Reality Recap: Tumors, babies, mothers

Bethenny Frankel is equal parts cool and embarrassing in a recent TikTok. La Isla de las Tentaciones is still making waves online. Real Housewives of New York’s Sai told Jeff Lewis that Brynn is actually not close enough to her kids to miss them like she said she did at the reunion. The production company behind The Traitors has greenlit a new show called The Inheritance, which fans are hoping will pack just as much of a punch as The Traitors does. And there’s finally a value on just how much money the Real Housewives franchise has made Peacock. You’ll never guess. But you don’t have to, you can just click here to find out. 

Problems mounting for Teddi Mellencamp

This week, it was announced that doctors found multiple brain tumours on Teddi, requiring her to get surgery. But despite health issues, a former housekeeper of hers launched a $2-million lawsuit against the former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, alleging racism and mistreatment.

Julia Umana, who worked for Teddi as a live-in nanny and housekeeper says she was treated worse than her colleagues, some of whom were white and blonde. According to Julia’s lawsuit, Teddi ‘worked her to the bone’, accused her of stealing, and mocked her for speaking Spanish. 

Upon informing Teddi that she’d be leaving, Teddi pressured her to work three 12-hour shifts, for which she says she was only compensated $325. When she complained about her compensation, she says she was wrongfully terminated. She’s seeking unpaid wages and damages. 

The news of Teddi’s brain surgery coupled with the lawsuit being levied against her is spurring a range of reactions from fans of the show, some sympathetic, others not so much, saying the allegations of her acting unethically are believable, pointing to the fact that she was having an affair with a married horse trainer while still being married herself, which I wrote about here. You can dislike someone and still feel sorry for what they’re going through. But on the other hand, reality TV fans can be a bit ruthless.

Summer House cast reunites for a strange new season

What do you get when you add a married couple, a Canadian, two ex-fiancées, and a baby? The season premiere of Summer House, of course. How the producers managed to get Ciara and West to spend a summer together after the chaos of last season plus that trainwreck of a New York Times article, I will never know. 

While most think the even bigger mystery is how producers managed to get a pregnant Lindsay Hubbard and Carl Radke back in the house after he called off their wedding, I would disagree. Lindsay knows how to milk opportunities better than a farmer and a cow. She turned her pregnancy announcement into a brand partnership with Clearblue, FFS. And though annoying, she’s certainly smart enough to know that starving an audience hungry to watch this play out on TV would mean her leaving money on the table. We all know that’s not her ministry.

So far, she’s already way less annoying this season. And so long as she remains sober, which, like, she kind of has to, I feel like she might have a really good season this time around. 

In that way, her pregnancy is actually her ticket out of having to deal with her past sins. The entire cast was pissed with her last season and called her out during the reunion. Despite the excitement of returning to the house, if she wasn’t pregnant, I don’t think she would’ve gotten off nearly as easy as we’ve been shown so far, particularly with Carl returning to the house and having so many people on his side. 

But with the excitement of a new baby, the first baby for this franchise, it makes sense that the cast is letting bygones be bygones. And the questions instead are about gender, names…and timelines. Despite the math not mathing, it genuinely seems like the cast is happy for her, and that’s all that matters. I guess. 

Naturally, producers left us with the cliffhanger of Carl entering the home, not yet saying hi to his pregnant ex-fiancé, but inevitably seeing the life-sized photo of her ultrasound on the fireplace. And the season lookahead promises lots of in-depth looks at the events that led to the collapse of Craig and Paige’s breakup, which I wrote about here. 

Between Ciara pledging to ignore West, at least for the time being, Kyle actually growing up a bit and coming home from a night out before an ungodly hour and Jesse falling in love with Lexi, this season is guaranteed to be a good one.

Sutton unravels, in a good way

This week, Sutton Stracke pulled the curtain back on her personal life and upbringing more than she has since being introduced as a cast member on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. As she wrapped up her trip to her hometown of Augusta, Georgia, paying a visit not only to her mother, Reba, but the home in which her father died by suicide in back in the early 2000s, we gained a more thorough understanding of her oddities. 

In last week’s episode, we got our first in-depth look at Sutton’s mother, who she previously discussed on the show and lived up to every expectation we had (or perhaps, didn’t have) of her. She comes across as cold, unaffectionate, and very straightforward – and perhaps a bit racist? Maybe I’m the only one who picked up on the difference in treatment between Garcelle and Kyle. 

But as the conversations continue with Sutton’s mom, and particularly with Sutton, who reveals that her mother was in the house when her father shot himself, and that she has some resentment toward Reba, it becomes more understandable why both women are the way they are. 

Reba was a career woman at a time it wasn’t so popular to not be a stay-at-home wife. She was also a caregiver to her husband – to some extent, at least – in the years leading up to his death. She spent years with a man who was simultaneously experiencing substance abuse issues all while being in a depressive state, on anti-depression meds and sleeping pills. That doesn’t sound easy.

And despite always being after her mother’s love, affection, and approval, especially understanding the difficulty of running a business, it wasn’t Sutton that received it, but her ex-husband, Christian, who Reba loved and admired as if he were her own. 

Sutton has previously mentioned Reba being more concerned with Christian’s well-being when she announced they’d be getting a divorce. And her finally revealing that yes, she does resent her mother a bit, but is still clearly desperate for her mother’s validation is something a lot of women with mother wounds can relate to.

Having spent the last few months bingeing Married to Medicine, I was reminded of Heavenly, a controversial cast member, who, like Sutton, also got to revisit her childhood home, reassessing the internal damage done by her mother all these years later. The good thing about TV is that the producers can make anything happen, including a walkthrough of your old home. Seeing both of these women, who have cold, outward personas, being reduced to tears walking through the hallways of their old lives makes them just a bit more understandable. And a lot more human.