Returning to ‘The Real Housewives of DC’

Well, it’s back. Peacock added “The Real Housewives of DC” (RHODC) to its platform last week. This marks the first time the series has been available to stream since Bravo aired its only season nearly fourteen years ago.

The show’s central drama — that cast members Michaele and Tareq Salahi had breached security at President Barack Obama’s first state dinner — had already played out in public before the first episode aired. The Washington Post broke the news in November 2009. By the time RHODC premiered in August 2010, people were already tired of the story – especially people in D.C.

In The Post’s scathing review, Hank Stuever lamented the “rot” of Bravo’s “transgressive garbage” and called the show “an afterthought that no one really needs to watch.”

Cast member Mary Schmidt Amons, who is best remembered from the show for installing a biometric lock on her closet in a failed attempt to prevent her daughter from borrowing her clothes, thinks the show has been unfairly panned.

“I felt like our show was very authentic,” she said from her family farm in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, where she runs an interior design company and is working on a documentary about her grandfather Arthur Godfrey.

“Despite the amount of nonsense and ridiculous behavior carried out by the Salahis that essentially crashed the show, I still feel like it was a great snapshot of DC,” Schmidt Amons said.

Her castmate Lynda Erkiletian, who memorably combined Judaism, Christianity, astrology and sage burning in a house blessing ritual for the cameras, agreed.

“I never believed it would be canceled until I actually read that it was canceled,” she said in a phone call from her home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She still runs her talent company, the Artist Agency. She also said that since she opened her heart chakra, she has gotten engaged, a turnaround since she was dating Ebong Eka on the show and insisted that marriage was overrated.

ODuring his SiriusXM radio show on Wednesday, executive producer Andy Cohen said he lobbied hard for a second season of RHODC, which he now understands was impossible.

“If the FBI subpoenas your raw tapes, that’s impossible,” Cohen said. “This was such a huge internal scandal at NBCUniversal that there was no way this show was coming back.”

Scandal and crime aren’t always fatal consequences for Bravo shows. On “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” the raid on Jen Shah’s home — which ultimately led to her fraud conviction and prison sentence — was deftly weaved into the show’s drama. After the press reported on the off-camera shenanigans of the cast of “Vanderpump Rules,” the show was awarded Bravo TV’s most-watched episode in about nine years.

But the fallout of RHODC cast members sneaking into a White House party didn’t enhance the show’s drama. It has taken over.

Cat Ommanney’s razor-sharp tongue and vaguely British accent could have made her a legendary villain. Stacie Turner’s search for her birth parents could have been truly moving. Erkiletian’s mix of Southern manners and New Age woo-woo could have been iconic.

But they were all drowned out by the noise of the Salahis and the chaos they sowed.

Paul Wharton, a stylist who was a regular character on the show, thinks RHODC could have been saved by different production and post-production choices. “It’s like baking a cake,” he wrote in an email from London, where he lives part-time and works in the television industry. “Our show had all the ingredients, but needed one of those fancy electric mixers to smooth out the lumps and be tasty.”

But the city of DC is a tricky ingredient for Real Housewives. DC runs on politics. Politics is about civility. Politeness is poison to real housewives.

“Anyone involved enough in that political world to have made it interesting would never have done it in a million years,” says Brian Moylan, the author of the best-selling book “The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives.”

There are political players who appear on the show. Ommanney’s then-husband, Charles Ommanney, was a photographer assigned to photograph the White House during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Republican lobbyist Edwina Rogers pops up a few times, as does then-DC Councilman David Catania.

“You actually wanted this to be a ‘West Wing,’ but it never really delivered,” Moylan said.

When the main problem is a guest list at a party or a perceived social deficit, watching people argue can become escapist and almost soothing. That’s not the case with RHODC when they argue about marriage equality or affordable health care.

In one scene, Cat clinks champagne flutes with a Republican health care lobbyist before telling her that she considers “Republican health care lobbyist” an oxymoron. “I was wondering if you would pay my medical bills. I only got $23,000 since I got here,” she purred, smiling.

It’s hard to find cheer — the reason viewers tune into Bravo — when confronted with our broken medical system.

Schmidt Amons disagreed. She thinks the show could have benefited from even more political content. “If we had kept going and had to navigate the politics that have arisen since 2010, we would have had an epic, epic series,” she said.

OOf course, politics has become much more polarized since 2010 and reality TV stars have been legitimized in ways that seemed unthinkable, with Kim Kardashian becoming a billionaire and Donald Trump the 45th president.

In that sense, you could say that RHODC was ahead of its time. That doesn’t mean it will hold up perfectly. Unsurprisingly, there are moments that haven’t aged well.

Turner was the only black housewife of the cast, a stunning fact considering DC’s demographics

During the show, Turner underwent several interactions that we would now characterize as “microaggressions.” As her White castmates toast the fact that they are each other’s “soul sisters,” someone tells Turner that she can be “our Diana Ross.”

Ommanney repeatedly clashed with a supporting character named Erica over what Erica perceived as racially questionable comments.

During her birthday dinner, Schmidt Amons went on a sarcasm about why hair salons should be integrated, drawing puzzled looks from black attendees.

“Yes, that was very unfortunate,” Schmidt Amons said about her hair salon comment. “That was stupid, stupid, stupid.” Schmidt Amons said she regretted some of her other comments on the show, but felt she was largely portrayed fairly by producers.

Turner did not respond to requests for comment and Ommanney declined to speak on the record.

Also shocking from today’s lens is the way castmates discuss Michaele Salahi’s thinness.

“Tell her to eat a hamburger and fries,” Erkiletian said casually about her castmate, which led to several arguments in later episodes.

“It was true, though: I was genuinely concerned,” Erkiletian said, emphasizing that her 39 years as president of a modeling agency have made her sensitive to seeing weight changes. “Working in the industry like I do, it’s a constant warning sign when you see someone with an unhealthy BMI.”

RThere were a lot of flags in Salahis’ RHODC storyline, even before they crashed the White House. The couple comes across as either in complete denial of their actions and consequences, or as a bunch of con artists who never give up the fight, even when questioned by members of Congress on national television.

Michaele Salahi did not respond to a request for comment.

One would think that a re-examination might yield some kind of revisionist appreciation for the Salahis. In recent years, criminals like Gypsy Rose Blanchard and con artists like Anna Sorokin have become quasi-folk heroes in some circles. A few months ago, “delulu is the solulu” – read: “delusion is the solution” – became a meme.

So why does watching Michaele Salahi on RHODC still evoke feelings of unease? It’s not crazy or fun to watch her pretend to search in her car for an invitation that she knows never existed. Her unchanging smile isn’t campy; it’s creepy.

“The kiss of death for any Housewife is inauthenticity, and the fans can always feel that,” Moylan said. “You felt that these two are full of it, and not in a nice way. In a rude way.”

That was the ultimate problem with RHODC. Delusions, served quickly and without much context, can be comedy. When it’s delivered in long, lingering shots that hold blank, smiling eyes, it becomes horror.

After RHODC aired, Michaele was reported missing by her husband, Tareq. It was later revealed that she was talking AWOL to Journey lead guitarist Neal Schon. Yes, That Journey, known for ‘Don’t Stop Believin”.

The two have been married since 2013. They haven’t been on a reality TV show. Yet.