I tried as hard as I could to fight the power of Bravo and Andy Cohen’s “laugh at the entitled” Real Housewives tractor beam, but it’s too strong to resist. We are adding Housewives to the GRTFL. The Real Housewives formula is simple: Six wealthy-but-not-so-wealthy-they-won’t-appear-on-reality-TV women + city + events for them to argue at = television show. The Real Housewives franchise is the ultimate “I only watch because my wife/girlfriend/sister/girl-I-am-stuck-in-the-friend-zone-with-watches-but-secretly-I-can’t-wait-for-the-next-episode" program. I'm not going to sit here and try to sell you on some academic bullshit about how this show’s popularity is fueled by us middle-class folk basking in schadenfreude. I am simply going to confess that I watch it, enjoy it, and am more excited than I should be to write about it every week. There is something groovy about watching women who are paid to act like themselves on camera do their best to display anything but their true selves on camera. Shit, meet show.

As always, we drew up some rules: