Reality revolt

Michelle Santiago Cortés on reality TV’s reality check.

Fall television is about to get very real as reality television swells up to fill the vacuum left behind by the releases that could have been. With the exception of Nathan Fielder’s (comically timely) philosophical treatise on the “ethics and logistics of reality-show image-making,” The Curse, reality television is picking up a lot of the slack. The New York Times’s Margaret Lyons writes that fall programming is “overstuffed” with competition and game shows, signs of the impact of the Hollywood strikes.

The rise of reality TV as a network and viewer staple is tied to the history of Hollywood strikes. Anna Shechtman writes in the New York Review of Books that while “the first” American reality TV show aired in the late seventies, the genre didn’t come into its own until shows like Cops and America’s Most Wanted became American television mainstays during the Writers Guild strikes of 1988. Then in 2007, the guild went on strike again, and unscripted television swooped in to help networks meet their bottom lines. Reality television of the late aughts was a precious goldmine, it was the era of Rock of Love, I Love New York, and A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila. Without them, who knows if we’d have our beloved Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives of New York City (RHONY). Now, more than 55 days into the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023, we have 38 hours of unscripted programming across five primetime schedules, an eighty-one percent increase from last year.

Reality television is relatively cheap and quick to produce, and as labor organizer Nelini Stamp writes in The Guardian, it casts, “nonunionized TV personalities substituted for striking writers, crossing picket lines on the way to fifteen minutes of fame.” But more work does not necessarily equal more money for workers (frustratingly enough). Ryan Gajewski of the Hollywood Reporter recently explained that yes, unscripted television is booming right now and the proof is in the fall schedules. But, “the jobs that are available tend to be long hours working weekends, no health benefits.” The business of unscripted is designed to funnel money into all the usual places—network pockets—and nowhere else. Breakout stars are not proof-of-concept that reality television somehow democratizes fame or upward mobility, those are the false promises many of these shows trade in.

On the heels of another Hollywood strike and an overreliance on unscripted programming, it’s no surprise talent is growing increasingly frustrated by their working conditions. Last year, Love Is Blind’s Jeremy Hartwell filed a lawsuit against Netflix and the show’s production company for creating “inhumane working conditions'' by limiting the cast’s access to sleep, food, water, and the outside world while piling them with alcohol. The suit also makes note of $50,000 in “liquidated damages” participants were allegedly expected to pay if they chose to ditch the show early. Of course, the suit also claims participants were paid below the minimum wage. And a few days ago, Nick Thompson, Hartwell’s Love Is Blind castmate, told Vulture that working on the show meant “you give up your phone, your wallet, your passport” and that “you’re not allowed to leave the hotel room without permission.”

Bethenny Frankel, of RHONY fame, said on Instagram that it's time for a “Reality Reckoning.” On August 4, a letter from Frankel and celebrity attorneys Mark Geragos and Bryan Freedman teased an incoming “bombshell lawsuit” against NBCUniversal, Bravo’s parent company. It says “NBC has exceeded the moral and legal limits permissible in a civilized society,” and warns that “the day of reckoning has arrived.” Geragos and Freedman are representing current and former cast and crew that have worked with Bravo. Geragos told Vulture that their team has since “been overwhelmed investigating complaints.”

Perhaps the reality TV reckoning is taking promising roots among Bravo’s Housewives because of the double-bind of labor these ladies find themselves in. “Housewifery is hard work,” Shechtman writes in NYRB, “taxing, by all accounts; isolating, by default; unwaged, by design.” In eleven housewives franchises (not including spinoffs) and 154 housewives, only seven have been rumored to quit, the rest either got fired or are still filming: “it’s a buyer’s market for Bravo.”

Despite the onion-like layers of nondisclosure agreements and fourth-wall denialism, housewives drama is also workplace drama, “the terms of their employment have nonetheless become fodder for their televised fights.” It’s not hard to assume that all of the dizzying mudslinging that characterized this latest season of Real Housewives of Atlanta was, as many housewives are used to accusing each other (and especially Kenya Moore) of, failed attempts at building storylines that can guarantee screen time, a reunion seat next to Andy Cohen, and a contract renewal. As Shechtman writes, “their work is the production of drama, and they must be prolific to stay on the job.”

Despite the lawsuits and the impending “reckoning,” the business of reality television is doing just fine. After 13 seasons, the RHONY returned with a reboot and a brand new cast: A new crop of rich women, none of whom have been jaded or broken down by years of working for Bravo. A reboot was a risk, but now, Cohen and other Bravo executives are gushing and talks about a Real Housewives of Atlanta (RHOA) reboot are swirling around the rumor mill: A source told Page Six that production has been doing “some outreach” for a new cast, “locally in Atlanta.” Another source told Entertainment Weekly that ahead of filming the latest reunion, the housewives were told to expect “a big change with the franchise moving forward.”

The ratings are still great and RHOA, in addition to being the first all-Black cast, has long been among the most successful Housewives franchises. Now, the ET source says, “The cast is on edge about their future and has no idea where the network plans to go.” As a writer who once worked under a WGA-E contract, this sounds like one thing: a layoff. And I was lucky to have a union.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• The Black Film Archive celebrated its second anniversary (Substack)

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MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• Babe, wake up. We got a new Andrea Long Chu (on Zadie Smith)

• Copy, the first AI-powered fashion Magazine (Vogue)

• Whitney Mallett on end-of-summer dickmatization for Feeld

• With five old phones and some Pew data, a reporter’s strategy for social media coverage (Nieman Lab)

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