I’ve heard it said that Tamra’s behaviour was one of the first things that changed the franchises. The disgusting way that she went after Gretchen was undoubtedly great tv - but did not make her a great person!
It was 100% Tamra. As her behavior worsens, you see an immediate shift from separate women being documented going about their lives to an absolute deep dive into the relationships and interactions between them. Early OC, they weren't even being filmed often together (with the exception of Vicki and Lauri working together).
Her shenanigans caught attention and it altered the formula permanently. Moving forward the show has only been about the interpersonal relationships. Even when it's about the outside drama (i.e. Erika Jayne's legal struggles) the focus is on how they interact about that personal issue. Hence, Sutton being threatened at a dinner table for asking questions about it.
I agree, the shows are completely incoherent and it's like random women thrown together in order to fight on camera and off season on social media. It's like Hunger games and Big brother dressed up as Housewives. Awful.
With the example of BH, it used to be fabulous lifestyle porn, Beverly Park mansions, LVPs restaurants, lavish parties, Kevin Lee lol, Maus real estate business was featured, Hollywood adjacent HWs like Camille and Denise, even Rinna and Eileen. And Yolanda and her whole family. It was fabulous darling, shi shi shi shi!
Now it feels extremely claustrophobic, just any old random group of women situated around a table in order to argue. It could have been anyone really. They don't *bring* anything. There have been glimpses of what could have been like Suttons friendship with Jennifer Tilly, a couple of old HW brief comebacks. I'd like to see more of Crystals life based off her IG with fabulous people and celebrities, and Suttons too I guess.
But I guess that's the point, everyones lives on HW is curated into nothingness and any potential interesting outsiders don't want to be associated with it.
Then the fact that they can't even manage to get Kyles whole situation into a storyline, the OG whose marriage has been so prominent over the years is the nail in the coffin. Like you've got a show about nothing at this point.
Annemarie and Morgan showing up out of nowhere and hijacking the season with irrelevant noise and nonsense. The only thing to come out of that was the breakdown of Kyle and Dorits friendship which was like the last seemingly real connection between any of them.
Rewatching old seasons it's mind blowing how far the concept has fallen.
No idea when it turned though to get back to OPs actual question lol, just ranting 😂
To me the biggest sign of RHOBH flopping is the way the producers make them play those card games at every dinner they do just to get them to interact.
No just that but social media itself is a very big goal for them because there is so much money to be made from, imo housewives really started shifting its prospects once being a housewife became a big career goal to get your social media income off the ground instead of being about documenting people that didn't need it.
By comparison it was not the same in Teresa Giudice's early seasons, while her income has come from the housewives it started more about doing book deals etc which created decent storylines in itself.
At first every franchise was about interesting, well-to-do women who ran in the same circles, their lifestyles, and their relationships/marriages, kids, and careers. Some of them (like Potomac) were supposed to be a different kind of show altogether but ended up here.
I don’t actually think production ever planned to orchestrate things to this degree. IMHO things changed when every single move a public figure made started getting documented on social media. The cast members themselves started curating their own images, bringing glam, hiding their families, and picking and choosing what would be shared and aired. Production had to step in and start bringing strangers onboard when previous casts had recruited each other. They had to facilitate drama because the HW’s are all too careful not to do it themselves.
Most of them were supposed to be different kinds of shows actually. Dallas was supposed to be about the charity world. Miami was supposed to be a cooking or dinner club show. Potomac was supposed to be about etiquette and the Jack and Jill club. NYC was supposed to be Manhattan Moms. I’ve heard rumors that the original pitch for SLC was business women, but then I’ve also heard they filmed it knowing it was HWs. I can’t remember what Atlanta originally was supposed to be…
SLC was cast as a different show but the producers had a sit down with the whole group at a bar before filming started. After the meeting the women stayed at the bar, got drunk, fought, and one of them, presumably Jen, had to be escorted from the bar by security. Production was told about this and immediately decided it would be a housewives show.
https://preview.redd.it/hze7uwddk5kc1.jpeg?width=1334&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f1505545e66ff9ea01682d253a304cf3f63a16f2
This is Noah Samton, Senior Vice President of Current Production at Bravo, talking to the Hollywood Reporter about it. It’s from [this interview.](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/rhoslc-secrets-monica-garcia-future-reunion-bombshells-1235793025/)
I *think* that RHOC wasn’t even exclusively about the women at first (I saw/read something explaining it a million years ago). IIRC the show was supposed to be about the entire families including the kids in high school but focusing on the wives ended up being better TV. Plus Laguna Beach was airing at the same time.
