Ranking the Housewives

A completely subjective ranking of 119 Real Housewives.

[rankingthehousewives]

Eight years later, or, "I'm not getting older; I'm just getting bolder."

Hi divas,

It's been the better part of a decade since I first posted this list, and a lot has changed: for me, for Bravo, and not least for the various superestrellas herein. I'm forced to fess up to some clunker opinions (Stacey Forsey is not a better Housewife than Vicki Gunvalson; Teresa Giudice is [heartbreakingly, devastatingly] not actually in love with her brother), and a few overall sea changes in the way I conceptualize the show and Bravo in general.

First of all, I underestimated the delight of the Housewives blog/news cycle, which has only refined as an apparatus since the posting of this list. A key component in being a Bravolebrity is one's ability to titillate with delightfully brain-bending headlines (Teresa Giudice 'can’t relate' to Jen Shah’s prison sentencing: 'I would never do something like that.') and to shock and delight with one's antics, public snipes, absurd feuds, and assorted felonies. When I first compiled this list, it was after my first watch of each of series, and I didn't understand that a good chunk of the captivating material occurs offscreen, as a thrilling little adrenaline hit during an otherwise mundane day. If I had to make a list like this again, I'd take that into much more rigorous account.

But I wouldn't make a list like this again, because fundamentally... I really like all of these women now, at least as highly edited TV characters! Shock twist: they're all now tied in my heart! I see them all as rich and necessary players in the show's milieu, and I honestly think that my individual moral judgments of them are totally irrelevant—and, in fact, I think the show works best approached as non-judgmentally as possible. I respect that each viewer will have their own individual lines in the sand as to what is and isn't Too Far, informed by their own personalities and experiences, and I can't ask for carte blanche approval of these problematic women and their problematic ways. But for me, I have genuinely come to appreciate Kyle Richards and Jeana Keough and THE Mary Schmidt Amons, and of course I still love Phaedra and Tamra and Sheree and all of the other beautiful Botoxed gladiators who have taken to the Coliseum (and The Traitors season two) for our collective entertainment.

I think part of what's brought me to this conclusion is that in the current era of BravoCon and celebrity superfans and Peacock exclusives, the social media discourse has gotten increasingly tense, heated, and even abusive—between fans and other fans, certainly, but also between fans and the talent. People frequently direct really cruel messages to the Housewives and other Bravolebrities without thinking of the impacts of those sorts of messages, individually and en masse. I think a ranked list like this one, with its favourites at the tops and least favourites at the bottom, isn't a great format for communicating the nuance of these programs at their best, and for expressing my appreciation for these many strong, interesting, entertaining women who love vaginal rejuvenation and axe-throwing. Basically, I think we're too quick to judge, and I think I judged too quickly.

I still get really sweet messages from readers about this list (please forgive me if I haven't answered yours!), so I won't strip it from the web, even though I disown a lot of the opinions underpinning it. If you're reading this in 2024, or later, just know that I almost universally wish I were kinder and more thoughtful in my appraisals. And, hey, thanks again for reading.

If you're interested in keeping up with me eight years later, I write, produce, and host a podcast with my friend, Josie, called Bittersweet Infamy. We cover infamous non-fiction stories, including an excruciatingly in-depth dive into the Salahis' white house crash with lots of bizarre celebrity cameos, from Shaq to Sugar Kiper to Bai Ling. Three and a half years in, we're revving up for our 100th episode, so we'd love the well wishes.

If that's not your vibe, then please continue to enjoy the weird and wonderful worlds of Bravo—and please, by all means, make it nice.

xoxo

t.

P.S. RHOSLC kicks ass.

P.P.S. Luann is still my favourite.

[rankingthehousewives]

RANKING THE HOUSEWIVES

Yoooo! Welcome to Ranking the Housewives! If this is your first time, let me help you find your way around!  First of all, the rankings after this point are posted from top-to-bottom -- so the winner first. If you wanna read from bottom to top, or just click around for your favourite Housewife, hit up The List. Other links you might be interested in are:

Intro - wherein I lay out the ethos of this ranking. Acknowledgments - just some people I’m very grateful to.

You can also feel free to chuck me a message using the Ask button. 

Enjoy reading!

xo,

t.

[rankingthehousewives]

PROLOGUE (or, Requiem for Millou)

There is a popular argument, I think, that shows like the Real Housewives franchise herald the fall of society as we know it. They’re transparently artificial, they’re hyperfocused on material things and plastic surgery, they spin almost entirely on rich middle-aged women screaming at each other. It’s an easy series to dislike, with easy characters to judge. My take on the show is a little different. I appreciate it as the modern answer to the primetime soap – a Dynasty or a Melrose Place for our era. I also think the shows don’t get nearly enough credit for their occasionally literary storylines, their economic communication of often fairly complex female characters, and the sprawling labyrinthine structure they take on four or five seasons into any given city. I think it’s a franchise that’s endlessly debatable and analyzable. You can read into it as much or as little as you like. I love thinking about it and talking about it. And so: this. A ranking of all 119 Real Housewives, from each of the franchise’s English language installments.

In order to undertake a ranking of this type, you must first abandon your search for the perfect Housewife. No Housewife will ever be righteous 100% of the time. Someone you previously loved will all of a sudden turn into a total monster or a complete hypocrite or a holier-than-thou prude for the space of an episode, or a month, or an entire season. Everyone takes a turn as the villain on Housewives, with very few exceptions. 95% of them have said something egregiously racist, or dropped some pseudo-benevolent homophobia, or otherwise been messy. So you may show me a scene where someone I’ve ranked very highly is acting like a total fucking tool, and I’d concede. Housewives greatness is often a matter of psychological complexity or entertainment factor rather than actual prosocial qualities.

