Hunting Housewives Might Be the Perfect Metaphor for Bravo's Treatment of Its Stars

The fourth wall in the Bravo Real Housewives universe has become an increasingly flimsy structure; Ultimate Girls Trip did away with it all together and had the housewives discuss everything from past episodes to Cameo income. But this year has also seen the housewives of Salt Lake City acknowledge their role as reality TV stars, exposing a cast member as a Bravo troll account with Heather Gay’s iconically delivered “Receipts! Proof! Timeline! Screenshots!”

On Real Housewives of Potomac, the cast have given up on even pretending to be a group of friends — every scene screams contractual obligation, with much of the cast refusing to speak to one another at all while on a “girls trip” to the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, on Vanderpump Rules, the shadow of the “Scandoval” that whipped social media into a frenzy looms large. The cast (apart from Tom Schwartz) openly detest Tom Sandoval but clearly understand that they have to interact with him in some form in order for the season to continue, their podcasts and media appearances in the wake of the scandal having become major plot points. A trip to Lake Tahoe with the show’s villain made it obvious that these are a group of co-workers, not friends.

This is all also happening as a so-called “reality reckoning,” championed by former housewife Bethenny Frankel, further exposes what goes on behind the scenes to create drama, and a litany of lawsuits have been filed against Bravo, Andy Cohen, and former castmates by Bravolebrities Brandi Glanville, Caroline Manzo, Rachel Leviss, Leah McSweeney, and NeNe Leakes. So Lifetime’s Hunting Housewives, which sees Leakes being murdered by the “King of Reality TV,” is packed with timely parallels.

Along with Leakes, the new film stars fellow former housewife Denise Richards, former Dancing With the Stars pro Kym Johnson Herjavec, and Sharknado’s Melyssa Ford as four wealthy housewives who take a private jet to a spa weekend only to discover that Karla’s (Richards) husband has arranged for the plane to crash and have the survivors hunted. To make things all the more meta, Mark “The King Of Reality” Dodds (Mark Ghanimé) has filled the woods with cameras and gathered their husbands around to watch the drama unfold.

Sadly, both because she’s the most compelling screen presence and because the Real Housewives of Atlanta has been a complete snooze since she left, Leakes’ Rebel does not survive the dastardly Reality Television King’s plot for long. And as the fellow housewives say farewell with crystals and rosé, it invites the audience to also pour one out for the loss of one of reality television’s most beloved, and memeable stars.

The film is exactly the type of silly, mindless fun one would expect from the title and network, with the occasional ridiculous moment where the budget constraints are clear, including a large build-up to climbing a tree only to cut to the actors discussing how it was climbed successfully straight afterwards. But even that seems like pure meta-housewives, where Real Housewives of Beverly Hills spent a season building to a Kathy Hilton confrontation in Aspen, only to offer no footage and have the rest of the cast describe what had gone down in the subsequent episode.

Aside from the nefarious reality TV mastermind who is plotting their demise, the rest of the husbands fall into the regular categories of househusbands seen on the show: the power-hungry businessman who wants his wife to devote herself to being arm candy (Tom Girardi, Lenny Hochstein, David Foster, Kordell Stewart, Jim Edmonds), the ineffectual bores underserving of their dynamic partners (Donn Gunvalson, Shane Simpson, Mario Singer, John Mahdessian, Peter Thomas) and the sweet staunch defenders of their wives’ every misdeed (Ken Todd, Terry Dubrow, Ray Huger, and Leakes’ own late, great husband Gregg Leakes).

But what Hunting Housewives, perhaps inadvertently, picks up on is the current feeling that the subjects of these shows are being pushed into potentially dangerous situations. In the case of Vanderpump Rules, Ariana Madix struggled with mental health issues on the show, and her partner of nine years, who had a seven-month affair with her co-star and best friend Rachel (née Raquel) Leviss, attributed the deception to needing to maintain the “brand” that he and Madix had created on Bravo. Leviss had to check into a mental health facility for months after “Scandoval” became a sensation.

While Madix has outwardly been thriving, with a plethora of brand deals and stints on Broadway and Dancing With The Stars, she’s spoken about the toll it took on her mental health, and how she struggled with suicidal ideation, eating disorders, and anxiety. In the weeks after the affair was exposed, her friends had to create round-the-clock schedules because she couldn’t trust herself to be left alone. Sandoval himself has spent the most recent season talking about the danger he was in, as his co-stars kept “f–king dragging [his] name through the dirt. I battle with f–king suicide.”

The Real Housewives of Potomac star Gizelle Bryant revealed on a recent episode that an accusation of colorism made by co-star Candiace Dillard in the previous season “caused hundered of death threats” and said in a confessional, “Candiace has created so [much] rhetoric and nonsense, I have to be concerned about my safety. My kids need to be safe.” Cast members of color in predominantly white casts, like Dr. Tiffany Moon, Garcelle Beauvais, and Mary Cosby, and their families have been particualry vulnerable to racist trolling, often stoked by disputes with white castmates. And on Salt Lake City, not only has the cast been forced to spend time and vacation with the cyber bullies that torment them and their families, but had three seasons with a convicted criminal Jen Shah, who Heather Gay alleges gave her a black eye on a cast trip.

Add to that the accusations of sexual assault levied by Caroline Manzo and Leah McSweeney, the latter who claims she was served alcohol despite producers knowing she was a recovering alcoholic. When she appeared on Ultimate Girls Trip, her castmates encouraged her to drink, and producers made attending AA meetings impossible, despite her saying on camera to a fellow housewife that “If you want me to drink that's like saying kill yourself.”

So while the many lawsuits and allegations made during the so-called “reality reckoning” may not take down powerful Bravo executives or make these shows less popular, they have made cracks in the fourth wall that cannot be repaired. And watching Hunting Housewives, the central conceit doesn’t seem so far-fetched. A lot of our beloved Bravolebrities have been put in real danger and as audiences, we sat on our sofas and watched it happen.

Hunting Housewives premieres March 8 at 8:00 PM ET on Lifetime. 

Leila Latif is Contributing Editor to Total Film, the host of Truth & Movies: A Little White Lies Podcast and a regular at Sight and Sound, Indiewire, The Guardian, The BBC and others. Follow her on twitter @Leila_Latif.