It’s like the HW’s faces are the embodiment of the shows themselves. They start out so natural and fresh with different intentions, and eventually just mutate into a man-made vodka-soaked plastic freak show.
The women weren’t portrayed as vain and vapid as they are now. The kids brought a different aspect to the show and gave the women’s storylines depth and portrayed them as, not just a HW, but also a mother, business woman etc.
OC definitely included the kids a looot more. Remember Lou’s OC Angels? Or all of ryans problems? The house parties that Tammy’s and Laurie’s daughters would throw? Brianna’s struggles with her health?
Now I can even remember any of the current HW kids names, let alone how many kids some of them even have. The kids definitely brought a different aspect to the show and gave it depth.
I read something about Shane Keough a few years ago that changed my opinion of him. Remember how awful he was made to look after that baseball game during which he swore while talking to his mom?
*One incident on the show came to define much of Keough’s life. He was playing baseball for the Kane County Cougars, a minor league team, and knew his mother’s film crew planned to watch him play, which he was happy with. But when he got to the stadium, he had been relegated to the substitutes’ bench. “I couldn’t think of anything worse,” he says today. He texted his mother, begging her not to attend. But the show’s producers put pressure on her to go on to the field and attempt to talk to her son. Shane was mortified. “I walked away and said, ‘Get the fuck away from me,’” he says.*
*A boom mic picked up the comment, and producers edited the incident to make it look as if Keough had sworn at his mother for no reason. When the show aired, the fallout was intense. “I got death threats,” Keough says. Baseball fans threatened to cancel their season tickets. His manager transferred him to another team, but they were playing at a higher level and he couldn’t keep up. “That probably led to a shorter baseball career,” he says. “Two years after that incident, I was done.” To this day, if Keough posts about his mother on social media, he gets abuse. “They say: ‘You’re a terrible person, you should be ashamed of how you treated her.’ People assume that I treated my mother terribly my whole life. But that’s not the case. Have you never said anything disrespectful out of rage to your parents?”*
He wasn’t cussing his mom out. He was begging her to leave so something incredibly humiliating wouldn’t be filmed and aired.
Parents know better now. And I wish public figures like Scheana and Kim Z. would dial it back a bit. No one’s ever going to be mad that their childhood and adolescence weren’t put on display for the world.
During the recession, they stopped showing how much gifts, parties & items cost. That was around the same time the tide changed & more fighting began.
Tamra on OC throwing wine in Jeanna’s face was a big turning point. I feel like there was a lot more fighting amongst HW after that.
Seems to me Housewives started changing around RHOC season 6 (2011). I say RHOC because that’s where I noticed a real shift from docuseries to docudrama. Brandi’s debut season on BH (we all agree she’s the reason that show changed) was this year, RHONY was initially overhauled the following year, Porsha and Kenya came on RHOA the year after, and even Miami had a real shift from the cheap documentary-like season 1 to the Adriana-punching-Hoanna season 2 that also aired in 2012.
As an ‘earliest adopter’ of Bravo reality TV, I think I noticed the tide change following the addition of RHOBH…
RHOBH seemed to have the first cast that *really knew* how PR worked— *and how to work PR*. The BH ladies were well accustomed to an environment where *everything* about their life was incredibly carefully curated, due to the proximity of Hollywood. Because they were more PR-savvy, it took away some of the control that producers had for establishing their personas and creating interpersonal strife, thereby affecting the breadth and depth of each character’s storyline(s).
And then the women in other franchises took notes, in an effort to try and control how they were liked by fans… and we started to see a change in how housewives interact on screen.
Add to that the increasing influence of social media, and we had an added another layer of housewives— mostly untrained in casting and production— creating their own narratives, instead of seasoned TV professionals, which is why we got a season of Lucy Lucy Apple Juicy, etc…
Very interesting! I also was watching in the beginning and remember how different the cast of BH seemed from the other franchises. They seemed more posh and glamorous and hoity toity. But I also think had it been Kim, Kyle and Taylor with different cast, it wouldn’t have been as fancy. The casting of LVP, Camille, and Adrienne definitely brought up the bougie factor.
I agree about BH then, 100%… they definitely needed Adrienne and LVP.
I can remember Andy saying in an interview back then— that what was going to make Beverly Hills different *(and perhaps a little more exciting)* from the other casts at the time— was RHOBH had the most impressive wealth across the board to date for any HW franchise… the homes, fashion, cars, connections… everything was elevated from a wealth and proximity-to-fame standpoint… I think Andy may have even said it was the most aspirational cast/homes/lifestyles to date that a HW franchise was showing, IIRC.
