Bravo is known for producing some of the most quality reality programs that television has to offer. Its new series “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” is not one of them. The show is one of the many spin offs of the company’s popular series, “The Real Housewives of Orange County”, and accomplishes the difficult task of being even more vapid and over-dramatized than the original. Within the first minute of the season premiere, the women are shown in the midst of a full-fledged screaming match, and within a minute and a half one housewife has already called another a “prostitution whore”. Before the opening credits even begin to roll, one cannot help but think this show would be better suited for a major network or even Oxygen, rather than the same company known for Project Runway and Top Chef.
The show does little to deviate from the Orange County original- however now the same vacant stares of the women’s botox-injected faces are framed by dark over-processed hair opposed to the peroxide treated locks of their California counterparts. They have simply taken the shallow, gold digging antics of the rich housewife and added thick jersey accents for an “exotic” touch. The Juicy Couture sweatsuits of the OC housewives have been replaced by Victoria’s Secret PINK brand sweatpants, and while the children of the West Coast Housewives are attending schools such as Berkeley and on their way to entering the MLB, on the East Coast they are working for their parents’ businesses and trying to raise money to open a strip club. It is the New Jersey, Italian-American stereotype at its finest, and through its portrayal of these women seems to make the claim that money does not buy class. At the end of the episode, clips for upcoming events of the season show the women spending thoughtlessly, yelling brazenly, gossiping incessantly and fighting cattily. I for one will avoid watching diligently.
Amelia Herrera
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