TV

At the midway point of Season 1, our culture writer weighs in.

• ...

Send this article to your social connections.

“Real Housewives of Rhode Island” fans, we rejoice with crackahs and Fig Newtons.

The first New England-centric “Housewives” franchise was renewed for Season 2, Bravo announced on May 11. There are no date or cast changes or confirmations announced as of yet. For a sense of a timeline, Season 1 premiered  April 2.

According to Deadline, RHORI is “a major hit” for Bravo. It “became Bravo’s biggest series or season premiere episode ever on Peacock, and is on track to become the network’s second-biggest show across platforms behind only “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

RHORI has become a critic’s favorite — my hand up here, waving a Ziplock of baggie of Saltines — with two nominations for 2026 Critics Choice’s Real TV Awards: Best Unstructured Series and Best Ensemble Cast in an Unscripted Series.

As critics and fans have pointed out, RHORI has that totally unscripted magic of early Housewives franchise shows. Guards are down. It’s pure candor. And you cannot make up quirky cast members like Alicia Carmody: the doll obsession, the crackah obsession. Or the bluntness of Jo-Ellen (matter-of-factly talking about sleeping with a friend’s ex— and his brother, in episode 7, for example.) 

This is the magic of Andy Cohen’s world-building. 

With the franchise now in its 20th year, the “Housewives” executive producer helped create those trope-filled fantasy escapes that appeal to a wide-range of viewers, and has left its firm fingerprints in the wet clay of the 21st century zeitgeist. 

Reality TV often gets piled into the “brainless” bin. It’s fun to hate on for some. There is reality TV–often a competition involved– and there is the  Bravo-Verse. 

But there’s a reason why Bravolandia is reviewed in the New Yorker, analyzed in the New York Times and Paper Magazine . Lena Dunham has opinions on Bravo’s “Summer House,” Jon Hamm loves “Housewives.” John Oliver dives deep on “Housewives” and “Vanderpump.” My go-to Bravo Escape: “Below Deck,” any franchise.

“People come up to me and say, ‘You would never believe it, but I’m a lawyer,’ or ‘I’m a scientist and I love Bravo,’” Cohen told Vulture in a recent interview. “I’m like, ‘I could believe it.’”

It’s in the world-building. From “Below Deck Med” to “RHORI,” Bravo tells a safe story. 

When done well — and RHORI does it well, as I’ve commented this first half of the season —  the genre should feel like a giant snow-globe: a safe, contained world, full of well-loved tropes, and inhabited by wild cards. When you shake it up, it’s chaos — each speck doing its own natural thing, no strings attached, no prompts. Wildly flying on its own course, and colliding with other specks. We watch the chaos with a guilty-pleasure feeling we’re peering in on a storm, yet well aware it’s just a glass bubble. The storm, in its own way, is very real– those specks are indeed falling. But there is no danger for us here. It’s just a happy escape to peer in on the imitation of madness. 

I’ve thought often, over these last few weeks, of my interview with Christina Applegate. We talked about her memoir on abuse, anorexia, cancer, and life with MS. 

“People don’t understand why I watch Bravo: because then I don’t have to think about it,” she told me of life with MS. “I’ve watched every single season of every single franchise of ‘Below Deck.’ And ‘Housewives.’ Ask me a question about any show on Bravo. I love them all so much.”

In the nearly 6,000-word Vulture interview, Cohen echoed what Housewives fans have said online all season: “The Real Housewives of Rhode Island” is “very much in the spirit of what the ‘Housewives’ originally was.”

Meaning unfiltered, almost unaware of the camera. 

At the Deadline Reality TV Summit, Cohen said: “I think one of the reasons ‘Rhode Island’ is so incredible, is that the women’s self-awareness about being on the show is incredibly low. They are uniquely themselves and taking us along for the ride.”

Cohen told Vulture he felt “great” about the RHORI roll-out. “It is so scary launching anything at this point. There are thousands of shows. No one is watching live television. But I knew from the casting that this show was going to be a hit.”

Stand-outs, as I’ve pointed to before, include the hilarious quote-machine that is Alicia, the opinionated Jo-Ellen. The call-it-like-I-see-it Liz McGraw. 

Also interesting is the six-degrees-of-Kevin Bacon connection most cast — including Rosie Woods DiMare, Ashley Iaconetti, Rulla Nehme Pontarelli, Kelsey Swanson — seem to have with each other’s entire extended families. 

On casting, Cohen told Vulture: “It’s still about connections to the group, and it’s about whether they pop on camera, whether they’re opinionated, whether they have something to say. Funny is huge.”

At the Deadline Summit, he also credited Rhode Island itself as being part of the draw. If you’ve seen the first seven episodes you know they’ve watched polo and pedaled through Portsmouth, explored vineyards in Middletown, sailed Newport, and stayed in a Newport mansion.

“It’s the perfect setting, creatively and from a story point of view,” he added. “It’s aspirational and beautiful, which is a big part of these shows.”

He added: “Here’s the thing about Rhodies, you don’t f*** with them.” (RHORI fans: T-shirt idea.)

Now I grab my pizza chips and toast to Season 2.

Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.