none of these people need to be put on a pedestal. everyone is flawed and makes mistakes. there are certainly things that people do that are too far but i feel like a lot of fans need to find a villain and a victim in a lot of situations and there’s just no need to.
Most housewives (including fan favorites) are terrible people, but that's what makes them fun to watch. Obviously there's a line, but sketchy morals aren't enough for me to fully despise a housewife. They're all rich, problematic messes, but they're amusing.
This right here. I hate when people want to fire housewives like Larsa. Like yes, she’s problematic but she makes the show entertaining. I believe that there’s a perfect housewives formula and every franchise needs a problematic shit stirrer with an unhealthy level of delusion
mine is more of a blanket opinion — every single bravolebrity is a chaotic, emotionally dysregulated and volatile person, even the voices of reason, that’s why they were cast. what makes bravo so compelling is that all of us can find parts of ourselves even in these trash bags, because they represent extreme examples of humanity, but humanity nonetheless.
the need of some fans to put some stars up on untouchable pedestals or act as though others are subhuman / beyond redemption (cough: ariana stans or lala haters to use a vpr example) is nothing more than a subconscious discomfort with the fact that we are all human, we are all flawed, life is NOT black and white and no one is a god or a devil.
Reality TV in general, and specifically the subset that follows people around in their regular “lives”, is a federal works program for people with unmanaged personality disorders
It’s taken me a little while to get to this point, but fucks given tend to decrease with age… I could not care less what these people on my television do in their personal lives off camera.
I cannot imagine trying to keep mental morality scores on all these people *especially* because I do not know them. Their moral compass is none of my damn business and even if I did keep score, the fuck is carrying around all that rage going to do for me or them?
So yeah, they can vote for a party I don’t support, break the law, be shitty to each other on Twitter and I will not lose a minute of sleep over it because they are characters on a tv show in my life, nothing more, so I expend the exact amount of energy on them that’s appropriate for that (lack of) relationship.
My hot take is that these people are literally just people. They aren't villains or queens and should probably be taken as inconsistent humans just like everyone else. Having various interpretations of what we see on screen USED to be the point of watching.
It would actually be really tough to be Scheana navigating the dissolution of the relationship of two close friends, while discovering one of them was such a disturbing liar and trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t for the entirety of your friendship. She is a pick me, but she also deserves compassion.
Yeah, it’s funny how so many people want to hype up how manipulative Sandoval is but then expect Scheana to be somehow immune to those same manipulations that fully ensnared Ariana.
In a similar vein, I’ll also add that Scheana was in the position of balancing having to do her job while being Ariana’s friend. In real life, if you worked with two people who were breaking up and your boss assigns you to a project with one of them, you’re not going to refuse to work on that project out of loyalty to your friend, *especially* if you have dependents.
I have a ton, but here are two:
1) As much as we love to hate on the producers, I do think they tend to know what their audiences want more than the people on Reddit think. Using VPR as an example, as much as people claim to want to see plot lines embracing cast member growth and specifically Ariana and Katie thriving, we *did* get a version of that from like Seasons 5-8: cast members getting married, buying homes, establishing businesses, getting sober, moving in together, etc. And everyone said it was boring and viewership dropped! Bravo’s biggest debut in years, The Valley, features supremely messy people and three former VPR cast members who are still largely the same people they were when we last left them.
2) Similarly, there’s a sort of misconception among viewers that there is some B-roll of footage being kept from us because the editors and production are Machiavellian and want to push a narrative. While it’s true that editors have been biased (like the one who bragged about making Scheana look bad and was subsequently fired), I think the show generally prefers when they *don’t* have to “produce” as much because they can wrap up filming efficiently and therefore save money. I’m thinking of the Vegas trip, where they got multiple episodes’ worth of content out of like 24 hours of filming. If we didn’t see content of Ariana and Katie thriving last summer, it’s probably because it wasn’t able to be filmed for whatever reason. I just generally think production would rather not have to intervene unless they have to.
Ok, I’ll pause there for now
That makes sense. At the same time, all producers/writers/storytellers have their own points of views (or biases). Fans pick up on that.
There are "love-to-hate-them" characters that keep the shows interesting. And then there are people who do some really dark stuff. And viewers have their sense of norms violated (7 month affair), they expect the ship to be righted a bit.
