Drama, Not Trauma Part 2: They Don’t Understand The Assignment

Several bloggers hyped up The Real Housewives of Potomac (RHOP) as Atlanta’s heir apparent. But the sixth season of the series premiered to a little over 1 million viewers. Some say people aren’t watching reality TV. This point would be valid if America’s Funniest Home Videos (ABC), Big Brother (CBS), and Celebrity Family Feud (ABC) weren’t attracting over 3 million viewers each week. Maybe the issue is informed women are tuning out of The Real Housewives franchise, as producers don’t understand these viewers, and the assignment, creating antic-laced, televisual environments that are too toxic to watch. 

The Real Housewives Franchise (Bravo) launched as a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of women who flout the traditional picture-perfect TV representation of housewives in nuclear families. This Housewives brand of reality TV followed the direction of early 2000, cable-based, TV docu-series like The Osbornes (MTV, 2002),  Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica (MTV, 2003), and Being Bobby Brown (Bravo, 2005). Later in 2007, Fox, Style, and E! networks aired The Simple Life, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians, respectively. These shows ushered in a hybrid genre of reality TV: the unscripted situation comedy (sitcom). Unlike traditional scripted sitcoms, that strove for symmetry, these unscripted shows played up the fabulous incongruity of the cast. Think of wealthy Paris and Nicole working in a barn or Jessica Simpson asking if tuna is chicken. These moments contradicted what viewers expect of glamorous TV figures, and we loved it.

The Real Housewives franchise premiered in this same satirical televisual milieu with The Real House of Orange County in 2006. Like these earlier shows, the allure of The Real Housewives of Atlanta (Bravo, 2008) was its incongruity. It was hilarious to follow mostly unknown and unemployed women living the lavish lifestyle of A-list celebrities. And it was funnier to watch Nene Leakes call their cards with classic lines like, “I’ve been knowing Sheree for so long. I have been to her house a million times. There’s no security. Her gates don’t even work.” These quirky moments between real friends made the show.

Cut to 2010 and the premiere of VH1’s Basketball Wives, followed a year later by Mob Wives. Producers of these series utilized a storytelling style that the TV industry calls jumping-the-shark. To jump the shark is to focus stories around outrageous incidents for the shock value. With Basketball Wives and Mob Wives, we got doses of fights, bottle-throwing, and table flips every week, and these shows were a hit. Carlos King, who eventually rose to EP (executive producer) of RHOA, seemingly took a page out of VH1s book. In an episode of Kandi Burruss’s Speak On It, Burruss explains that her daughter's father appeared on RHOA because Carlos King had a pattern and practice of creating scandalous moments with tactics like surprising cast members on camera with a person from their past. Carlos King is very proud of this producing style. He has stated in many interviews that Season 9 was the best of RHOA because he pushed the cast to give their all. But season 9 was about rape allegations. It was a traumatic and triggering season for the cast and viewers, and the first season, since season two, to only reach 3 million viewers once. This season ushered in the gradual exodus of informed Black women viewers.  

Here’s the thing: Jump-the-shark producing tactics work for series like The Real World and Big Brother because these types of reality TV programs are episodic. By episodic, I mean these shows don’t maintain a cast that carries a plotline through a season and across multiple seasons. With shows like The Bachelor, there is a new cast every season. Hence why the jump-the-shark style does not work for serial reality (unscripted) sitcom TV programs like The Real Housewives franchise. We invest in RHOA the same way we invested in the cast of Girlfriends and Living Single. These women become our surrogate friends and family members, and we don’t want to see them embroiled in stressful conflict each week in the way that we would accept from a Big Brother contestant who might be eliminated from that episode. This is where the producers of RHOA got the assignment wrong. And it’s my unpopular opinion that the jump-the-shark producing style  brought RHOA, The Oprah Winfrey Show of reality TV shows, down to the level of Basketball Wives and Mob Wives with their Jerry Springer antics. 

When reality TV was novel, it was easier to attract viewers by advertising fights and flipped tables. But 14 years in, informed women, the very demographic Bravo covets, are tuning out. Bravo can start to understand the assignment by hiring more women, specifically Black women of all backgrounds, to work behind the camera in real decision-making positions. And these women, including the women cast members, have to say no to jump-the-shark tactics. Currently, The Real Housewives franchises are led mostly by men. We need diversity, so I’m not saying fire the men. I’m saying Bravo needs more EPs and executives who can relate to and articulate a woman’s experience. We wouldn’t expect cis-het women to be the sole or lead producers of Pose (FX). Bravo is doing slightly better by focusing more on personal story with RHOP, but it might be too late. 

Most informed women don’t tune in to these shows to see women read each other for filth. We tune in to see real relationships to which we can relate. Season 13 of RHOA centered around a dungeon, and unfortunately, that is where the series has gone--straight to the pits of hell. And it’s not simply because the beautiful Black women who grace our screens are boring. It’s because the producers and network don’t understand the assignment.