“You can’t sit with us.†Those five simple words are top of mind this week, and not just because of the premiere of Mean Girls (the movie-musical one). It’s also the sentiment surrounding the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City reunion, which incidentally also features a Burn Book.
Historically, the seating arrangement at a Real Housewives reunion is representative of a group’s division throughout the previous season. Enemies are normally sat across from one another, friends and allies share a couch, and those most entrenched in drama earn the hot seat next to our circus ringleader, Andy Cohen. But things aren’t always quite so neat. Sometimes dynamics evolve so quickly throughout a season (or even the reunion itself) that a seating chart that works for one conversation may make no sense for the next. At the season-four Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion, for example, Teresa Giudice switched couches halfway through to more effectively yell at those who she’d been seated beside. Sometimes the spot next to Andy goes to an O.G. such as the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Kyle Richards (who’s sat there all but twice), whose gravitas would feel misplaced further down the couch but might not have been in the thick of the most drama. And rarely — like when Danielle Staub was given a stand-alone chair for her season-ten RHONJ reunion appearance — the entire cast is united against one person. That’s the dilemma this season’s RHOSLC reunion had to tackle.
When that seating chart was first released, fans were perplexed, having no idea what the season finale was about to bring. The arrangement didn’t align at all with what we’d seen play out on the show up to that point, so the question began to loom: What was about to happen between Monica Garcia and Heather Gay that would pit them head-to-head? Not only did Detective Gay expose Monica’s cyberbullying influencer grift with “receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots†in the finale, but all the women then united against Monica as a result. So how do you seat a five-verses-one split?
The only truly representative seating arrangement would have been putting Monica in a dunk tank. But instead, two women had to take one for the team and sit with Ms. Von Tease, and ultimately Bravo (with years of experience laying out drama-inducing place cards at dinner parties from hell) made the perfect call. Monica is seated across from her three most vocal adversaries: Heather, who exposed her secret identity; Lisa, who she’d been bickering with all season; and Angie, whose husband she spread gay rumors about. While Meredith and Whitney are by no means her allies, especially after the Reality Von Tease reveal, there will likely be the least amount of back and forth there, giving them the unenviable couch seating. It’s so unenviable, in fact, that throughout the reunion Meredith made a point to position her body awkwardly facing away from Monica — lest any channel surfer mistake her proximity for an endorsement.
That awkwardness will really be put to the test as the reunion progresses with part two (January 16) and part three (January 23), when the women will be able to really get into Reality Von Tease. We’ll get to see this lopsided battle in action, with Meredith and Whitney craning their necks to the end of their own couch to get their licks in. Does Bravo’s health insurance cover chiropractors? But in any case, production will surely have camera operators in place, hidden somewhere in the Bermuda-themed sunken-ship set ready to capture the angle of Meredith bellowing at her couch-mate. Perhaps there’s already one tucked away behind an icicle, ready to pounce — because yes, this Bermudan pirate ship is covered in snow. How else would we know that we’re watching Salt Lake City without an on-the-nose visual cue!? It’s like when the season-11 Real Housewives of New York reunion featured a giant light-up “NYC†behind the women. We know!
The most surprising part of the arrangement was actually that Monica, a showman at heart, hasn’t yet thrown it in the other women’s faces that she earned first chair. But keep an eye on Instagram — touting that placement might very well be Reality Von Tease’s final act. Snagging that seat is an impressive feat for a freshman Housewife, accomplished only by a select few — Marlo Hampton, Julia Lemigova, Leah McSweeney, Tiffany Moon, Shannon Beador, Kristen Taekman, Kenya Moore, Joanna Krupa, and Aviva Drescher (a list that should be read to the tune of “Vogueâ€). Monica earned that seat, but will she be able to keep it? Sometimes when you’re sitting in the hot seat, you get burned.