The commenters, podcasters and creators really hate whenever something that has happened off camera makes it way in front of the red light. I don’t necessarily understand that notion, not in 2025.
I’ve written about it before. Bravo fans desire to hold onto the past and what these shows were in their first few seasons is doing detrimental damage to the Housewives franchise as a whole. You can now add ‘off camera arguments’ to the list of things Bravo fans are complaining about.
Everything on the show is about the show. These women are very famous— so famous that thousands of people are traveling from all over the world to Las Vegas this weekend to see them as if they are a Marvel movie cast. I don’t think it’s fair to complain about off camera issues, because they are famous, when we have built them up to be this way.
From my perspective, when things happen off camera it means that there are real relationships behind the scenes. To me, it makes the show more real. The fact that issues arise when the cameras are down highlights that these women are truly in each other’s lives.
When we start to nit pick at what is allowed and what is not, we start to lose the magic of what these shows are — television shows. We can only ruin them with our over analyzation, the need to have things stay exactly how they always have been when in fact, these women & the shows themselves are incredibly different.
We no longer live in a time when social media doesn’t affect the shows, where the fourth wall doesn’t fall and where the women are not fighting about their fame, money and status. If the shows evolve and the cast evolves, we as the fan base have to evolve with it.
We have to get used to the idea that these shows take place behind the scenes just as much as it happens on screen. We have to become comfortable with not knowing everything and having the cast fill us in on certain storylines.
A lot of people on the internet were bothered by the fact that we didn’t see Meredith flip out on the flight home from the yacht trip. But how could we? They weren’t filming, in first class with no one but themselves and production and had just come back from a three day boat trip that they traveled over 15 hours for — they were probably exhausted and wanted to get away from each other.
Also, let us not forget that the last time a cast member filmed something themselves, Meredith had a meltdown. Imagine what would’ve happened if she saw them filming her mid-freak out?
Just because there is no footage doesn’t mean there’s something nefarious going on. Just because we didn’t see it happen doesn’t mean we can’t be invested. It doesn’t mean that we can’t take sides or speculate what happened. It doesn’t make the drama any less real.
I refuse to allow people’s need for these shows to exist in a silo to ruin the greatest franchise. We have had 11 episodes of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City so far and every single one has been a hit. There has not been one filler scene or episode — they are firing on all cylinders and I think this might be their best season yet. Note for the audience — we also said this about seasons 4 and 5.
If I’m being honest, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is the only franchise I like at this moment, though Potomac is a close second if only because of Queen Stacey Rusch. They are carrying Bravo on their backs and every Tuesday I sit down to watch the show, I’m giddy with excitement.
I almost don’t want to watch it because I don’t want it to be over.
We’ve had so many ‘off camera’ storylines on this particular franchise before — so much of the Jen Shah stuff, Monica & Reality Von Tease…off camera, press/creator storylines are in the DNA of this show, from the moment Mary said Jen smelled like hospital. We jumped into the middle of a friend group that was fighting and it’s been that way ever since.
Let me be clear — I do not want every franchise to turn into this. The blogger storyline on RHOC this season was not great but RHOSLC gets a pass because they do camp and drama like no one else right now.
The beauty of RHOSLC is that you can never be to sure what is going on or what the ladies are fighting about. None of it makes sense, the dynamics and allegiances change from scene to scene, and anything or anyone is fair game.
It’s a beautiful, chaotic mess and I hope it stays that way for many, many years.