Funnily enough, this will be my second post- article about The Real Housewives franchise in two years. Consider me an expert on all things Bravo and Andy Cohen. My credentials include hundreds of hours of the Bravo channel humming in the background of my single-mother household, as well as countless minutes of my own undivided attention given to the scandals of Beverly Hills, Salt Lake City, New York City, Dubai, and Potomac, to name only a few of the spin-offs my mother and I have been patrons of over the years. The Real Housewives has been so integral to my being that—as people are often shocked to learn—I wrote my main college essay about watching the franchise with my mother and grandma over the years (presumably, Brown approved). So hear ye, hear ye, I implore the masses to accept that my review of the series’ newest installment, The Real Housewives of (our very own!) Rhode Island, is the opinion of an Ivy League-endorsed Real Housewives expert.
A few weeks ago, a close friend and I set about planning a The Real Housewives of Rhode Island premiere watch party, themed after all of Rhode Island’s native delights. For my friend, an Italian-American Cranston local, the show hit closer to home than ever. When the cast was announced, she even discovered a loose blood relation to one of the stars. We spent the day of the premiere gathering all of Rhode Island’s specialties, driving out to The Original Italian Bakery first to stock up on cannolis and “pizza chips” (heavily featured in episode four). To drink, we offered coffee milk and Del’s lemonade.
A Real Housewives franchise can be hit or miss. It is entirely dependent on the “iconicness” of the independent cast members, the cast as a whole’s chemistry, and the presence of drama juicy enough to constitute a season “storyline.” To be a good individual housewife is to be good at the Housewives game. A cast member of a Real Housewives series must strike a careful dramatic balance and avoid being too toxic or too boring. Creating drama and fighting is good. However, create too much drama or fight too often, and you become hated by the audience to the point of being fired from the show. On the flip side, create too little drama and apologize too quickly—in other words, become boring and irrelevant—and you are out as well. Equally important is that the cast as a whole can get along well enough, despite their mandate to create drama, so that they can still stand to be in the same room with each other in every subsequent season. Indeed, it was evident to Real Housewives fans that the Rhode Island franchise was meant to fill the niche left by The Real Housewives of New Jersey, which was temporarily paused due to irreconcilable differences among cast members who began refusing to film with one another.
As the first episode premiered, I waited with bated breath to see which of these camps the show would fall into, and by the end of it—as well as writing now, four episodes into the series—I could confidently say that Rhode Island appears to be a hit in the making, maybe even on par with the ever legendary likes of Salt Lake City. Each of the cast members’ lives and back stories, to put it frankly, is delightfully bonkers—the makings of fantastic reality television. Take Liz, the owner of one of Providence’s successful cannabis dispensaries, who learned upon marrying her husband that they were distantly related and lives in a cartoonishly decked out castle-mansion somewhere in Cranston, all the while facing allegations of cheating that she vehemently denies while simultaneously alluding to an “inappropriate” relationship with her husband’s best friend. Her castmate Kelsey, on the other hand, is out and proud as somewhat unwillingly engaged in a polyamorous relationship with a filthy rich boyfriend who has another woman in another state, whom she matches with her own second boyfriend when he is away.
The remainder of the cast makes up for their far more traditional lives with big personalities and hilarious jokes. Jo-Ellen and Alicia are particularly sympathetic and funny, while their entrenched Rhode Island cultural capital adds authenticity to the cast. Rulla is formidable and instantly iconic, although her denial of her husband’s affair leaves her interactions with others feeling frustrating, even as viewers may concurrently sympathize with her plight. Rosie has thus far been my personal least favorite; while she has started some initial drama, her engagements with and reactions to others feel forced and over-the-top. Perhaps the only cast member who initially feels misplaced on a Real Housewives franchise due to her kind and subdued demeanor is former Bachelor in Paradise star Ashley, although her positionality as a Rhode Island transplant rather than a local like the other women could prove compelling as the show goes on.
The Real Housewives franchise wants you to believe that the women it features are actually in a friend group, and admittedly, sometimes other casts have felt forced or inauthentic. Rhode Island does not suffer from this defect—in fact, far from it. Given the tiny nature of the state and community of Rhode Island, the women are related to each other in myriad ways, from being childhood classmates to having been involved with the same man at one point. Their friendships feel real and like they were in place long before the show’s producers lumped them together at a dinner party. The women are funny, clearly have inside jokes with each other, and enter the series with established opinions and grudges. It’s a refreshing tone for a Real Housewives series, especially as the franchise has at times been criticized for being formulaic and staged.
Watching the show with a group of friends in my Providence apartment every Monday night, we laugh and point with glee at the B-roll footage featuring the Providence skyline, the familiar bridges we drive over every day, and even the gates enclosing Brown. I jumped when Alicia had acai bowls prepared for the ladies from In The Pink—a favorite spot of mine on Thayer Street—for breakfast. On a nice spring day, sitting and doing work on the Quiet Green, I talked to a mother of an admitted student about Brown who approached me, before quickly delving into our thoughts and opinions on the show’s latest episode upon realizing we were both watching it. Maybe the show does not represent Rhode Islanders accurately, a criticism I have seen expressed online, and while I am sympathetic to that sentiment, accurate representation has never been the franchise’s goal. The Real Housewives aims to craft compelling, escapist reality television—to create a world of luxury into which viewers can escape the troubles of their own lives and immerse themselves in someone else’s mess. The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, by whatever reason for which it has found itself in our own backyard, accomplishes just that, and I encourage fellow fans of the genre to tune in.
