The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season five finale ends in a twisted game. The women are having an already tense dinner in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, when cast member Heather Gay suggests that they pull out their phones and share the meanest things they’ve written about each other as a “healing” exercise.

This moment is clearly designed to set up next season’s feuds, but Gay, the crafty ringleader of the bunch — practically a producer on the show — frames it as a necessary release for the paranoid group of friends. Naturally, the scene ends with Gay’s castmate and cousin Whitney Rose tricking frenemy Lisa Barlow into reading a sexually graphic rumor about her and her husband, John, which leads to Barlow reactively blurting out a sexually graphic rumor about on-and-off friend Angie Katsanevas’s husband, Shawn. Any rebuilt trust among the group quickly unravels, and the women are, rest assured, back at square one.

With a less outrageous and colorful cast, this clearly produced moment may have landed with a thud rather than a bang. But the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast has discovered an effective and refreshingly simple way to approach conflict as the 10th installment in the Real Housewives universe: Give the audience what they want, no matter how pre-meditated or contrived.

Meanwhile, the women of the Real Housewives of New York City reboot have struggled to create fresh, compelling storylines as the newest show in the 20-year-old franchise. Their second season also recently concluded with a jaw-dropping finale, although it was ultimately more shocking than satisfying. After a season of failed pranks and boring arguments, the finale took a sharp and disturbing turn, focusing on a cast member’s sexual assault and bringing out some troubling racial dynamics in the group.

Both RHOSLC and the RHONY reboot have demonstrated the tricky business of joining a reality franchise so late in the game. However, after a few unbalanced seasons, RHOSLC has managed to carve out its own identity while leaning into the most classic Real Housewives tropes. Meanwhile, the level of self-awareness of the cast of RHONY is one of the reasons for its downfall.

Salt Lake City proves that reality TV can be theater

Since The Real Housewives of Orange County premiered on Bravo in 2006, there have been 11 different shows, almost 200 Housewives, and numerous tell-all books, all forming an exhaustive manual on how to succeed (and........

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