such shady opinions on other people’s marriages.
Which is why it is so odd that now in Season 9, seemingly out of the blue, Gizelle and Wendy have put their differences aside and are turning a new leaf for the camera. Considering the years of acrimony between them, this new allegiance has struck dedicated viewers as somewhat insincere. It is convenient that during a season when Gizelle has lost her green-eyed bestie Robyn Dixon, just as Wendy has lost her closest alliance, Candiace Dillard Bassett, suddenly the co-stars are willing to play nice. We know from Real Housewives of New Jersey that a divided cast will not last, and so it seems that Wendy and Gizelle have decided to fake a friendship for the sake of appearances in Season 9. Even though the pair are trying their best to keep cordial, there has been little footage shown of the two actually bonding or forming a meaningful connection. A fake friendship may have been enough to carry them through Season 9, but Wendy and Gizelle have such a fractured history that it’s unlikely the truce between them will last.
9 Desperation To Stay On The Series
Nothing sucks the air out of a season like a Housewife that is desperate to keep their reality pay check coming. The best Housewives in memory often have legendary careers outside the series itself – when you think of icons like Kandi Burruss, Vicki Gunvalson, Carole Radziwill, and Garcelle Beauvais, or more recent additions like Jenna Lyons, and Bozoma “Boz” Saint John, these women all had established careers that were/are one of the most interesting facets of their series. In contrast, there are Housewives that become desperate to keep their career as a reality TV star as a top priority, since it is their main source of income.
When Housewives become desperate to stay on the series, the way Ashley Darby is on this Season of RHOP, the intensity of their antics to stay relevant can often derail a scene. Ashley reviving her pop-star aspirations would be inspirational if there was significant effort being put into the goal. But with the success of Candiace’s Deep Space album and tour last season, a high bar has been set and Ashley singing live off-key at yet another uninspired GnA event really falls short of the mark.
8 House Husbands Taking Over
RHONJ is guilty of this flaw, but it has been since the early days of the series, when Joe Gorga joined the cast in Season 3 with his wife Melissa Gorga. Joe was directly involved in much of the Housewives mess in New Jersey due to his wife and his sister Teresa Giudice constantly feuding about “the family,” so RHONJ has always been a series that prioritized the Househusbands’ perspective slightly too much. We’re seeing the same sense of entitlement to control the narrative on RHOBH this season.
Mauricio “Mo” Umanksy has been on the series since the first season, with his now soon-to-be ex-wife, Kyle Richards. Mo has a reputation of being the “hottest” Househusband, and his cool, laid-back demeanor, plus his ultra-successful lifestyle, have always endeared him to viewers. Since he also has his own drama with Kyle’s sister and occasional co-star, Kathy Hilton, his perspective has often been prioritized on RHOBH. Now that Mo is no longer a Househusband, it is starting to be questionable why he and his buddy PK Kemsley are getting to shoot solo scenes together as they downplay their responsibility for the end of their relationships, while throwing subtle daggers at their wives.
It’s clear that Mo is suddenly needing a platform, since Netflix didn’t pick up a third season of his own reality series, Buying Beverly Hills. He is under such an intense microscope with his high-profile divorce, the federal pandemic relief loan lawsuit his company is facing, and the conservatorship battle with his father’s girlfriend, it was also probably a smart decision for Mo to skip a season of scrutiny, since he always has RHOBH as a space to continue to push the narrative that he is cool, calm, and collected during this tumultuous time.
7 Exclusive Lifestyles Where Inclusivity Is a Struggle
White fragility is a real issue in the elite spaces where the Real Housewives often tread. Ramona Singer‘s inability to adapt her conservative values to the more liberal ideals of her co-stars came to such a head that it was arguably the downfall of the original RHONY series. Amid Eboni K. Williams’ efforts to educate the more sheltered white women on the cast about things like microaggressions and Black history in the United States, Ramona came under scrutiny for her off-camera behavior towards cast and crew members from the Black community. Her refusal to educate herself and adapt her behavior accordingly caused a significant rupture in the series, and was certainly a contributing factor to the reboot.
