Toronto’s Real Housewives are rich, but are they mean enough?
Homegrown stars stick to the script by showing off wealth
Toronto the staid finally has a Real Housewives reality TV franchise. But should we care?
You won’t find a Weston, a Thomson or a Rogers in the cast of The Real Housewives of Toronto, which debuts Tuesday at 10 p.m. on Slice.
The one rule of old money is to never, ever talk about money. But true to form, this phenomenally popular TV franchise is populated with nouveau riche social climbers who are not afraid to bring on the bling.
So you get “stars” such as Kara Alloway, the former beauty editor of Homemakers magazine, saying, “When you have money and a fabulous life, lots of people want to be your friend.”
For “style entrepreneur” Roxy Earle, it’s as simple as: “Why be a gold digger when you can own the gold?”
As for Joan Kelley Walker, who likes to tell viewers she has a bubble bath just about every single day, there is a reminder that her husband, Magna CEO Don Walker, “makes a lot of money.”
Being crass is the currency of reality TV. The lives of these “housewives” are cartoonishly aspirational. It’s where the number of Hermes Birkin bags and Louboutin stilettos you own become a kind of nuclear arms race in one-up-womanship.
That eye-catching formula, mixed in with plenty of petty rivalry and old-time Joan Crawford-Bette Davis-style feuding has been ratings gold for the franchise.
It sets feminism back a thousand years but it is undeniably at times must-watch train-wreck TV. If one were to look at the decline of daytime soap operas and civilization in general, one could look no further than the Housewives franchise where scripted “reality” is far more interesting and outlandish than anything you will see on “Days of Our Lives.”
Since the very first Real Housewives show set in Orange County debuted in 2006, there have been numerous spinoffs across the United States and international versions, including Australia and an upcoming production for Bangkok.
Now we have Toronto. Is this a good thing? Producers are anxious to showcase an unabashedly aspirational side of the city. The women go to fancy Yorkville restaurants and stores, and host a facelift party at the Soho Metropolitan Hotel. They list the number of properties they own and spout endlessly about why they are so freakishly fabulous.
It’s a common narrative in the Housewives franchise, but it feels forced, as if producers wanted to show that Toronto with its 76-cent dollar truly is a “world class” city. And that we can outspend the best, even if there are no shots of Rodeo Drive as in “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” where there are real stars.
The problem is, Toronto is already a world-class city, listed in The Economist magazine as the world’s best place to live, where Vogue names Queen West as one of the hippest destinations in the world.
Not to mention that Hollywood comes to the home of Drake, “The 6,” every summer for one of the world’s most important film festivals. In this Trumpian era when our neighbours to the south are already eyeing us enviously (even as our housing prices shoot upward), we have already arrived.
So while the “Real Housewives of Toronto” adheres closely to the arc of the franchise, it feels odd. Certainly, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a show about snarky, showy women. Toronto is not immune to having materialistic, vapid citizens. But it feels like an ’80s reprise of Hogtown Glitter Girl society, complete with a lunch scene at Sassafraz.
For some viewers, this will be vigorously off-brand. Canadians are supposed to be nice and polite. Not showy.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Canada’s first Housewives spinoff was in Vancouver, lasting two seasons before Slice pulled the plug. And the level of bullying and viciousness in that show outmatched many of its American counterparts. Of course, several of the women were American imports, as if producers didn’t trust locals to go for the jugular.
This time around, there are no obvious villains. In the Vancouver edition, retailer Jody Claman was an unrelenting bully. But it made for great television, especially when she surprised producers by showing up at a private fitting party at The Room in Hudson’s Bay and sued one of the other stars for defamation.
In the first Toronto episode there is a party (there is, it seems, always a party) arranged by businesswoman Ann Kaplan Mulholland, who seems the most level-headed in the bunch, for her husband, cosmetic surgeon Stephen Mulholland.
Some overblown conflict is introduced when Alloway tells Earle that one of Mulholland’s staff bungled a procedure on her face. Much of the episode is spent on whether or not there will be an awkward confrontation. And that pretty much passes for a crisis in the world of the Housewives. Because if you can’t trust your plastic surgeon, who can you trust?
The question is, why do these women put themselves out there, knowing the inevitable social media backlash?
It’s simple. Housewives has become a major marketing platform. Take Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel. She parlayed her appearance into her own spinoff reality show, a talk show and four self-help books. She also founded Skinnygirl Cocktails, which she sold for a reported $100 million (US).
“Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Lisa Vanderpump has a string of restaurants in Los Angeles that owes its success less to the quality of food than the quality of exposure she gets on air.
It’s not surprising that Toronto housewife Jana Webb, the founder of a yoga company, might be looking for more exposure. Or that Mulholland sees an opportunity to market her plastic surgeon husband.
And despite the lack of representation of old Toronto money, the current crop of stars do show some promise.
French-Canadian actress Gregoriane Minot, for example, is married to Pierre Jutras, who runs the Spoke Club in Toronto, which is a hub of media, entertainment and arts. So you never know who may show up.
Walker, meanwhile, may not be hitched to a Weston, but she is married to what passes for business royalty. Don Walker earned $23.4 million at Magna in 2016, so she can have a Skinnygirl Cocktail any time she wants.
If the Toronto version of the Housewives is to survive it will likely have to amp up the rivalry and viciousness. It would be ironic if it failed because the cast was simply too nice to each other. No indication of that so far.
But then, wouldn’t that be appropriately Canadian?