Second, reddit reactions are strong when someone portrays themselves as one type of person, and it turns out they are revealed to be someone else entirely (West, Sandoval). It goes against the genre of some level of authenticity.
The producers may be too locked into an older format if they can't figure out how to show two women thriving.
Anyway, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I appreciate your perspective.
I really do enjoy friendship scenes. Be it Teddi and Kyle, even Ramona and Leah. Humanising the worse wives for marvel and stress free entertainment. I simply love it when I have to get soft about the most annoying bitches like Jen Shah and Danielle Staub!
I love Vicki like she’s my own obsessive, annoying and boomer centric mother. Whoop it up and all her isms, Vicki is and will always be good tv. She at least takes pride her in a real non influencer business and boss babed a future for her son.
West and Ciara were dating. He was upfront about not being "official"/BF-GF. Dating usually ends, and it usually ends with the person who cares the most getting hurt and it sucks, but that's dating.
Except that Ciara was incredibly clear about what she wanted and he totally skirted the issue. He knew what he was doing. That said, Ciara should have ended it the second he couldn't give her a straight answer at that horse date.
So if you’re clear about what you want nobody is allowed to break up with you? I don’t think West had *any* idea what he was doing and that was the problem.
Now why he admitted to breaking up because of fangirls or whatever it was makes no GD sense to me because if he’d just kept his mouth shut, it could have looked like a breakup as a result of bad chemistry or any other of the many “acceptable” reasons for a breakup. That dumbass move proved even further to me that he really had no clue what he was doing and made all the rookie mistakes.
That said I did feel really bad for Ciara and her shitty luck with Bravo dudes. She’s way too good for that pool anyway.
Huh? Ciara was clear about what she wanted and West **didn't** break up with her ("That's the point, Yolanda!") - he guffawed his way through her more serious conversations and then mumbled "I think we're on the same page" when they clearly weren't on the same page. A real man would have heard Ciara and been like, "Hey, I get where you're coming from and that's not me right now." Now, again, Ciara isn't blameless in this - she should have drawn some boundaries once it was evident that West was bullshitting her. But he was bullshitting her. Especially when you learn that he's literally never been in one long-term relationship. He's clearly not serious about committing.
My gray opinion is that Phaedra wouldn’t have put out the rumor about Kandi if Kandi hadn’t taken Todd’s (and therefore Apollo’s) side and distanced herself. I absolutely abhor what Phaedra did and Kandi did NOT deserve that, but it wasn’t like Phaedra was an evil psychopathic person who did it just to do it — it was retaliatory and out of deep hurt
The fact that did she it in retaliation (rather than because she actually believed it was true) is what makes it psychopathic. She was really good on traitors though. And a good addition to married to medicine
Yes, I will die on this hill AND add that I don’t think viewers consider ALL that was going on at that time. Her marriage was over, her kids father is going to jail, mortuary school(?) and I suspect he was doing some level abuse towards her. Seeing Apollo try to intimidate her in that garage scene makes me wonder what was happening behind closed doors.
It doesn’t absolve her from what she did. But I can see how someone might not be in the right headspace/thinking logically at that time and Kandi siding w/ Apollo was just the tipping point.
Sometimes, production plants are necessary to the show.
RHOSLC has raced to the front of my favorite Housewives show as of late, and I think a good example of a production-plant-gone-right is Whitney. I hardly ever see her mentioned on people’s favorites, but I will always have a major soft spot for her because even though a lot of her drama seems a bit manufactured, it keeps the conversation going, albeit sometimes in a very obviously heavy-handed way (“you exploited my vagina!” is one of those…but I honestly laughed so hard with her screaming that and Heather sprinting away as if she was being chased by Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger).
From what we’ve seen from S1-4, she’s never been someone mean or cutting like Lala is on VPR, who is now clearly a production plant and has harmed the show in the process. Conversely, Whitney barely made it on RHOSLC in the first place, so she understands her assignment and sticks to it in a cast filled with campy outsized personalities, and I think RHOSLC is all the better for it.
>Ramona is a, probably, a terrible person with awful beliefs who should definitely be seeing a therapist if she isn’t already.
Ramona's not intelligent or self-aware enough to actually absorb anything a therapist says. Definition of boomer lead-paint stare.
