A Real Housewives State of Affairs

If you’re a OG housewives fan like myself, you know two things, the original Real housewives of New York (RHONY) and more recently The Real Housewives of Salt lake City (RHOSLC) are truly peak reality television, exceptional casting and pure theatre of the housewives phenomenon on full display.

As of February 2025, The Real Housewives has been our TV’s for 19 years and spawned 11 different US franchises.

It’s overall success cannot be denied!

Andy Cohen has proclaimed countless times, Housewives killed the Soap Opera.

And they did!

The housewives will go down in TV history as a juggernaut that permeated the entire globe, captivated audiences, broke the mold of reality TV, created its own lane, and presented a more sophisticated reality cast than we’d seen before.

RHOSLC season 5 was a perfect example of how captivating this franchise can still be when the right women, who have the right dynamic, and the right amount of balls all come together, but it also highlights how off track some of the other cities are currently sitting.

As an OG viewer, fanatic and repeat watcher of every city, season, episode, that’s ever been created under the Housewives umbrella, since the beginning. Never missed any episode. Ever!

I have some thoughts!

We’ve reached a cross road with the franchise as a whole and certain cast members , OGs, are losing their appeal, their way, or their minds!

A very quick skim through the TVdeets website (a long time running page which posts the live rating for the shows weekly) will reveal the steady decline in ratings over the last few years. Some to the point that their ongoing viability has become questionable. See below examples.

RHOBH – Season 12 premiere 2022 – 1,151.000m

Season 14 premiere 2024 – 796,000

RHONY – Season 13 premiere 2022 – 959,000

Season 15 premiere 2024 – 312,000

(tvdeets.com for more details)

Have the shows just lost their appeal after 19 years on air or is it something else?

Modern women, navigating life, love, relationships, careers and the rest will never stop being worth watching, so where is it going wrong?

Here’s what’s gone down, just in the last 12 months –

We have Karen Huger (Real Housewives of Potomac (RHOP) – 9 seasons) getting arrested for driving under the influence, living in denial in our faces, insulting the audience and getting busted the whole way, shamelessly denying her fault in any of this despite police body cam footage implicating her, essentially catching her red handed.

Teresa Giudice (Real Housewives of New Jersey (RHONJ)- 14 seasons) and Melissa Gorga (RHONJ – 12 seasons), because of their irreparable family rift (perpetuated and out for all of us to see, ON THE SHOW, for 12 seasons) essentially caused the cancellation of RHONJ, ‘paused’, as they say, but word on the street is this decision is more permanent then the network is letting on ( iykyk).

The demise culminated by seemingly troubled production methods in the last seasons, housewives with historic tenure provided too much room for entitled and disengaged behavior in their work ethic towards the show and a cast that may or may not have plotted to ruin each other’s lives for content.

Recently, we saw Bryn Whitfield accusing Ubah Hassan (Real housewives of New York – season 15) of sleeping with production to get her position on the show. Despite Ubah ‘knowing’ that Bryn had been SA’d, only to find out that Ubah did not know this information, and thoughtlessly publicity defamed her casemates character via this accusation.

This incident delivered the shows first actual watchable moment it’s had in the last two seasons since it’s reboot, but also the darkest.

Why are we letting clout chaser cast members pull these kinds of stunts? And how bad is your casting if this storyline was the only thing remotely interesting in 2 season?

The Real Housewives of Dubai – ‘paused’ (indefinitely) after it’s lackluster season 2 which failed to deliver real cohesion or a real shit for any of us to give.

Audiences are seemingly becoming fed up with Kyle Richards from the Real housewives of Beverly Hills (14 seasons), the only OG still standing, who after her divorce and inner need to present a picture perfect image of herself, has essentially made herself the anti housewife with a complete departure from transparency in the last two seasons.

These shows evolve and have ebbed and flowed in relevance throughout the years but this current era feels like they’ve lost their way.

What is a housewife and a housewives show meant to be?

From the outside looking in, it seems producers misguide the women in their choices during filming often and move the line of what is or isn’t allowed season to season.

‘Follow the reality’ is what former Real Housewives of Atlanta producer Carlos King (seasons 1-8) often laments in his ‘King of Reality’ Podcast, but lately these shows seem to take the truth as a malleable suggestion for a storyline.

Mr King also regularly refers to Potomac cast member Mia Thornton as ‘Mia be lying’, and lie she does!

Mia Thornton’s ‘paternity’, love and hip hop esque, fake ass storylines not only tow’s the line of the ethics of children’s involvement in these shows but also acts as a prime example of producers allowing cast members to turn their persona on the show into a concocted fictional character, designed and executed with perfect and conscious insincerity.

