Denise Richards fans are in it for the long haul. She imprinted on us at a young age with perhaps the greatest three-film run in cinema history: 1997’s Starship Troopers, 1998’s Wild Things, and 1999’s Drop Dead Gorgeous. Her career as a reality star, born out of her tabloid past as the former Mrs. Charlie Sheen, has been slightly less illustrious — from her forgotten E! series, Denise Richards: It’s Complicated, to her contentious stint on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The latter culminated in an unceremonious exit with Denise bailing amid rumors of an affair with Brandi Glanville and some admittedly wretched mean-girl behavior from castmates Lisa Rinna and Kyle Richards (no relation). But Denise devotees have kept hope alive, undeterred by Trixie Mattel’s iconic misquote of Rinna: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we never saw Denise Richards again.”
We did see Denise again on season 13 of RHOBH, when she wore a jacket upside down, slurred her way through a dinner party, and then walked right into a fight with a no-holds-barred Erika Jayne. It was not, perhaps, the comeback she had hoped for, so it makes sense that we’re now getting Denise on her own terms in her new reality series, Denise Richards & Her Wild Things. Originally picked up by E! to follow in the footsteps of It’s Complicated, the show was moved to Bravo and given the RHOBH lead-in. That time slot — coupled with a trailer that included RHOBH stars Camille Meyer (née Grammer), Garcelle Beauvais, Kathy Hilton, Sutton Stracke, and Denise’s nemesis Erika — has clearly been designed to recontextualize Denise Richards & Her Wild Things as a Housewives spin-off. It’s not. In fact, the first two episodes of the series make two things clear: One, in terms of tone and overall quality, this show is much more E! than Bravo; and two, the frequent appearances of Denise’s famous friends are what will make it watchable.
That sounds a little harsh, especially coming from a Denise fan, but I need to be honest. The family drama that’s supposed to be the show’s selling point is nowhere near as engaging as a pop-in from Tori Spelling. In the opening scene of the first episode, we’re introduced (or reintroduced) to most of our key players. Denise and husband Aaron Phypers are picking up their three golden retrievers from the dog-training ranch. One of them will be a service dog for the youngest daughter, Eloise, 13, who is mostly nonverbal owing to a chromosomal deletion that caused developmental delays. Also present is 19-year-old Lola Sheen, Denise’s second daughter with Charlie. “Lola’s like a fairy,” Denise says in a confessional. “She’s just very soft, she’s light.” She’s also deeply devoted to Jesus, as we learn in the second episode, and I feel like that would have been useful context from the jump.
The premiere also gives us insight into Denise’s living arrangements. She has a home, but after Aaron’s parents and brother turned their stay of a few months into more than three years, Denise realized she needed space. She and Aaron rented a townhouse and then two more townhouses, which have been classified as a home, a studio, and an office. I’ll be honest, I find all this “our lives are so quirky and chaotic” stuff to be much less interesting than whatever’s lurking underneath, as in The Baldwins. For example, where is the money coming from to pay for four properties? A quick glance at Denise’s IMDb makes me wonder how much she could realistically be taking in, though perhaps Aaron (and his top-secret work they once claimed had caused them to be followed) is the primary breadwinner. Also, how does Denise really feel about her in-laws essentially forcing her out of her actual home?
Before we can dwell on that too much, we meet Denise’s firstborn, 20-year-old Sami, whom RHOBH fans know from Erika asking whether Denise or Sami makes more money on OnlyFans. It turns out their respective OF careers are a bit of a sore subject for Sami, who joined the platform as a way to make money outside of her minimum-wage candy-shop job. Denise claims she then set up her own OF as a way to support her daughter, but the result was a number of confusing headlines that paired the mother and daughter in a way that gave the vague suggestion of incest. Sami ended up being subject to more mockery and had to explain to her friends that she wasn’t collaborating with her mom on OnlyFans. “You have a lot of explaining to do with your friends with both your parents,” Denise offers. Then, looking directly at the camera: “That’s why we have a show!” It’s a little early for fourth-wall breaking, but this is the woman who gave us “Bravo, Bravo, fucking Bravo,” so really, what did you expect?
Now that the family dynamics have been established, it’s time to meet this week’s special guest star: Camille. It looks as if Denise Richards & Her Wild Things is positioning itself to have at least one cameo in every episode, and as I’ve noted, that’s basically the show’s selling point. Unfortunately, Camille is not the most dynamic presence at this point in her reality career — just look at her disastrous return to RHOBH earlier this season. Denise explains that she met Camille when their then-husbands were constantly up against each other for awards because Frasier and Two and a Half Men aired at the same time. (Those shows only briefly overlapped, though maybe Denise is thinking of Spin City. Regardless, we need better fact-checking.) There’s a nice little hint of darkness to Denise saying she will never divorce Aaron, even if they hate each other, but mostly we just get the two former Housewives running an errand to prepare for a Malibu beach picnic with a lot of strict rules about plastic. Denise also drops that Sami and Lola aren’t speaking, which is supposed to be the core drama of these opening episodes but shows up here as a bit of an afterthought.
