This September is the month of Mormon mania. Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City premieres on Sept. 18, where the woman will attempt a second act to their show-stopping takedown of Monica Garcia. Rivaling the premiere, though, is a new reality venture: Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which hit streaming Sept. 6. With their synced release dates, these shows will inevitably compete. It’s a full-scale reality television Mormon-off.
It’s easy to compare Mormon Wives and RHOSLC; hell, Mormon Wives even has its own Whitney and Jen, though this Jen doesn’t teach prison fitness classes to Elizabeth Holmes. Mormon Wives also uses the Bravo structure to its advantage; like Selling Sunset, Mormon Wives rips off the Housewives-style of confessionals and group trips.
Some of the conversations are practically identical: RHOSLC’s Heather questions Lisa for being a Mormon with a tequila company, while Mormon Wives’ Jen shames Jessi for her drinking. It’s also not Hulu’s first dip in the Bravo pot; they already have the dreadfully boring Vanderpump Villa, and are producing the docu-comedy Stassi Says. Adding in Mormon Wives, it’s easy to think that Hulu is crawling for those Bravo bucks.
In many ways, though, Mormon Wives is better than RHOSLC. For starters, its cast is actually LDS. RHOSLC promised some religious inquisition: The Season 1 trailer opened with its cast praying to God, and proceeded to teach the lessons of Mormonism, like fidelity and honesty. That ploy has mostly failed. Lisa is the only God-fearing Mormon on the cast, but she’s far from the Salt Lake norm. Heather and Whitney (and Monica, briefly) are ex-Mormons, but their religious reckonings are more vindictive than thoughtful. Every time Heather brings up her experience with the church, it feels like a ploy to sell another copy of Bad Mormon and its unnecessary sequel.
The Mormon Wives cast is, in fact, made up of Mormon wives. Sure, some of them are more liberal than others. In an early episode, the group splits between the more and less pious, with trad-wife Whitney jabbing at the less devout Demi’s sex habits (that somehow involve fruity pebbles?). Jen is so religious that she wears undergarments to protect the sanctity of her marriage. The closest these wives get to drugs is the laughing gas they inhale while receiving Botox injections.
Because so few of the Housewives are actually Mormon, RHOSLC never tries that hard to investigate Salt Lake City life. The show’s progression centers around its scandals: Jen getting arrested, Mary possibly running a cult, Monica manning a troll account. Mormon Wives, on the other hand, lingers on the city’s culture. Long sequences are spent explaining the women’s soda orders (there’s always a massive cup in-hand, holding some godforsaken combination of Dr. Pepper and coconut creamer). At Jen’s baby blessing, the crowd prays to Jesus Christ in a shockingly earnest moment; all of RHOSLC’s church-going clips feel voyeuristic at best.
Funnily enough, Mormon Wives has enough scandals under its belt to compete with RHOSLC. The show is built on blowout. These wives, who went viral on TikTok by creating their own pseudo-hype house called “MomTok,” became national news with their “soft swinging.” And yet, this husband-swapping recedes quickly within the show. Mormon Wives is much more interested in interpersonal relationships and LDS culture, while the swinging past simmers underneath. Compare that to RHOSLC Season 2, which can be marked in terms of pre- and post-Sprinter van.
Like a good Housewives series, Mormon Wives has main characters and side players. The show’s center is Taylor Frankie Paul, whose story is sprawling. Taylor revealed the group’s swinging on TikTok Live, divorced her husband, started dating her new boyfriend Dakota, got arrested and charged with domestic violence, immediately got back together with Dakota, and got pregnant with Dakota’s kid before marriage.
Naturally, she was a Page Six fixture. In this way, Taylor is quite similar to RHOSLC’s Monica. In a prophetic X post, Sam Greisman wrote, “Monica and her mom are too TLC for Bravo I think.” Taylor has this same TLC-level messiness.
And yet, Taylor fits into Mormon Wives in a way Monica never did on RHOSLC. The women rally around Taylor amidst her personal crises; even before Heather’s receipts and proof, Monica seemed outside the Housewives bubble. Don’t worry, the MomTokers were still able to excommunicate a friend: The relatively normal Whitney ends up kicked out, not for misconduct but for a lack of caring. There’s still a contingent of loud RHOSLC fans who decry the loss of Monica; maybe they’d be more happy with the way these wives handled Taylor.
If Mormon Wives has a fault, it’s the backslide into Kardashian-isms. The women speak with mind-numbing quantities of vocal fry, cooing drawn-out sentences of puffy nothingness. They’re also almost entirely identical; telling Demi from Jessi or Jen can be a daunting task. And with a cast of eight, some of the wives disappear entirely. Both Mikayla and Layla are title-card players without a lick of a storyline.
RHOSLC has an explosion problem, as audiences have learned the hard way. The boom, like Jen Shah’s arrest, is must-see TV. The fallout, like the entirety of season three, is horrifically boring and overwrought. With Season 5, fans wait with bated breath to learn whether RHOSLC can break the cycle, following the Monica debacle with something actually palatable.
Mormon Wives, then, offers the antidote. The show approaches LDS culture with a touch more curiosity, and demands less of its subjects for drama manufacturing. Where RHOSLC is meant to be gawked at, Mormon Wives is meant to spark intrigue. After eight episodes of Utah world-building, you can’t help but lean in with an open ear.
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