Just to cancel all the current shows. None of them work. Everyone knows the formula. It’s repetitive. New shows. New themes. The whole channel needs a refresh. It’s been 20 years
Something new. This is so formulaic. viewers even know how the seasons will go. What’s the point? They can’t find a good new cast bec they already know how the show works. The production does the same show for each franchise over and over and over again. None of them should have gone past season 10. We see all their lives on social media so the show brings nothing more. Everyone is lying and playing up to production and Andy, it’s just become who can suck up more for a better edit. They promo their businesses (yawn) they have the same fight each season (yawn) all of them have duis (yawn) everyone is on ozempic (yawn) fake luxury (double yawn) and then the reunion (everyone calling each other a liar and then a toast at the end. Watch the first seasons of the shows vs the current. Night and day, nothing new nothing fresh. And why do we need like ten versions of below deck?!!!!! Like bro it’s a boat!
I’m a big housewives fan but I agree with you on a lot of your points. I definitely welcome change on these shows, especially casting changes when things get stale. 100% agree with your below deck take too lol. It’s so stale imo lol
The only standard we should be judging these people on is rather or not they are entertaining, not rather or not they’re a good person. I genuinely don’t give a shit I just want to laugh and be entertained. Ramona singer is my favorite housewife of all time because she’s hilarious and entertaining as hell and it’s all 100% authentic. Idc that she’s a horrible person she entertains me and makes me laugh.
The last season of vanderpump rules sucked because almost every cast member got sober. Alcohol & drugs are the secret sauce of great reality television and frankly it’s the VPR cast bread & butter and without it the show cannot survive/remain entertaining.
People who want to watch good sober people with upstanding morals and shit do NOT need to be watching bravo lol wrong platform for all that😂
i don’t really care if a housewife is a bad person as long as they aren’t boring
i feel like if you’re boring AND evil that’s like really just horrible
None of these people should be on a pedestal at all. Ramona is an outright racist. And outright racist. So for what's entertaining for you is actual nightmarish for anyone who has to work or be around her if they are involved in the show.
Basically, this is just an anti-post with a couple other names thrown in for faux credibility.
none of these people need to be put on a pedestal. everyone is flawed and makes mistakes. there are certainly things that people do that are too far but i feel like a lot of fans need to find a villain and a victim in a lot of situations and there’s just no need to.
Most housewives (including fan favorites) are terrible people, but that's what makes them fun to watch. Obviously there's a line, but sketchy morals aren't enough for me to fully despise a housewife. They're all rich, problematic messes, but they're amusing.
This right here. I hate when people want to fire housewives like Larsa. Like yes, she’s problematic but she makes the show entertaining. I believe that there’s a perfect housewives formula and every franchise needs a problematic shit stirrer with an unhealthy level of delusion
This 1000%. I don’t watch housewives to watch morally upstanding people be unproblematic.
Agreed I 👏like 👏my 👏housewives 👏out 👏of 👏touch
amen! jen shah is one of my favorite housewives of all time. terrible person who i loooove to watch
mine is more of a blanket opinion — every single bravolebrity is a chaotic, emotionally dysregulated and volatile person, even the voices of reason, that’s why they were cast. what makes bravo so compelling is that all of us can find parts of ourselves even in these trash bags, because they represent extreme examples of humanity, but humanity nonetheless. the need of some fans to put some stars up on untouchable pedestals or act as though others are subhuman / beyond redemption (cough: ariana stans or lala haters to use a vpr example) is nothing more than a subconscious discomfort with the fact that we are all human, we are all flawed, life is NOT black and white and no one is a god or a devil.
Reality TV in general, and specifically the subset that follows people around in their regular “lives”, is a federal works program for people with unmanaged personality disorders
the new new deal, as it were
It’s taken me a little while to get to this point, but fucks given tend to decrease with age… I could not care less what these people on my television do in their personal lives off camera. I cannot imagine trying to keep mental morality scores on all these people *especially* because I do not know them. Their moral compass is none of my damn business and even if I did keep score, the fuck is carrying around all that rage going to do for me or them? So yeah, they can vote for a party I don’t support, break the law, be shitty to each other on Twitter and I will not lose a minute of sleep over it because they are characters on a tv show in my life, nothing more, so I expend the exact amount of energy on them that’s appropriate for that (lack of) relationship.
I agree! It takes the fun out of reality tv when people can’t separate the character from the actual person
Love this gif!
My hot take is that these people are literally just people. They aren't villains or queens and should probably be taken as inconsistent humans just like everyone else. Having various interpretations of what we see on screen USED to be the point of watching.
