Conditions will improve soon, but we all agree the current Bravo schedule absolutely sucks ass, right? We should never be in a position where a just-okay Below Deck season is a load-bearing part of the schedule, yet here we are. The current scarcity of programming is the overarching issue, but it’s made so much worse by putting RHOC and RHOM on the same night, and that’s made even worse by the fact that the night in question is Thursday. Thursday! That means those of us who watch on Peacock don’t get to see the episodes until Friday — a day when people leave the house to do things, unlike, oh, I don’t know, Tuesday? I’m sure the rationale is that the network is giving us the whole weekend to get caught up on our stories, but who among us is using Bravo to cope with the weekend? Being at home on the weekend is for movies and football! We need to watch these psychopaths say the horrendous mean shit we’d have loved to have Slacked our coworkers on a Monday so we can live vicariously through them and show up to work on Tuesday feeling restored!
THIS WEEK IN BRAVO
RHOSLC
Lisa returned this week after using contract negotiations as an excuse to get out of an RV trip, and while I can’t blame her for that, I didn’t miss her. Unpopular opinion, I know! I laughed as hard as anybody at “gout dick sucker” and was of course mesmerized by the confessional look in which her glam squad appears to have quit halfway through doing her makeup, but her energy brings the show down for me. I don’t think she’s actually good in a fight — especially not this one; her desperation is palpable — and I hate the power dynamics she creates among the women.
I think the core of my issue is that Lisa doesn’t have the juice to be the alpha. This is what makes her funny, but after six seasons, it’s making me a little insane that nearly everyone on the show has fed her delusion that she’s better than them. (Is this triggering me due to our current sociopolitical reality wherein everyone is capitulating to a loud, demented loser? Maybe!) Like, I expect Brittani to gravitate toward anyone who has broken so confidently from reality, but Heather is too smart to think we’ll see her “““friendship with Lisa””” as anything more than a meeting of the Bronwyn Hater Society and it’s insulting to watch her pretend otherwise.
That being said, Lisa can bring all the rancid vibes she want, but she can’t take our weird little details away. My favorite this week: Mary’s vast array of dog supplements on her vanity. Does she even have a dog?!
RHOC
Speaking of rancid vibes, the Gretchen experiment has proven to be a colossal failure I fear. I started the season optimistic that she and Tamra would bring some genuine, meaty conflict to the proceedings, but instead they’re rehashing things that happened over a decade ago. No thanks!
RHOM
When we say that the friends-of on Miami give more than full-time cast members, we’re talking about things like Adriana and Marysol quietly orchestrating every major storyline and getting away with it with both their colleagues and the audience for a length of time Kyle Richards and Lisa Vanderpump could only dream of.
TALES FROM THE CRYPT
The upside of having almost no new content to watch is that I’m breezing through my RHONY rewatch and am currently observing the heights of Lu’s wedding mania, which is some of the wildest human behavior ever captured on camera.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
The Miami reunion trailer is here, and it appears that Julia is going to continue revealing dirt on Adriana in the hopes of saving her job. It’s a better strategy than gunning for Guerdy, but I think all it’s going to result in is Julia taking Adriana to the on-pause zone with her.
There’s also been some interesting future-possibilities discourse on the podcasts this week: Ben and Ronnie’s ran through some RHONY and RHONJ rumors on Crappy Hour this week, and VPR’s Ally Lewber confirmed on Disrespectfully that she filmed some scenes for the new season of Southern Hospitality.
MISCELLANEOUS GOSSIP CORNER
We need stricter AI regulations.
Rinna does not go far enough on The Traitors S4 to make Bravo willing to pay her to appear at Bravocon.
Speaking of not excelling at a competitive reality program…