This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
Do you ever watch TV that is so good, you feel like you’re vibrating when you’re watching it? That is so directly attuned to your specific taste that, at one point, you look down at your couch and it turns out you’re levitating? Like you are so enraptured by what you’re watching, it’s as if what is happening on the television screen has created some sort of channel through your eyeballs directly to your soul, creating an electric connection that jolts you in a transformative way?
That is what watching this week’s season finale of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City was like.
There’s no shame in feeling that spellbound by an episode of reality television; what I described above is barely even hyperbole. Some people may have felt that way watching a great episode of Game of Thrones, when one of those major catastrophes happened on Grey’s Anatomy, or maybe even during an airing of SpongeBob SquarePants. To each their own! This finale was my Red Wedding, my Kyle-Chandler-and-the-bomb, my “Chocolate With Nuts.”
Every element of the episode sang with the harmony of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. (No disrespect to Heather Gay’s Ex-Mormons and Their Allies as Well as People Who’d Like to Be on TV Choir from last season.)
It was shot as cinematically as many of the movies being talked about for Best Picture—hell, more so. The summit of O.G. Housewives Gay, Whitney Rose, Lisa Barlow, and Meredith Marks on the Bermuda beach played like a scene from a Fellini film. If every screenshotted image that fans posted online with the caption “hang it in the Louvre” was actually displayed in the museum, the Mona Lisa would have to be taken down to make space. But it’s not just the visuals. Bravo’s resident snowbunnies brought the content.
“Shakespearean” is often used to justify the histrionic drama of Real Housewives, but it’s never been more apt. Phenomenal pacing—brimming with delicious teases, throwbacks, intense build-up, and dramatic reveals—led up to the climax: a wild twist that no one saw coming. A cast member is not who she said she was. Saltburn wishes. More like Talent-less Mr. Ripley. M. Night Shyamalan should take notes.
All of the episode’s excellence is owed to new cast member Monica Garcia, who meticulously crafted an arc that may rank as the best of any first-time Housewife. She became an instant fan favorite and, with this finale reveal, transformed herself just as quickly into one of reality TV’s all-time best villains. But that leads to a conundrum: Was she too good? She may have made great TV, but did she also make it so that she could—or should—never be invited back to film again?
Or, counterpoint: Did Monica just make the case that she’s unfireable?
The thing about Real Housewives is that, obviously, fans are so extreme in their devotion that just one word needs to be said before an entire history of plot lines and catchphrases pop up in their heads, like a keyword search in an online encyclopedia. But I do think—and I’m a broken record about this—that, like any TV show or film, a reader can be clued into a project’s greatness without having seen it. So let me attempt to break down this geyser of intrigue that exploded during this RHOSLC finale.
Heather receives a phone call that indicates someone has betrayed her, and she’s in shock about it. “I can’t believe it’s her!” she wails. She calls a needlessly, yet gloriously theatrical secret meeting with the O.G. cast members, gathering them on a windy beach at sunset on the last night of their trip to Bermuda. After a build-up filled with enough pregnant pauses to fill a grammatical maternity ward, she tells the women that Monica, who they thought was their friend, is not who she says she is. She is, in fact, Reality Von (Tea)se.
Those three words—Reality Von (Tea)se—are ridiculous-sounding at face value. That they’re the big revelation only adds to the perfection of the moment: gravity meets absurdity. With a delivery that should merit some sort of elocution award, Heather then explains, detail by detail, that Reality Von (Tea)se was an Instagram account that spent years spreading dirty gossip about the RHOSLC cast. More, when confronted with (aka screamed at with) proof at dinner, Monica admits that it’s true…“partially.”
What?! This woman who just spent months ingratiating herself to these cast members had been behind a troll account that had, before joining the show, leaked information and spread baseless rumors about them? It’s chilling. While admitting some involvement, as well as her assumption this would eventually come out—“Even Gossip Girl couldn’t stay Gossip Girl forever”—Monica claims that she only contributed videos meant to take down her former boss, Jen Shah, who is now in prison for fraud. The other women, who were attacked by the troll account’s other posters, she says were “collateral damage.”
It may be the juiciest episode of Real Housewives I’ve ever seen. But where does the show go from here?
Whatever the truth is, as far as the extent of her involvement with the Reality Von (Tea)se account, it’s clear that the other RHOSLC women are so traumatized by the posts and feel so betrayed by Monica that they’ll likely never want to film with her again. A version of the show where one cast member films by herself and the others pretend she doesn’t exist is not a feasible one. Could they bring in allies to film with Monica (maybe upgrade Mary Cosby to full-time?) and pit them against the O.G.’s? Is there a world in which Monica embarks on a year-long apology tour that bleeds into the new season, which she spends groveling in front of the other ladies?
In the aftermath of the Reality Von (Tea)se unmasking, a floodgate of information and leaks have come out about what is and isn’t true, who did and didn’t know what, and what Monica did or didn’t do. There’s also a polarized fanbase between those who think that Monica is a hero for staging such a great season of TV and those who think she’s demonic and has set an awful precedent for Bravo, where an obsessive fan manipulated her way onto the show. (The potential danger that poses to current cast members is real.)
It’s just a few days into January, and it’s already hard to imagine a reality TV storyline more thrilling to come in 2024. I can only imagine that the drama will metastasize a few dozen more times before cameras are up on the new season. Who knows where we—or Reality Von (Tea)se—will be then?
