Over the Potomac River, tucked in a champagne room far far away, Charisse Jackson-Jordan took a victorious sip as news broke Wednesday that Karen Huger would spend the next year in county jail following a disastrous DUI—her fourth. There was even more devastating news for The Real Housewives of Potomac OG that soon followed: It was reported Friday afternoon Bravo is allegedly moving on without her.
After years as the jester of RHOP, Jackson-Jordan (the real Grande Dame of Potomac, as is word on the street) just may have gotten the last laugh. Huger has been sentenced to a fate much worse than just jail time: the threat of irrelevance. And it’s coming at the perfect time… for Bravo, that is. Jail will definitely suck for Huger.
The Real Housewives of Potomac is at a crossroads, one that comes after four middling seasons in a row. Once the unsung hero of Bravo programming, RHOP has fallen far on the totem pole, usurped by underdogs like Miami, Salt Lake City, and the reinvigorated Orange County.
Huger’s departure could be a push off auto-pilot, one that will allow the entire cast a chance to fight like their flutes depend on it amid a power vacuum.
Huger’s sentence leaves RHOP without the Lisa Vanderpump to its Kyle Richards, interestingly enough at the exact same time as LVP departed The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (even missing its Season 9 reunion). RHOBH responded by keeping on the remaining main cast, while bringing on Garcelle Beauvais and Sutton Stracke, who have helped reinvigorate the show, slowly but surely.
And it wasn’t long ago The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City faced a similar predicament, fresh off its shakiest season yet. Much younger and unproven, RHOSLC turned around its best-ever season in the wake of Jen Shah’s federal imprisonment—and then they did it again. Meanwhile, The Real Housewives of New Jersey opted to wait out Teresa Giudice’s prison sentence after a disastrous Season 6, to tepid results (out of Giudice’s control, in all fairness).
Having become a caricature of herself over the years, Huger has long coasted on fake stories and even faker fence riding. She spent the entirety of Season 9 proclaiming an innocence we knew would never come to fruition, while riding out her trial with the hubris of a truly deluded Grande Dame as her cast idled along.
Were Huger to return, it would be the same old song we’re so tired of hearing. A time out is not only a humbling punishment in the sense that it will (hopefully) implore her to learn not to drink and drive for the umpteenth time, but a hiatus from Bravo could allow Huger a chance to rediscover reality. Surely, she’ll be back for Season 11 or 12, likely with the realization she actually needs to work, for once. And if she’s not willing to deliver, someone needs to shatter that flute.
The biggest issue is that, unlike Salt Lake City post-Season 3, there’s simply not a core roster of all-star Housewives left to parlay Huger’s absence. Sure, Gizelle Bryant is as hilariously cruel as ever, fresh off a rather impressive redemption arc. And a fully divorced Ashley Darby could finally give the “Coffee & Love” songstress a chance to spread her wings and be the messy anti-hero we once knew and loved. Not to mention, Stacey Rusch is the best newbie RHOP has seen since Candiace Dillard-Bassett.
Aside from that, Wendy Osefo just wrapped her fourth season in a row struggling to balance work and family, once again starting a business no one cares about. With Huger off to jail, Osefo’s only prospective plotline—a newfound feud between the former allies—is dead in the water. What’s left, another candle line? Snooze.
And with Mia going M.I.A. for Reunion Part 3 in light of a humiliating decimation (Gizelle’s first-ever reunion win!), it’s increasingly unlikely we can count on the DMV’s most accomplished liar to keep the wheels moving. She’s on track to be the Trump administration’s next Press Secretary at this rate, anyway.
Keiarna Stewart does exist too, allegedly, but Bravo cameras seem to struggle finding her. Mumbly confessionals and increasingly ill fitting corsets are funny of course, but they’re not going to snag her center flute, if she can muster up a flute at all. RHOP will probably be a month into filming Season 10 before production realize they forgot to fire her. That’s how Jackson-Jordan got to be a friend-of in Season 8.
That’s not to mention that the show’s reserve bench of Housewives is all but depleted, and Brandi Glanville’s paltry RHOBH Season 10 return shows exactly why pulling in a past troublemaker isn’t the answer. Yes, Bravo could try to resurrect Monique Samuels or a post-Traitors Robyn Dixon, but what is that solving? We can only watch Samuels lose so many pets to “natural causes.” Jackson-Jordan is waiting just off stage for a chance to be the most amazingly awful friend-of in Bravo history, once again, but the calls aren’t coming in.
Even if Bravo decides to keep the entire remaining cast—as was the case with Salt Lake City post-Shah and Beverly Hills post-LVP—duds and all, it’s still imperative to add to the roster. Rusch’s fantastic freshman season is proof the DMV still has untapped greatness waiting in the wings, after all. We can move in new and exciting directions, maybe even giving that thirsty clothing designer Vivien a friend-of slot. Anyone who can bring Rusch to a point of dropping her QVC veil should be rewarded.
RHOP should learn a lesson from its predecessors, that the only way to move forward is to stop circling the past. Frustrating as it can be, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has greatly improved from its all-time low in the absence of LVP. Huger, like LVP, suffered the fate of many years of fan adoration: feeling untouchable within her cast, and no longer feeling the need to couch her thinly veiled fraudulence so long as viewers believe her.
Vanderpump’s departure not only broke a tiring stalemate, but forced her castmates into exciting new positions. Richards has spent the past few years in the line of fire in a way she hasn’t been in a decade, while passive, proxy feuds have fallen aside for classic viciousness in the form of Stracke vs. Dorit Kemsley.
And, in Shah’s absence, Salt Lake City eagerly added some of the most unhinged people to grace our TV screens, from Monica Garcia to Britani Bateman, while Angie Katsanevas and Mary Cosby emerged out of the Shah shadow to show themselves in truly dynamic lights.
Similarly, New Jersey finally reclaimed its footing when it stopped trying to resurrect past Housewives like Jacqueline Laurita and Kathy Wakile, moving on with a solid new cast that extended the show’s shelf life at least three years.
There’s ample room for change in Potomac. Imagine two more eclectic Housewives, maybe one who can activate Darby’s Barbie and another who could feud with Osefo in a way that doesn’t involve voodoo shrines (absurdly funny as that was).
Sure, the surprisingly cute Season 9 reunion, which concluded Sunday night, proves the leftover Housewives are capable of making solid TV. But RHOP at its best wasn’t just serviceable. It was a laugh-out-loud institution, Season 4 proudly holding a spot on my list of all-time best Housewives seasons. There was a time the prospect of “bringing Eddie out” to expose Rusch’s grifter man TJ would be a blip on the radar, not the centerpiece of the reunion.
It won’t be easy, but maybe now, RHOP can finally escape purgatory. Maybe the most selfless act Huger ever made was taking her farce all the way to a hopeless trial, forcing Bravo to make the decisions it would never have been brave enough to make otherwise.