A noticeable trend over the last year is half truths and deception flow freely into the story arcs shamelessly by the cast and obvious lack of producer intervention.

It also feels like many long time housewives have not only had enough of the show, but the audience too and display this through their unwillingness to discuss what’s really going on (even though years ago they did) and have essentially moved the line of what is and isn’t allowed to be discussed. Kind of feels like we got sent to voicemail or dropped from the Christmas card list.

It’s only natural that when someone gives you dismissive energy and the feeling we(the audience) are no longer in the inner circle, ultimately we’ll receive your message, that we have now had our access to your story revoked, and we’ll bail, because that’s the message these women are sending us when they lie or scale down or omit the truth. Why does it feel like the audience has become an inconvenience to some of these women?

Kyle Richards energy and literal words at the last reunion essentially told the audience ‘after 14 years, I’ve decided I don’t owe you people shit, my life is my business and if you don’t like it, that sounds like a you problem! So fuck you very much.’

I feel like we got dumped as a collective audience and she’s now that friend that says she’ll organize a catch up but you know will probably never call again.

RHOBH being the most successful franchise, and many of us having been there from the beginning (the reason the show has succeeded) should highlight that after 14 years, we came this far to go on the journey with you, because you sat on our TVs and told us that’s what you wanted to do, so now everything is off limits or a secret? Without the openness why are you there?

We gave you grace last season, but if this is a thing now, girl bye!

Come back in 2 years.

She’s staying for the wrong reasons at this point anyway!

These trends and missteps across the shows make me wonder, why isn’t Andy Cohen intervening? Why are these women allowed to show up to mentally checked out?

Maybe his 20 year involvement and proximity to the women/shows is clouding his judgement when hard decisions need to be made?

Many of 2024s seasons delivered, and quite a few didn’t. Although the ratings weren’t all bad, for the first time, ever, I skipped episodes because of pure boredom. (Potomac., New York…sad days 😋, I didn’t know we’d fallen that far!)

As a day one watcher, I recently encountered an issue I'd never faced, a new episode had landed but based on the season so far, I had no interest in watching, and I didn't. This signified something was going wrong with the formula because for true fans, there is no such thing as missing an episode.

So I ponder and hope 2025 will see the stars realigning and necessary changes being made to reenergize the audiences confidence in the women and bring back transparency.

What I want to see happen on housewives in 2025 –

stop acting like New York is perfect, (Andy) you know it’s not, we know it’s not, just tell us how it is and do what’s needed. My opinion is a mini cast reboot, fire Brynn, demote Jenna, add 2 new girls.

Put Kyle Richards on pause. She needs it, we need it. The show needs it.

Fire Karen and Mia, they both are so messy, constantly play in our faces with the truth and our intelligence.

Give Kenya her flowers and rightful spot in the upcoming season of RHOA (ooohh child we gonna be so mad if the network do her dirty!)

we already know how these shows work on production, we’re 20 years in, so stop treating us like we’re don’t know what’s up!

When things aren’t working, say so or call housewives out, but don’t piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining, it’s 2025, we too grown now.

There has been too many instances of fakery, a lack of transparency and absent group cohesion that has brought us to the place where I’m scrunching my nose up because I know, they know, how to do it better, than how they’re doing it.

Bring back friends with real connections that existed before the show, bring back family dynamics, make transparency mandatory and get rid of stagnant energy that’s only still around because they’ve always been there!

We want powerful women, who love hard, fight hard, can read a bitch and tell the truth! The rest is all fluff.

The downward trend in ratings for every city from the last few years is substantial, and not going unnoticed, but i do hope that I’m still watching Housewives for years to come. These shows are my favorite juicy conversations between my friends and I, scandalous and delicious moments, they deliver camp, kitsch, tears, insight, friendship, glamour, adventure and influence pop culture, our lives and stand out in the reality world as the top shelf genre by far!

I hope they can get it together, I know they can GO THE DISTANCE!

Written by Mel Nicolosi

Housewives Historian and Enthusiast

additional thoughts-

Stop asking for the original RHONY girls back, you can’t recreate magic in a bottle, the cards have been dealt, we have to move forward, we had it so good though! I feel you 💘

quick thoughts on Australian franchises, Real housewives of Melbourne can also not be recreated, also ightening in a bottle… But if Gina is in I’m there no matter 😋

Bring back Mariah to Married 2 Medicine, this season and cast is just rinse and repeat at this point (best show on Bravo though)

Let me know if you want a deep dive into the supposed Real Housewives of Rhode Island said to be replacing New Jersey. Brilliant idea in my opinion, a full jersey reboot would never work with the audience, a new location but same vibe is the perfect direction, and all the production staff from RHONJ get to keep their jobs!

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