The Real Housewives has always been a bellwether of American society. There once was a time the Housewives bopped around with sky tops and facelifts as their daughters received eviction notices. The financial crash shaped early Orange County, just as the push to a polarized political environment shaped late-era New York.
The Real Housewives of Orange County began the season dealing with behind-the-scenes blogger drama and it concludes with an argument that the MAGA movement has unleashed a holy Hell on American society that can penetrate just about every medium. The days of blissfully ignorant Housewives of all political spectrums breaking bread are long over, it seems.
So, it’s fitting the reunion ends in utter disarray with an odd deconstruction of Gretchen Rossi’s Instagram likes, the “plotting and planning” of Tamra Judge, and yet another blogger breakdown in the eleventh hour. It’s the feel-bad finale of the year, sure to upset absolutely everbody—and maybe that’s the most apt representation of our angry America.
Can the Real Housewives ever go back to basics? That’s the question of the hour, one surmised by Heather Dubrow in another classic monologue.
“This is about our friendship. This is about conflict and resolution between us. And that’s all it’s ever been and all it ever should be. And anyone that arrives in this group and thinks they’re playing a game of Survivor is sadly mistaken. And I think that everyone needs to agree, once and for all, this has got to stop.”
Of course, RHOC may have begun as a peek behind the gates of the most elusive communities, but this franchise has long been a game of Survivor, and the ladies all know that. That’s why Gretchen shows up to the reunion dolled in her Barbie best, ready to sing for her supper against beliefs she once stood for (allegedly, and sometimes explicitly). Somehow, the Bravo environment is the last bastion of a woke America… or is it?
After a finale that set up the grand demise of Gretchen, the reunion has been a place of utter salvation for the world’s least strategic Housewife, who once offed herself by accident by buddying up to the woman who hates her while neglecting her only real ally. In Part 3, it’s not Gretchen who saves herself, but everyone else, even—and especially—Andy Cohen.
She starts the episode completely denouncing homophobia and transphobia, before turning her sights to Tamra, claiming the right-wing accounts Gretchen followed were linked to the longest-running Housewife. Sure, Gretchen followed many, many right-wing accounts, and yeah, she liked lots of their posts. But what people don’t understand is Tamra broke into her home in the middle of the night, unlocked Gretchen’s phone, and liked and followed every one of them.
Or, Gretchen followed an account because it posted about God. Hard to say!
“It’s a free country, by the way,” Andy says, before adding: “By the way, if you’re following 4500 accounts, it stands to reason that you are not seeing what most of these accounts are posting on a daily basis.”
Heather pushes back, “When you follow a multitude of hate mongers, what you’re going to see in your ‘For You’ page is hate.”
Tamra piggybacks on this point to bring out printed copies of problematic likes Gretchen still had just days before, allegedly, noting that Gretchen seems to have cleaned up her page as the reunion approached, Andy responds: “Shouldn’t she have unliked them? Isn’t that the right thing to do?”
That depends. Should Real Housewives be real?
If Gretchen Rossi supports such beliefs, should she hide that and transform her image to fit a better PR mold, or should she stand tall in herself, however unsavory? Would it not be more accurate to judge one’s behavior when no one was watching, rather than taking the reunion about-face at its word?
It’s the modern world of Housewives, one in which I’m hundreds of words into a recap and have barely been able to discuss the show itself, because the reunion isn’t discussing the show itself. We’re at Scream 4 opening-within-an-opening-within-an-opening levels of meta right now.
RHOC is not the place for a meaningful conversation on homophobia, in a surprise to utterly no one. Tamra waiting ’til the very end of the season to unleash the discourse was such a misfire that landed us in lopsided, poorly paced territory, making for a bizarre reunion segment that should have happened under the faux waterfall in Vicki Gunvalson’s Coto de Caza backyard. There’s a reason you should resolve the season’s drama within the season.
Irate and unnerved as half the cast turn on her, Tamra asks, “Why am I getting blamed for her liking homophobic stuff?”
That pinballs into a war between Tamra, Emily, and Shannon, the latter two sick and tired of the world according to Tam. The thing is, in a Survivor environment, the message is far less important than the messenger. Had Gretchen’s alleged likes and beliefs been discovered and exposed by Heather, everything would be different. But when an opportunity for deflection presents itself, the Real Housewives will take it, justifiably or not.
So, everyone aside from Tamra, Katie, and Heather decides screenshots are not proof in the court of law that is the reunion stage, preferring to bury Tamra alive.
That’s how we end up in our last half, as production lets the women watch the finale’s final minutes for the first time. Here, the reveal that Tamra allegedly leaked an entire season of storylines comes to the surface, causing utter pandemonium.
As Gretchen accuses Tamra of running a “criminal network” of unpaid bloggers, Tamra cries and screams that it’s actually the doing of Slade Smiley. Shannon, for her past, claims the blogger who called the women is “The Voice.” It’s kind of like how Michael Myers is referred to as The Shape in Halloween scripts.
Whether it’s The Voice, Slade’s friend, or that Twitter dermatologist waging war with the Salt Lake City Housewives is anyone’s guess. Ultimately, it might not really matter, as the reunion ends in such convoluted territory that absolutely nothing is resolved and no one feels a bit better. Even as blanket apologies roll out in the final moments, Jenn reveals what she heard about Katie approaching a friend to dig up dirt, leaving things in shakier territory for the two than ever before.
Lines are drawn across the board, and The Real Housewives of Orange County is hurtling toward its 20th season in utter disarray. Every Housewife is leaving in a worse position than she entered the day, with the possible exceptions of Heather and Gina, and it’s clear this group can’t go on as is. What else should we expect from the most suburban show to exist at a turning point where suburban women (and former Bravolebrities) are finding themselves at the epicenter of modern politics?
The Real Housewives of Orange County might never make it back to basics. This reunion may be uncomfortable and entirely in the shades of the gray, but that’s really no different from the awfully aged OC Angels arc of the early days. Beverly Hills is all about glamour; Orange County has always displayed our country’s underbelly.
Tamra will surely slither back into the group, but the question remains: What group? That, like everything else, is up in the air.
