In 2023, Anna Peele wrote about the reckoning facing reality TV—more specifically, the Bravo-verse—in her explosive Vanity Fair exposé. She revealed the disturbing allegations of alcohol abuse and racism that allegedly pervaded the Real Housewives franchise. At the time, former Real Housewives of New York City cast member Bethenny Frankel was calling for reality TV personalities to unionize in hopes of more protections for the stars of these popular shows.
Reality TV has always been about drama, but some of the latest scandals have sent shows and their fans into an existential crisis. Most recently, ABC made the unprecedented move of canceling a fully shot season of The Bachelorette after the emergence of a disturbing video showing the season’s star, Taylor Frankie Paul, in a domestic dispute. This season was expected to usher in a new era for the long-standing dating show, by bringing on a star of a different series (the very popular Secret Lives of Mormon Wives) with the aim of pulling in new viewers.
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is supposed to be about, ‘Oh, these Mormon mom influencers, they’re so perfect, but really everything’s a mess,’” Peele tells Little Gold Men. “That’s a different kind of series than Bachelorette, which is one of the crown jewels of Disney’s unscripted programming, and it’s supposed to be this fairy tale.”
The squeaky-clean image of the Bachelor franchise has been tarnished, and its programming isn’t alone in becoming embroiled in headline-making drama. Bravo’s Summer House is engulfed in its own scandal, which follows in the footsteps of Vanderpump Rules’ now infamous Scandoval from 2023.
It’s so much that it’s hard to keep track of it all, so this week on Little Gold Men, we brought on Peele to take a long, hard look at the state of reality TV. What might be the future of the Bachelor franchise? Peele believes it could go one of two ways: either it tries to recover and reboot after shelving this Bachelorette season, or “they can’t come back from this,” she says.
On a sunnier side of the genre sits Love Island. Peele, who has a book on the show, Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind Love Island, coming out next month, says the series succeeds because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. “It’s so silly that I think that it kind of disarms the islanders so that then they are able to just relax enough to accidentally fall in love,” she says.
So where does reality TV go from here? It has to either feel fresh as a new concept or bring together reality stars in a new way, as The Traitors has done so successfully. Peele calls out two other shows that seem to be ushering in the new era of success in reality TV: Love on the Spectrum (“a very moral, goodly hearted warm hug of a reality show”) and House of Villains (“There’s no gameplay. It’s just, like, wild people in the house tormenting each other.”).