Ubah Hassan‘s struggle to be heard and understood on the new RHONY suggests this trend continues, although the ladies are now better at acknowledging the error of their ways when it happens – except for bratty Brynn, who possibly can’t help herself. Other series have also struggled to diversify the cast by representing Housewives from BIPOC communities. RHOSLC introduced Jennie Nguyen in Season 2, but her online presence caught up with her, and racially insensitive posts from her past landed her in hot water with the fandom, and she did not return for another season after also failing to integrate into the group on RHOSLC.
The new season of RHOBH has barely given Garcelle and new incoming Housewife Boz any scenes together. And yet, the fandom is already pitting the two Black women against one another simply because Garcelle has struggled to find footing in her friendship with Dorit, while Boz hit it off with the long-winded Housewife in the opening episode of the season. Network executives are clearly putting in the work behind the scenes to ensure inclusivity is a priority, but it’s also obvious that the process is more challenging than initially projected.
6 Fake Perfection
Brynn Whitfield on RHONY is the best of the best we’ve seen when it comes to manifesting a perfect life and living her delusional fantasy on camera. But not everyone can Holly Go-Lightly their way through life, and many Housewives allow the facade of their fake perfection to slip.
When this happens, the illusion of the glamor that is usually a prerequisite to being cast in the franchise is lost. Even Brynn’s co-stars are already fed up with the way it’s “the world according to Brynn” this season on RHONY, and several of the ladies’ storylines so far have been about trying to catch their new friend in a lie, in order to force a confrontation about how much she twists everything to her advantage.
5 Newcomers That Can’t Read the Room
The newcomers on RHONY on Season 15 are a great example of women who can read the room. Racquel Chevremont has a genuine friendship with Jenna, and has easily integrated into the group while still dipping her toe in the messy “leaky pigeon” drama this season. Rebecca Minkoff is much more likely to sit back and observe the going-ons in the group, with a wry or pithy observation here and there, but is possibly guilty of under-sharing rather than over-sharing about her own life. Especially when it comes to her affiliation with the controversial Church of Scientology. She is allowing her entrance into the group to breathe, rather than storming the front gates and knocking down the door.
This season on RHOSLC is a perfect example of a newcomer who has absolutely no skill at reading the room. Though Britani Bateman has the exact level of delusion that could make for a wildly successful Housewife, her entrance to the group has been as subtle as Meredith Marks‘ Audrey Hepburn bangs. When a newbie with only a tenuous connection to the group comes to a themed dinner party and dramatically shouts “What About Me?!” after the conversation has turned away from her for what is, apparently, an insufferable amount of time, it can disrupt the natural flow of the usual Housewives dynamics. Her “will they/won’t they” with local celebrity Jared Osmond is taking up a surprising amount of space this season, considering the pair are not a couple and Osmond seemingly wants little to do with his “best friend.”
4 Manufactured Drama and Cover-Ups
Ashley has seemingly been taking a page from Gizelle’s playbook in Season 9 of RHOP. When she is limited from sharing the realities of her daily life with her children, amid a contentious divorce, she has taken to asking leading questions about her co-stars. This misdirection to distract from her lack of a storyline can often make it feel as though Ashley is a producer plant, as her desire to stir up the secrets that other ladies are trying to keep hidden aligns so well with the production’s agenda to create dramatic moments. While this tactic may ensure her continued presence on the series for a time, it’s certain that her co-stars will tire of the messiness quickly.
While Season 14 of RHOBH is still in the early stages, the feud between Kyle and Dorit feels like it has been drummed up by an experienced Hollywood producer/reality TV star to distract from the marital issues she has been desperate to keep off camera. Consummate entertainer Erika Jayne Girardi has been eager to play her role, sitting in the middle of the feuding friends, validating their narrative on either side. It may turn out that this feud is the real deal, but even in the early stages, the reasons the ladies have given for the deep hurt that seems to have arisen between them seem superficial at best. Their need to feud together for a storyline in order to distract from their contentious divorces, however, seems to run deep.
