The housewives The real story behind the Real Housewives

Premiering in 2006, Bravo's The Real Housewives of Orange County was a look at the lives of women living in Coto de Caza, a gated community filled with million-dollar homes in sunny Southern California. The show's eight-episode run was a hit that would, in the following decade and a half, spawn nine other series in other cities (New York, Atlanta, Dallas, etc.) and countless spin offs (like Vanderpump Rules). In The Housewives, entertainment journalist and self-proclaimed Real Housewives anthropologist Moylan provides a complete history of the franchise, which thanks to interviews both on and off the record with members of the production team as well as current and former housewives is both painstakingly thorough and incredibly juicy. Though many of Moylan's references and jokes will fly over the heads of everyone but the most devoted Housewives acolytes (on the list of "Ten Things a Housewife Shouldn't Do": renew wedding vows), this book's conversational tone and deep look at the history of this cultural phenomenon makes it an easy sell to anyone with even a passing interest in reality television. In the words of former Housewife Bethenny Frankel, Moylan truly "mentions it all."

Behind the scenes of one of TV's most absurd spectacles. Any history of the Real Housewives franchise would have to be messy. This inconsistent account certainly embodies that odd legacy. Sometimes, Moylan's writing is gloriously entertaining, especially in his recaps of classic moments from Housewives history--e.g., Teresa Giudice flipping tables or Aviva Drescher removing her artificial leg and tossing it into the middle of "famed New York eatery Cipriani." Here's how Moylan, a self-described "Real Housewives anthropologist" who has been recapping the show for more than a decade for Gawker and Vulture, describes Atlanta Housewife Kim Zolciak before she battles frenemy NeNe Leakes: "She's also sporting a cheaper wig than usual, her original nose, and lips without the filler that would turn them into balloon animals." Sometimes, Moylan takes interesting detours into the online world of Housewives fans, real-life encounters at the BravoCon convention, or a Puerto Vallarta Hyatt for "Vacation With Vicki," a weekendlong event with Orange County Housewife Vicki Gunvalson. Unfortunately, many of those bright and shiny moments are clouded by a lack of direct sources and vague identifiers like "according to someone working on the show at the time," and many of the early chapters are packed with tortured attempts to explain things without quoting anyone in a position of power at Bravo who could directly answer simple questions. It's not until near the end that we learn the reason: "Bravo did me the favor of contacting every single real Housewife, past, present, and possibly future, and told them they were not allowed to talk to me." That's a gutsy reality check for a book that sets out to reveal the inner workings of reality TV. It also helps explain the numerous knocks against Bravo executive Andy Cohen. But in a meta way, it still sort of works. Moylan gives the flawed, delightfully weird reality series the flawed, delightfully weird history it deserves. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.