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Why is The Real Housewives of New Jersey a smash-hit? The season finale's 4.6 million viewers in the 18-to-49-year-old demographic testify to its broad appeal, but why are we so enamored with these table-tossing housewives? Is it the big hair? The brash talk? The back stabbing? One thing's for sure. It's not their manners.
Out of all the Real Housewives series—from Orange County to Atlanta to New York City—"New Jersey" is the breakaway hit. Because I have deeply bad taste in TV, I've watched every installment of the Bravo franchise. Sometimes, I watch them twice. But the Jersey wives are far and away the most fascinating. Sometimes, I quote lines from the show. "Prostitution whore!" I shout, pointing accusingly. "I don't like you before I like you," I inform strangers.
I think the Real Housewives are popular for one reason: They're mean. I mean, they're really mean. They render Mean Girls pranks child's play. They don't sit around talking the talk, like the well-tanned, blond-highlighted, high-heeled 'bots of The Hills. These bitches will cut you. They actually walk the walk, which is why tables have a tendency to get overturned.
I hope they don't tone it down next season.
These molls are my heroes.
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Susannah, you're right that the appeal of the Real Housewives of New Jersey lies in their outsize cattiness. But in today's XXtra Small, Torie writes about the anti-Housewife: The Hills' Lauren Conrad and her new, semi-autobiographical book L.A. Candy. Conrad's appeal has always been as the bland, nice girl.
As Torie notes, "Jane," the heroine of Conrad's thinly-veiled autobiography, is far more edgy than the palid Conrad:
Maybe it’s the influence of her “collaborator,” Nancy Ohlin, but Jane is a lot more interesting than Conrad was on The Hills—funnier, smarter, not nearly as dull. And she would never sign a contract without letting her dad’s lawyer OK it.
Salon's Thomas Rogers weighs in on the Conrad phenomenon today as well:
Much of the appeal of Lauren Conrad, like the Bella Swan character in the “Twilight” novels, is that she’s a near-perfect cipher for young women. It’s her very blankness that made her so well-suited for “The Hills”—and a much better choice of star than the woman who will replace her on the show, Kristin Cavallari—because she doesn’t create drama. Drama happens to her. It’s a feeling that many junior-high-age girls (and some grown-ups) can easily identify with: I'm just trying to be nice—so why is everybody being so mean to me?
I disagree with Rogers that Conrad is a better choice for a star than the spunky Cavallari. Interest in Conrad's mind-numbing exploits is already on the wane: Viewership for this season's finale—Conrad's last show—was down 15 percent from last year's finale. Lauren Conrad's appeal never seemed to be that she was the everygirl, it was that she was the ubergirl: blonde, rich, lucky. Sure, she was marginally relatable because she had "drama," but she was never really a personality-free blank slate. She has a personality, it's just boring.
In general, people don't watch reality TV because they want to project themselves onto the main characters; they watch reality TV to be entertained by base ridiculousness. Or, at least that's why Susannah and I seem to watch reality TV.