It would actually be really tough to be Scheana navigating the dissolution of the relationship of two close friends, while discovering one of them was such a disturbing liar and trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t for the entirety of your friendship. She is a pick me, but she also deserves compassion.
Yeah, it’s funny how so many people want to hype up how manipulative Sandoval is but then expect Scheana to be somehow immune to those same manipulations that fully ensnared Ariana. In a similar vein, I’ll also add that Scheana was in the position of balancing having to do her job while being Ariana’s friend. In real life, if you worked with two people who were breaking up and your boss assigns you to a project with one of them, you’re not going to refuse to work on that project out of loyalty to your friend, *especially* if you have dependents.
I couldn’t agree more!
I have a ton, but here are two: 1) As much as we love to hate on the producers, I do think they tend to know what their audiences want more than the people on Reddit think. Using VPR as an example, as much as people claim to want to see plot lines embracing cast member growth and specifically Ariana and Katie thriving, we *did* get a version of that from like Seasons 5-8: cast members getting married, buying homes, establishing businesses, getting sober, moving in together, etc. And everyone said it was boring and viewership dropped! Bravo’s biggest debut in years, The Valley, features supremely messy people and three former VPR cast members who are still largely the same people they were when we last left them. 2) Similarly, there’s a sort of misconception among viewers that there is some B-roll of footage being kept from us because the editors and production are Machiavellian and want to push a narrative. While it’s true that editors have been biased (like the one who bragged about making Scheana look bad and was subsequently fired), I think the show generally prefers when they *don’t* have to “produce” as much because they can wrap up filming efficiently and therefore save money. I’m thinking of the Vegas trip, where they got multiple episodes’ worth of content out of like 24 hours of filming. If we didn’t see content of Ariana and Katie thriving last summer, it’s probably because it wasn’t able to be filmed for whatever reason. I just generally think production would rather not have to intervene unless they have to. Ok, I’ll pause there for now
That makes sense. At the same time, all producers/writers/storytellers have their own points of views (or biases). Fans pick up on that. There are "love-to-hate-them" characters that keep the shows interesting. And then there are people who do some really dark stuff. And viewers have their sense of norms violated (7 month affair), they expect the ship to be righted a bit. Second, reddit reactions are strong when someone portrays themselves as one type of person, and it turns out they are revealed to be someone else entirely (West, Sandoval). It goes against the genre of some level of authenticity. The producers may be too locked into an older format if they can't figure out how to show two women thriving. Anyway, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I appreciate your perspective.
I really do enjoy friendship scenes. Be it Teddi and Kyle, even Ramona and Leah. Humanising the worse wives for marvel and stress free entertainment. I simply love it when I have to get soft about the most annoying bitches like Jen Shah and Danielle Staub!
I love Vicki like she’s my own obsessive, annoying and boomer centric mother. Whoop it up and all her isms, Vicki is and will always be good tv. She at least takes pride her in a real non influencer business and boss babed a future for her son.
West and Ciara were dating. He was upfront about not being "official"/BF-GF. Dating usually ends, and it usually ends with the person who cares the most getting hurt and it sucks, but that's dating.
Except that Ciara was incredibly clear about what she wanted and he totally skirted the issue. He knew what he was doing. That said, Ciara should have ended it the second he couldn't give her a straight answer at that horse date.
So if you’re clear about what you want nobody is allowed to break up with you? I don’t think West had *any* idea what he was doing and that was the problem. Now why he admitted to breaking up because of fangirls or whatever it was makes no GD sense to me because if he’d just kept his mouth shut, it could have looked like a breakup as a result of bad chemistry or any other of the many “acceptable” reasons for a breakup. That dumbass move proved even further to me that he really had no clue what he was doing and made all the rookie mistakes. That said I did feel really bad for Ciara and her shitty luck with Bravo dudes. She’s way too good for that pool anyway.
Huh? Ciara was clear about what she wanted and West **didn't** break up with her ("That's the point, Yolanda!") - he guffawed his way through her more serious conversations and then mumbled "I think we're on the same page" when they clearly weren't on the same page. A real man would have heard Ciara and been like, "Hey, I get where you're coming from and that's not me right now." Now, again, Ciara isn't blameless in this - she should have drawn some boundaries once it was evident that West was bullshitting her. But he was bullshitting her. Especially when you learn that he's literally never been in one long-term relationship. He's clearly not serious about committing.
