The Real Housewives Has A Millennial Problem

The Real Housewives franchise is turning 20-years-old in a matter of weeks. (If “OG of the OC” Vicki Gunvalson’s Family Van meltdown is (almost) of legal drinking age, then how old does that make us?)

This anniversary is a fab time to reflect on where the Bravo-verse is headed — and, I’ll be honest with you, there’s something I’ve been concerned about lately. In general, the calibre of newbie Housewives is not matching the quality that we used to see. And as a millennial who came of age in the era of The Hills and The Devil Wears Prada, it gives me absolutely no pleasure to say that my generation is (mostly) to blame for this decline. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the Real Housewives has a Millennial Problem.

Take Amanda Frances, the latest Housewife to join RHOBH. Shortly after arriving in the 90210, Amanda got into a feud with the accent-switching, Belvedere-sipping Dorit Kemsley. Their beef? Amanda made some fairly inoffensive (and rational) comments about Dorit’s constant bashing of her awful estranged husband, Paul “PK” Kemsley. After being challenged at a dinner — in a very low-key way, by the standards of RHOBH dinner parties — she said that she was waking up every half hour in bed that night, and that her body experienced the confrontation as a “physiological attack.” If that wasn’t ridiculous enough, at the next group dinner, Amanda seemed bewildered by the idea of conflict, saying that they should instead have the “intention to really hear each other.” To which her fellow cast mates — and, I’d imagine, pretty much everyone watching — responded: Girl, get real!

Amanda isn’t the only millennial Housewife to misunderstand the assignment. In a confessional, OG Housewife Kyle Richards compared the self-described “money queen” to Crystal Kung Minkoff, a former RHOBH Housewife (and fellow millennial) who once described feeling “violated” by a co-star forgetting to knock before they entered her room on a cast trip. And I think age is partly to blame for the embattled RHONY 2.0 reboot, which has struggled to connect with fans. The mostly-millennial cast had grown up watching reality TV, so they showed up with products and brands to promote. Fans expect a certain level of self-promotion (this is Housewives, after all) but it feels jarring when it isn’t matched by real sharing. (Now that Carole Radziwill is swooping in as a “friend,” perhaps she can help them to open up?)

Circling back to Amanda, her main problem is that she has joined the show with unrealistic expectations of conflict, then employs therapy-speak whenever she encounters it. “Healthy boundaries” are great in the real world, but they’re basically incompatible with being on a conflict-centered reality show. We’re at a point where even the casually-engaged Bravo fan understands that these friendships are working relationships. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be meaningful or close, like many of our work friendships are, but it does mean that it’s silly to project the expectations of “real” friendship onto them. In everyday life, you’d never speak to someone again if they rudely called you out at a dinner party — but Housewives is not the real world, it’s a structured reality show.

Amanda exemplifies that millennial Housewives often want to have it both ways. When it suits them, they hide behind the “healthy boundaries” of the real world. But when it comes to self-promotion? Oh, then they suddenly spring into Work Mode. On the show, Amanda has endlessly promoted her “best-selling” book, “Rich as Fuck,” and “manifestation courses.” And that feels hypocritical when she won’t approach the actual hard work of Housewifery – having challenging conversations and, yes, confrontations — like the job that it very clearly is.

Before I drag my fellow millennials too hard, there are of course exceptions to this rule. RHOP’s Candiace Dillard-Bassett and RHOSLC’s “hilling” queen Whitney Rose are two of the all-time greats. As is Ashley Darby (although I feel like she doesn’t count because she was practically raised on-camera?) But even Ashley noted in part two of the RHOP reunion that it feels like she has to tread more carefully around the “sensitivities” of the newbies, and that she keeps getting called out for things that wouldn’t have been a big deal in the past.

Perhaps the norms of sharing and shade on Housewives are simply changing. But the success of Rachel Zoe on RHOBH — season 15’s other newbie, who is my new personal obsession — makes me think that Bravo needs to revert to its original formula and return to casting women like Vicki Gunvalson and Luann De Lesseps, who had already lived interesting lives full of ups and downs before Housewives came along. That’s the type of woman who built this franchise — and so far, millennials are struggling to fill their (expensive) shoes.

Written by Louis Staples