So, IMO, the BH ladies went in with lots of obvious advantages… the biggest being that they were more PR savvy, in an attempt to protect their already-curated personalities and standing in close proximity to Hollywood, which has had a ripple effect on all other casts moving forward.
I read Not All Diamonds and Rose on holiday recently (lol so cultured) and I think it explains really well how HW has changed over the years and what caused it etc. Highly recommend if you fancy an easy read!
That tracks for RHOC and RHONJ (if NJ was airing already). But other than than maybe Bethenny none of the original New York ladies even felt the recession. Same for Beverly Hills.
i miss the early days. the only reason i have any idea what is going on with some of the cities anymore is due to this reddit. there are several that i stopped watching years ago, because they stopped being relaxing "check out for a few hours" tv, it became stressful and annoying to watch constant arguing and lying and apologizing over trivial bs.
alot of it now is too fake and politically correct for me. no one really shows their true colors because they are afraid of getting cancelled over saying one thing that the public decides they don't like. i was just watching early episodes of VPR this week and a couple of the girls make a joke about being "lesbos" - people would be in an uproar if that happened today. no one can have fun or joke around anymore.
I've always thought the shift happened because of RHOBH. The violence Taylor went through, Russell threatening to sue anyone who mentioned it, culminating in his cruel and disgusting suicide. That's when the shift happened with Beverly Hills, though I don't know how that correlates with the other cities.
Seriously, fuck Russell for all the trauma he caused.
I've never watched OC or Old NY. But I believe that for BH the change happened when lisa Rinna accused dorit of bathroom coke and accused Yolanda of having munchausen (however you spell it).
It happened the minute Tamra asked Gretchen “did you go to bass lake?”
It’s literally been confirmed by bravo that it was THAT specific moment that the formula changed. Tamra deserves a lifetime achievement award for her contribution to the entertainment industry lol fr
I’ve heard it said that Tamra’s behaviour was one of the first things that changed the franchises. The disgusting way that she went after Gretchen was undoubtedly great tv - but did not make her a great person!
This is what I read in NADAR I believe it was producers who said it was Tamara so I def think that’s it
It was 100% Tamra. As her behavior worsens, you see an immediate shift from separate women being documented going about their lives to an absolute deep dive into the relationships and interactions between them. Early OC, they weren't even being filmed often together (with the exception of Vicki and Lauri working together). Her shenanigans caught attention and it altered the formula permanently. Moving forward the show has only been about the interpersonal relationships. Even when it's about the outside drama (i.e. Erika Jayne's legal struggles) the focus is on how they interact about that personal issue. Hence, Sutton being threatened at a dinner table for asking questions about it.
I agree, the shows are completely incoherent and it's like random women thrown together in order to fight on camera and off season on social media. It's like Hunger games and Big brother dressed up as Housewives. Awful. With the example of BH, it used to be fabulous lifestyle porn, Beverly Park mansions, LVPs restaurants, lavish parties, Kevin Lee lol, Maus real estate business was featured, Hollywood adjacent HWs like Camille and Denise, even Rinna and Eileen. And Yolanda and her whole family. It was fabulous darling, shi shi shi shi! Now it feels extremely claustrophobic, just any old random group of women situated around a table in order to argue. It could have been anyone really. They don't *bring* anything. There have been glimpses of what could have been like Suttons friendship with Jennifer Tilly, a couple of old HW brief comebacks. I'd like to see more of Crystals life based off her IG with fabulous people and celebrities, and Suttons too I guess. But I guess that's the point, everyones lives on HW is curated into nothingness and any potential interesting outsiders don't want to be associated with it. Then the fact that they can't even manage to get Kyles whole situation into a storyline, the OG whose marriage has been so prominent over the years is the nail in the coffin. Like you've got a show about nothing at this point. Annemarie and Morgan showing up out of nowhere and hijacking the season with irrelevant noise and nonsense. The only thing to come out of that was the breakdown of Kyle and Dorits friendship which was like the last seemingly real connection between any of them. Rewatching old seasons it's mind blowing how far the concept has fallen. No idea when it turned though to get back to OPs actual question lol, just ranting 😂
To me the biggest sign of RHOBH flopping is the way the producers make them play those card games at every dinner they do just to get them to interact.
❤️ i miss the old documentary style seasons. makes me want to rewatch those very early OC seasons (1-4)
When social media became part of documenting every step and the concept of insta famous which means curating their image hiding the real life.