Or maybe I just don’t care about this particular conflict, which stems from Lola staying friends with Sami’s ex-boyfriend because he was Lola’s friend to begin with. I’m inclined to agree with Denise here: “You’re gonna have plenty of stuff to fight about; this is nothing.” Nevertheless, the family barbecue is at least in part an attempt to bring the two sisters back together. It’s also an opportunity for the show to introduce more side characters, including Cousin Al and his girlfriend, Lena; and Charlie Sheen’s third ex-wife, Brooke Mueller, the mother of a son who looks eerily like Charlie and is Sami and Lola’s half-brother. I’m too distracted by those dynamics to pay much attention to the sisters fighting, just as Denise is distracted by a passing squirrel. “Sorry, I keep looking at this squirrel,” she says. “I have so many squirrels that come, and I feed them nuts.” More of this Denise, the one who seems a little like she’s on another planet. (Perhaps even a planet where she fights giant bugs!)
Denise being spacey also leads to the funniest moment in the episode. She sits down with her daughters to try to make peace, but when Lola asks Sami to speak to her more kindly, Sami answers, “I wouldn’t speak to you like this if you weren’t such a bitch, dude.” Denise interjects, “Don’t call her ‘dude,’ she’s your sister.” It was spoiled by the trailer, but it still makes me laugh — as does Denise getting her handbag caught in the picnic table and spending the next several minutes trying to extricate it while Sami and Lola continue to jab at each other. This is the show I want to be watching, one where Denise is in full upside-down-jacket mode, and not an E!-flavored family comedy about sisters fighting over a boy.
Alas, as the second episode begins, Denise is still fixated on repairing her daughters’ relationship, even after acknowledging she has made the situation worse. Don’t worry, we also take a moment for Denise to remind us how big Aaron’s penis is, as if the point hadn’t been hammered home sufficiently on RHOBH. (We also learn, speaking of RHOBH, that Erika Jayne once complimented his lats and that he’s repressed that memory because he cut all those women out of his life. Seems like a chill guy!) Aaron agrees with Denise that it may be time to call in Cousin Al because he’s kind of a big brother to the girls. Al has struggled with addiction for much of his life but is now clean and sober. At one point, he stole Denise’s handbags and pretended to be a Louis Vuitton rep on Facebook so he could get some quick cash. I found it very endearing when Denise reflected that despite her anger, “At the end of the day it’s just stuff.” I root for Al, even if I personally find it a little weird when he greets his cousins with “Hi, beautiful.”
But enough about the family stuff. This episode’s special guest star is Tori Spelling, and she’s a much bigger draw for me than Camille. I love Tori, and I root for her, too — whether she’s up against ex-husband Dean McDermott or a hibachi grill — and she’s in fine form when she meets up with Denise. Who am I to judge their daytime beverages of tequila and vodka? I do feel like Tori upstages Denise a bit; she’s just more naturally funny. When Denise mentions that Aaron is the first man she’s been with who can actually be handy around the house, Tori notes, “I can’t imagine Charlie screwing in a lightbulb … How many hookers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” They jointly call their shared ex, Patrick Muldoon (Zander in Starship Troopers), and Tori learns that Patrick actually broke it off with Denise for her. This is huge for Tori, a woman who never got the Hollywood sex-symbol treatment Denise did. She’s feeling so benevolent that she lets Denise invite herself onto her new podcast.
The podcast recording is pretty fun — Tori does her misSPELLING show from a bed at the iHeartRadio studios, a nod to her post-divorce depression. Again, Denise Richards & Her Wild Things works best for me when it’s Denise connecting with these famous friends she has decades of history with. She has some really nice moments here, like saying Tori may as well go topless on OnlyFans because “your tits are out there.” When Tori says they’re actually not, Denise counters, “Oh well, you might as well have them out there.” She also invokes the deaths of Luke Perry and Shannen Doherty to urge Tori to live freely and without shame because “life is fucking short.” It’s a nice moment, and you can see the genuine connection between these women.
Less genuine are the very produced scenes in which we contrast Sami and Lola: While Sami gets ready for a rave with her friend Leah, Lola celebrates Taco Tuesday and Jesus with her saintlier pals, Reily and Nick. It’s here that we learn about Lola’s very recent embrace of Christianity — she says she really started living with God only “a few months ago” — and the whole thing is much more intense than I expected. She seems to live her whole life around signs from Jesus when she’s not getting advice from her dad (what a contrast!), and it becomes clear in confessionals that religion may be at the root of her distance from her sister. Sami feels judged by Lola, at one point suggesting that Lola thinks she follows Satan, and given how Lola is talking, I’m not sure that’s an exaggeration. It’s also clear that, for Lola, “God understands me, and that’s all that matters.” This is really not where I saw this story line going, but I guess it’s more compelling than the same “breaking girl code” drama that plagues Housewives franchises.
Regardless, the conflict seems to be wrapping up already. Al meets with his cousins to mediate, and they’re pretty quickly able to express where their hurt is coming from (aside from the Satan thing). Lola feels Sami dated in Lola’s friend group against her wishes and has created unreasonable boundaries for her. Sami feels Lola is choosing Sami’s ex-boyfriend over Sami. While their positions don’t really change, Al gets them to apologize and say they love each other, which does make you wonder how serious this fight ever was. But as someone who really just wants to watch Denise shoot the shit with her ’90s co-stars and ex-lovers, I’m more than happy to move on.