3 Social Media Rumors and Nastiness
Arguably, the downfall of RHONJ has been the ugliness that has been drummed up due to the cast members utilizing social media to dig up dirt on their costars. Teresa and her friend Jennifer Aydin were caught seemingly bribing bloggers and social media accounts in a smear campaign against Rachel Fuda and her husband, John Fuda. This ugly dynamic of spreading rumors about each other to cause drama on the series has a long history on the franchise, with Teresa spreading rumors about Jackie Goldschneider‘s husband cheating, and then Jackie in turn insinuating she had heard a rumor that one of Teresa’s daughters used drugs. The tit-for-tat can get uncomfortable when it gets so low attacking marriages and children, and not only that, many of the rumors the ladies try to spread turn out to be flops in the first place, so when they repeatedly try to bring them up, it quickly gets boring for the viewers.
The Reality VonTease drama on RHOSLC dominated the final episodes of Season 4, and the reveal that cast-member Monica Garcia had been helping to run the troll social media account that attacked several ladies on the cast was so shocking that it is a moment that will live in Housewives infamy. No matter how charismatic and fascinating Monica was as a Housewife, the discomfort the other women felt after they had essentially been conned into befriending someone who ruthlessly criticized them online meant that she was not asked back for Season 5. While her dedicated fanbase was appalled at the thought of losing Monica, they can catch her iconic voice as the announcer in Season 2 of House of Villains.
2 Production Shows Its Hand
Alexis Bellino coming back as cast on RHOC the same season that she began dating John Janssen, after he had been Shannon Beador’s boyfriend on the series for years, was simply diabolical of the production. Even worse, Shannon’s recent break-up with Janssen had ended in her embarrassing DUI and hit-and-run incident. Then Janssen brought a lawsuit against Shannon during filming for a face-lift loan she had allegedly failed to repay. It was so transparent that Janssen was desperate for a voice on the series amid the break-up that it was uncomfortable to see him appear next to Alexis in confessionals. His and Alexis’ plan to villainize Shannon backfired on them, as Alexis consistently rubbing the relationship in Shannon’s face only made her more sympathetic to the audience, and Janssen only came across as thirsty for some of Shannon’s shine. Production, on the other hand, got an amazing season of reality TV out of their casting antics, but they ran the risk of appearing grotesquely cruel in the process.
The opening scene of RHOP Season 9 is almost indefensible from a production standpoint. Their leading lady, Grande Dame Karen Huger was also involved in a DUI incident, and though Shannon set a pretty stellar example of acknowledging her fault and dealing with the very public consequences of her actions on RHOC, Karen has taken a different tactic this season on RHOP. Instead of acknowledging fault, Karen is remaining completely silent about the incident until the court proceedings have concluded. This may be smart from a legal standpoint, but the opening scene of the season committed an irresponsible fraud by offering a deer defense as an excuse for Karen’s crash. The recreation in the opening scene of Season 9 featured a shot of a deer in the middle of the road, implying that wildlife was the reason for Karen careening into a tree. Even Karen herself admitted in a recent Watch What Happens Live appearance that there had been no deer present during her crash, so this fraudulent ploy by the producers to create doubt about Karen’s crash being the result of intoxication completely backfired.
1 Seasoned Housewives Who Self-Produce
There are rare gems among the Housewives who are capable of self-producing and still keeping the viewers on their side. Brynn on RHONY will probably go down in the history books as one of the best. Brandi Glanville on RHOBH was among them. Phaedra Parks from RHOA was one of them, until she crossed the line by getting caught planting a rumor about her co-star wanting to drug someone. But of all the Housewives to get away clean self-producing her way through a season, Kyle Richards carries the most impressive record.
Kyle managed to distract from her very public divorce by teasing a potential bisexual romance with country music singer Morgan Wade for all of Season 13. Only to turn around this season with a request for privacy as she refuses to say Morgan’s name on camera. Now that Mauricio is under the microscope, not only for his very public divorce from Kyle, but also for the legal issues he is currently navigating, it seems convenient that Kyle is suddenly feuding with one of their closest friends on the series. As Kyle continues to self-produce narratives each season while hiding the reality of her world, RHOBH is earning a reputation for faking more than just friendships.
