Posted on 05/29/2020 8:20:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
To put it concisely: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are sustaining the illusion of propriety, the Real Housewives of New York are abandoning it.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Real Housewives of New York City air one day apart. As the spring unfolds, this proximity is creating a contrast that illuminates the two basic categories of a Real Housewives franchise.
Its all about opposing tensions. For the Beverly Hills housewives, the central tension is between the illusion of propriety and the womens varying abilities to maintain it. Even Denise Richards and Erika Girardi, both of whom make great housewives because they challenge the Beverly Hills code of conduct, occasionally demand decorumlike not having discussions about threesomes near Denises children. This season of RHOBH promises more explosive conflict with Denise, who will deny a tawdry rumor for the sake of her marriage and reputation. Theres a reason we laugh at super dad Mauricio getting stoned in his mansion. Its unexpected.
The Real Housewives of New York City started out in the same category. Luann, the countess, once reprimanded Bethenny for introducing her to a driver by her first name. Alex and Simons Brooklyn fixer upper mortified RHONYs Upper East Side dwellers. Now the women get so drunk they chip their teeth, threaten police officers, and throw tiki torches. Thus, the tension on RHONY is not about maintaining the illusion of propriety, because theyve largely given up on that project. The tension is between their social status and their behavior.
To put it more concisely: RHOBH is about sustaining the illusion of propriety, RHONY is about abandoning it. The Dallas housewives would fall into the first category. The New Jersey housewives would fall into the second, along with the Atlanta and Orange County housewives. (Think of the OC housewives drinking like fish on a golf course, or any scene with Kelly Dodd, who changed the trajectory of the show after Heather Dubrows departure.)
Theres usually a woman or two in each franchise that behaves more like someone from the opposite category (think Lisa Rinna, especially in Amsterdam, or Leann Locken), which helps create an interesting dynamic.
RHONYs brilliant new housewife, Leah McSweeney, nakedlydrunkenlyextinguishes a tiki torch with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot this season, symbolically dousing the flame of white supremacy. The podcast she hosted before joining the show, and still hosts, is literally called Improper Etiquette, which is also the perfect description of RHONY.
Dont get all socialite on me! Leah screams at Sonja, who shouts back, Dont get all socialist on me!
When did this become Occupy Hamptons? Sonja quips in a confessional.
The next morning, Ramona, who left the women to party elsewhere, is incensed to find her home in a state of disaster. Cameras catch aging socialite Tinsley Mortimer passed out in bed next to a plate of pasta. Theres a sex toy in the chicken. Its a mess.
Ramonas freakout over her friends lapse in decorum is funny to viewers because, as Leah pointed out in a Thursday Instagram, she has similar lapses constantly. Its the same with the womens critiques of Leahs tattoos. The complaints are laughable, not credible, because these are the women urinating in the middle of corn mazes with cameras rolling. (There are million other examples, like Aviva condemning Ramona and Sonja for allegedly impolite behavior and then going on to throw her fake leg at Le Cirque. And remember Avivas dad?)
Over time, the show has evolved into a brilliant tragicomedy that captures aging socialites grappling with class and all of its cultural and psychological implications. The Beverly Hills women drink, sometimes a lot, but when they do, they end up performing impressions of each other and fighting over group dynamics. Its interesting in its own way, but different.
Luann went from a countess who writes books on etiquette, to a wannabe pop star, to jail, then back to the Hamptons. Sonja, the single best person on Bravo, is still wounded by her divorce from J.P. Morgans great-grandson, and grappling with its impact on her social life and self-esteem. Shes scolded when she puts the Morgan family crest on a pair of loafers, screams about not being a trophy wife, and berates her cast mates for touching the Morgan letters at a museum. I party with John John Kennedy and Madonna all the time, she drunkenly rambled to Dorinda a few years back.
Dorinda, meanwhile, still struggles with the death of her highly-regarded husband, a former speechwriter for Geraldine Ferraro and adviser to George Soros. Her troubling relationship with alcohol leads to outbursts the wife of a powerful man would never be expected to have in public, let alone willfully on national television. She cooks and cleans and makes it niceand then shouts at you about it.
Theres also Ramona, who is very single and ready to mingle following her divorce, which ended an ostensibly perfect marriage. Tinsley went from It Girl to Mugshot Girl after her own divorce, and has never really recovered. This scene with her mother, which finds a disheveled Tinsley weeping in pageant makeup after hosting The Big Apple Circus, is one of RHONYs most poignant, and most representative.
If RHONYs women are the Beales (and, indeed, Sonjas tagline once referenced Grey Gardens), the women of RHOBH are still the Bouviers. Each category is interesting in its own way, and takes the right cast to pull off. RHOC, for instance, is struggling with a transition phase right now. At their heart, these shows use comedy and sometimes tragedy to crack the facade of elite superiority, documenting the pain money and fame can bring about.
This is a generally helpful lens through which to see the Housewives because it explains the tensions that make us laugh and keep us interested. If you think the Housewives warrant no serious consideration, thats perfectly understandable. But certain franchises really do live in the intersection of reality television and docuseries. The good ones successfully explore and lampoon the ways wealth or its absence can wound women, can drive them to new heights, or drive them to the personal destruction.
“The Real Karens”
This is the real Federalist?
Huh?
“Leah McSweeney, nakedlydrunkenlyextinguishes a tiki torch with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot this season, symbolically dousing the flame of white supremacy.”
Who cares? “Keeping up with the Joneses” is a recipe for misery. I’d have to be really bored to watch drivel like this.
They are not housewives. They are all rich, middle aged plastic bullies.
Ahhh,, The high paid hookers&housewives of Hollyweed. Bravo found a real money maker in that one.
Glad to see Lisa of Sur came to her senses and went back to entrepreneurship as her passion, not getting lips pumped full of silicon like Lisa of QVC who is a loon and Denise who looks so out of place and touch, it must be Charlie Sheen related and why they ever got together.
Growing older is difficult for women who have based their entire existence on their appearance.
I discovered “Real Housewives” (I don’t remember which ones, only that there was more than one,) in February, 2010, when I was confined to a bed in the hospital for more than 2 months, the first month on IV morphine and very strong antibiotics.
I admit I got somewhat addicted for reasons I’ve never quite understood.
But one thing I did notice, I could feel my individual brain cells dying (quite probably the brain cells were committing suicide,) while I watching those shows.
Mark
Very true
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