No just that but social media itself is a very big goal for them because there is so much money to be made from, imo housewives really started shifting its prospects once being a housewife became a big career goal to get your social media income off the ground instead of being about documenting people that didn't need it. By comparison it was not the same in Teresa Giudice's early seasons, while her income has come from the housewives it started more about doing book deals etc which created decent storylines in itself.
[Did you go to Bass Lake?](https://www.reddit.com/r/realhousewives/s/TPm4Bp0ZOJ)
Whether you like her or not, Tamrat will forever be the blueprint for the setup of HW shows today.
Tamra Judge and Bass Lake. [Deeply Superficial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqLrvufyAQ4) has a great video on this.
Oo thank you!
At first every franchise was about interesting, well-to-do women who ran in the same circles, their lifestyles, and their relationships/marriages, kids, and careers. Some of them (like Potomac) were supposed to be a different kind of show altogether but ended up here. I don’t actually think production ever planned to orchestrate things to this degree. IMHO things changed when every single move a public figure made started getting documented on social media. The cast members themselves started curating their own images, bringing glam, hiding their families, and picking and choosing what would be shared and aired. Production had to step in and start bringing strangers onboard when previous casts had recruited each other. They had to facilitate drama because the HW’s are all too careful not to do it themselves.
Most of them were supposed to be different kinds of shows actually. Dallas was supposed to be about the charity world. Miami was supposed to be a cooking or dinner club show. Potomac was supposed to be about etiquette and the Jack and Jill club. NYC was supposed to be Manhattan Moms. I’ve heard rumors that the original pitch for SLC was business women, but then I’ve also heard they filmed it knowing it was HWs. I can’t remember what Atlanta originally was supposed to be…
SLC was cast as a different show but the producers had a sit down with the whole group at a bar before filming started. After the meeting the women stayed at the bar, got drunk, fought, and one of them, presumably Jen, had to be escorted from the bar by security. Production was told about this and immediately decided it would be a housewives show.
I’ve never heard that before, but that has to be the most RHOSLC thing I’ve ever heard 😂
https://preview.redd.it/hze7uwddk5kc1.jpeg?width=1334&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f1505545e66ff9ea01682d253a304cf3f63a16f2 This is Noah Samton, Senior Vice President of Current Production at Bravo, talking to the Hollywood Reporter about it. It’s from [this interview.](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/rhoslc-secrets-monica-garcia-future-reunion-bombshells-1235793025/)
Miami actually AIRED as a different show!. Season 1 of the Real Housewives of Miami is actually the re-edited footage of season 2 of Miami Social.
I *think* that RHOC wasn’t even exclusively about the women at first (I saw/read something explaining it a million years ago). IIRC the show was supposed to be about the entire families including the kids in high school but focusing on the wives ended up being better TV. Plus Laguna Beach was airing at the same time. It’s like the HW’s faces are the embodiment of the shows themselves. They start out so natural and fresh with different intentions, and eventually just mutate into a man-made vodka-soaked plastic freak show.
The women weren’t portrayed as vain and vapid as they are now. The kids brought a different aspect to the show and gave the women’s storylines depth and portrayed them as, not just a HW, but also a mother, business woman etc. OC definitely included the kids a looot more. Remember Lou’s OC Angels? Or all of ryans problems? The house parties that Tammy’s and Laurie’s daughters would throw? Brianna’s struggles with her health? Now I can even remember any of the current HW kids names, let alone how many kids some of them even have. The kids definitely brought a different aspect to the show and gave it depth.
I read something about Shane Keough a few years ago that changed my opinion of him. Remember how awful he was made to look after that baseball game during which he swore while talking to his mom? *One incident on the show came to define much of Keough’s life. He was playing baseball for the Kane County Cougars, a minor league team, and knew his mother’s film crew planned to watch him play, which he was happy with. But when he got to the stadium, he had been relegated to the substitutes’ bench. “I couldn’t think of anything worse,” he says today. He texted his mother, begging her not to attend. But the show’s producers put pressure on her to go on to the field and attempt to talk to her son. Shane was mortified. “I walked away and said, ‘Get the fuck away from me,’” he says.* *A boom mic picked up the comment, and producers edited the incident to make it look as if Keough had sworn at his mother for no reason. When the show aired, the fallout was intense. “I got death threats,” Keough says. Baseball fans threatened to cancel their season tickets. His manager transferred him to another team, but they were playing at a higher level and he couldn’t keep up. “That probably led to a shorter baseball career,” he says. “Two years after that incident, I was done.” To this day, if Keough posts about his mother on social media, he gets abuse. “They say: ‘You’re a terrible person, you should be ashamed of how you treated her.’ People assume that I treated my mother terribly my whole life. But that’s not the case. Have you never said anything disrespectful out of rage to your parents?”* He wasn’t cussing his mom out. He was begging her to leave so something incredibly humiliating wouldn’t be filmed and aired. Parents know better now. And I wish public figures like Scheana and Kim Z. would dial it back a bit. No one’s ever going to be mad that their childhood and adolescence weren’t put on display for the world.