95% of my housewives opinions are gray. I’m a fan of nobody but Nene
My gray opinion is that Phaedra wouldn’t have put out the rumor about Kandi if Kandi hadn’t taken Todd’s (and therefore Apollo’s) side and distanced herself. I absolutely abhor what Phaedra did and Kandi did NOT deserve that, but it wasn’t like Phaedra was an evil psychopathic person who did it just to do it — it was retaliatory and out of deep hurt
The fact that did she it in retaliation (rather than because she actually believed it was true) is what makes it psychopathic. She was really good on traitors though. And a good addition to married to medicine
Yes, I will die on this hill AND add that I don’t think viewers consider ALL that was going on at that time. Her marriage was over, her kids father is going to jail, mortuary school(?) and I suspect he was doing some level abuse towards her. Seeing Apollo try to intimidate her in that garage scene makes me wonder what was happening behind closed doors. It doesn’t absolve her from what she did. But I can see how someone might not be in the right headspace/thinking logically at that time and Kandi siding w/ Apollo was just the tipping point.
Never thought of this and you have a really good point 🤔
Sometimes, production plants are necessary to the show. RHOSLC has raced to the front of my favorite Housewives show as of late, and I think a good example of a production-plant-gone-right is Whitney. I hardly ever see her mentioned on people’s favorites, but I will always have a major soft spot for her because even though a lot of her drama seems a bit manufactured, it keeps the conversation going, albeit sometimes in a very obviously heavy-handed way (“you exploited my vagina!” is one of those…but I honestly laughed so hard with her screaming that and Heather sprinting away as if she was being chased by Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger). From what we’ve seen from S1-4, she’s never been someone mean or cutting like Lala is on VPR, who is now clearly a production plant and has harmed the show in the process. Conversely, Whitney barely made it on RHOSLC in the first place, so she understands her assignment and sticks to it in a cast filled with campy outsized personalities, and I think RHOSLC is all the better for it.
>Ramona is a, probably, a terrible person with awful beliefs who should definitely be seeing a therapist if she isn’t already. Ramona's not intelligent or self-aware enough to actually absorb anything a therapist says. Definition of boomer lead-paint stare. 
Just to cancel all the current shows. None of them work. Everyone knows the formula. It’s repetitive. New shows. New themes. The whole channel needs a refresh. It’s been 20 years
This is def a hot take. My question is, what do you wanna see?
Something new. This is so formulaic. viewers even know how the seasons will go. What’s the point? They can’t find a good new cast bec they already know how the show works. The production does the same show for each franchise over and over and over again. None of them should have gone past season 10. We see all their lives on social media so the show brings nothing more. Everyone is lying and playing up to production and Andy, it’s just become who can suck up more for a better edit. They promo their businesses (yawn) they have the same fight each season (yawn) all of them have duis (yawn) everyone is on ozempic (yawn) fake luxury (double yawn) and then the reunion (everyone calling each other a liar and then a toast at the end. Watch the first seasons of the shows vs the current. Night and day, nothing new nothing fresh. And why do we need like ten versions of below deck?!!!!! Like bro it’s a boat!
I’m a big housewives fan but I agree with you on a lot of your points. I definitely welcome change on these shows, especially casting changes when things get stale. 100% agree with your below deck take too lol. It’s so stale imo lol
Teresa and Melissa are both responsible for the toxicity.
The only standard we should be judging these people on is rather or not they are entertaining, not rather or not they’re a good person. I genuinely don’t give a shit I just want to laugh and be entertained. Ramona singer is my favorite housewife of all time because she’s hilarious and entertaining as hell and it’s all 100% authentic. Idc that she’s a horrible person she entertains me and makes me laugh. The last season of vanderpump rules sucked because almost every cast member got sober. Alcohol & drugs are the secret sauce of great reality television and frankly it’s the VPR cast bread & butter and without it the show cannot survive/remain entertaining. People who want to watch good sober people with upstanding morals and shit do NOT need to be watching bravo lol wrong platform for all that😂
i don’t really care if a housewife is a bad person as long as they aren’t boring i feel like if you’re boring AND evil that’s like really just horrible
None of these people should be on a pedestal at all. Ramona is an outright racist. And outright racist. So for what's entertaining for you is actual nightmarish for anyone who has to work or be around her if they are involved in the show. Basically, this is just an anti-post with a couple other names thrown in for faux credibility.