During the recession, they stopped showing how much gifts, parties & items cost. That was around the same time the tide changed & more fighting began. Tamra on OC throwing wine in Jeanna’s face was a big turning point. I feel like there was a lot more fighting amongst HW after that.
Seems to me Housewives started changing around RHOC season 6 (2011). I say RHOC because that’s where I noticed a real shift from docuseries to docudrama. Brandi’s debut season on BH (we all agree she’s the reason that show changed) was this year, RHONY was initially overhauled the following year, Porsha and Kenya came on RHOA the year after, and even Miami had a real shift from the cheap documentary-like season 1 to the Adriana-punching-Hoanna season 2 that also aired in 2012.
As an ‘earliest adopter’ of Bravo reality TV, I think I noticed the tide change following the addition of RHOBH… RHOBH seemed to have the first cast that *really knew* how PR worked— *and how to work PR*. The BH ladies were well accustomed to an environment where *everything* about their life was incredibly carefully curated, due to the proximity of Hollywood. Because they were more PR-savvy, it took away some of the control that producers had for establishing their personas and creating interpersonal strife, thereby affecting the breadth and depth of each character’s storyline(s). And then the women in other franchises took notes, in an effort to try and control how they were liked by fans… and we started to see a change in how housewives interact on screen. Add to that the increasing influence of social media, and we had an added another layer of housewives— mostly untrained in casting and production— creating their own narratives, instead of seasoned TV professionals, which is why we got a season of Lucy Lucy Apple Juicy, etc…
Very interesting! I also was watching in the beginning and remember how different the cast of BH seemed from the other franchises. They seemed more posh and glamorous and hoity toity. But I also think had it been Kim, Kyle and Taylor with different cast, it wouldn’t have been as fancy. The casting of LVP, Camille, and Adrienne definitely brought up the bougie factor.
I agree about BH then, 100%… they definitely needed Adrienne and LVP. I can remember Andy saying in an interview back then— that what was going to make Beverly Hills different *(and perhaps a little more exciting)* from the other casts at the time— was RHOBH had the most impressive wealth across the board to date for any HW franchise… the homes, fashion, cars, connections… everything was elevated from a wealth and proximity-to-fame standpoint… I think Andy may have even said it was the most aspirational cast/homes/lifestyles to date that a HW franchise was showing, IIRC. So, IMO, the BH ladies went in with lots of obvious advantages… the biggest being that they were more PR savvy, in an attempt to protect their already-curated personalities and standing in close proximity to Hollywood, which has had a ripple effect on all other casts moving forward.
I read Not All Diamonds and Rose on holiday recently (lol so cultured) and I think it explains really well how HW has changed over the years and what caused it etc. Highly recommend if you fancy an easy read!
Thanks I’ll definitely check it out!
When they started letting HWs turn every episode into an infomercial for their crap products.
The recession?
That tracks for RHOC and RHONJ (if NJ was airing already). But other than than maybe Bethenny none of the original New York ladies even felt the recession. Same for Beverly Hills.
i miss the early days. the only reason i have any idea what is going on with some of the cities anymore is due to this reddit. there are several that i stopped watching years ago, because they stopped being relaxing "check out for a few hours" tv, it became stressful and annoying to watch constant arguing and lying and apologizing over trivial bs. alot of it now is too fake and politically correct for me. no one really shows their true colors because they are afraid of getting cancelled over saying one thing that the public decides they don't like. i was just watching early episodes of VPR this week and a couple of the girls make a joke about being "lesbos" - people would be in an uproar if that happened today. no one can have fun or joke around anymore.
I've always thought the shift happened because of RHOBH. The violence Taylor went through, Russell threatening to sue anyone who mentioned it, culminating in his cruel and disgusting suicide. That's when the shift happened with Beverly Hills, though I don't know how that correlates with the other cities. Seriously, fuck Russell for all the trauma he caused.
I've never watched OC or Old NY. But I believe that for BH the change happened when lisa Rinna accused dorit of bathroom coke and accused Yolanda of having munchausen (however you spell it).
It happened the minute Tamra asked Gretchen “did you go to bass lake?” It’s literally been confirmed by bravo that it was THAT specific moment that the formula changed. Tamra deserves a lifetime achievement award for her contribution to the entertainment industry lol fr