Additionally, it helps to frame the Housewives as characters rather than actual people. I’m not out to depersonalize the whole experience of watching reality TV any more than it already is, but Housewives in particular is such an artificial franchise. The conversations as depicted are chopped up and reconstructed. The Housewives, their stories and their characterizations are equally fabricated. I don’t doubt that filming the show has endless reverberations on their real lives, but when you sign up as a Housewife, you basically commit to be a character in a soap opera. It comes with the territory. With that in mind, I’ll often give someone high marks for being a good character on the show if not a person I necessarily like. Brandi Glanville, Jill Zarin, Danielle Staub, Jody Claman: all interesting characters and deeply flawed human beings.

Please note also that this isn’t a ranking of the biggest Housewives. There are plenty of massive, influential ‘Wives whom I don’t really care about, and plenty of obscure gems in my top 20. If you’re looking for the usual Bethenny-NeNe-Teresa-Vanderpump-Vicki top five, this isn’t the ranking for you. If you’re riding hard for Magali: welcome. You have found your people.

I had planned to release the write-ups in a trickle, a few a day, but we live in the Netflix era. People want to binge at their own pace. So out of respect to your personal autonomy, here’s everything. I’ve included all of the American franchises (Atlanta, Beverly Hills, Dallas, D.C., Miami, New Jersey, New York City, Orange County and Potomac) as well as the English language international franchises (Cheshire, Melbourne and Vancouver). The cut-off point is OC season eleven: if it aired before then, it’s covered. I haven’t decided whether I’ll update it on a rolling basis, but since there will be three new international franchises premiering in the next year (Auckland, Sydney and Toronto), I imagine I’ll be unable to resist.

Other than Vancouver, which I watched as it aired, I watched all of the Housewives franchises in a sustained push starting at the end of 2015 with the express purpose of creating this ranking at the end. What can I say? I like a project. As a result, however, my knowledge about things like contemporary fan reactions to characters and stories and some more arcane pieces of gossip is fairly fuzzy. I apologize in advance for errors where they occur and welcome feedback and corrections.

Finally, I’m very conscious of being a gay dude putting himself in the position of judging a whole raft of women. I’ll try to do so on their merits as people and as television characters in the most responsible, least misogynistic way possible (for its part, the show itself begs for you to judge these women, often for misogynistic reasons). What judgment I pass, I’ll try to do based on their actions and their individual personalities rather than some smug notion of How Women Should Be. Please feel free to tell me if I fuck up.

Let’s get started!

[rankingthehousewives]

(Oh, and just so you’re not shocked -- the ranking starts at #1. Sorry about that. If you want to go from the bottom up, hit The List.)

[rankingthehousewives]

1. LUANN DE LESSEPS

New York City // 1 - 5 & 7 - present

“One should know: never count out the Countess.”

I should first admit that I was spoiled on LuAnn. Long before I undertook my project of watching all the Housewives series, I learned of LuAnn through her music career, which consists of such iconic jams as “Money Can’t Buy You Class” and “Chic, C’est La Vie.” I will candidly say I was enthralled. “Who is this strange, intense woman rapping at me about etiquette over a techno beat?” I wondered. “I must know more!” And I’m happy to confirm two things: 1) LuAnn’s musical oeuvre has tremendous staying power and her songs comprise a critical portion of my “getting ready to party” playlist to this day; and 2) the LuAnn of the TV show is exactly as her music makes her seem.

Generally speaking, there are two LuAnns, who, in deference to Carole Radziwill, we will call “LuAnn” and “the Countess.” “The Countess” is LuAnn as she’d like to present herself to the world. She’s almost certainly a contrivance of LuAnn’s decade-plus marriage to a minor member of the European nobility and her belief that that arbitrary title demands she act in a certain way. She constantly harps on about minor breaches of manners and demands that drivers and servants call her “Mrs. de Lesseps” and generally tries to enforce this weird Victorian interpretation of social customs. The Countess is relatable to absolutely no one and doesn’t seem to understand how the standards she holds others to, and her hypocrisy around conducting herself to these same standards (more on which below), are incredibly alienating and make people hate her guts rather than impressing them. “LuAnn”, on the other hand, is a hard-drinking party animal who loves to aggressively pursue younger and/or married men and doesn’t give the first fuck about the rules of proper etiquette, especially when they get in the way of her obtaining some dick (no value judgment; we should all be so driven). This push and pull between LuAnn as she’d like to be seen (prim Count’s wife) and LuAnn as she actually exists (sexual predator) is critical to the character and goes a long way to understanding why the other women are so frequently at their wit’s end with her, even when she’s rarely a central character in any given conflict.

Of course, a lot of the other women’s frustration with LuAnn also has to do with her hilariously sneaky and mercenary strategic tactics. LuAnn, simply put, is a total fucking snake and loves nothing more than to enter a conversation, stir up some sort of conflict between unrelated parties, and then scurry away and pretend she has no idea what happened. She does this for no real reason other than the thrill of blood in the water, and usually has no stake in who wins or loses the fight she creates. The punchline, naturally, is that LuAnn is completely unsubtle in her machinations and is constantly called out for being a shit-stirring liar. I love watching the women stammer in fury when they realize they’ve been LuAnned yet again and there’s nothing they can do about it because LuAnn will just lie to your face and act offended if you confront her and everyone else already knows what a heel she is so there’s no point in calling her out. LuAnn also sets fucked up traps for people even during peacetime, like trying to trick Ramona into blindly rejecting her own wine or inviting Kelly Bensimon to a party in season seven to mess with Bethenny. Even LuAnn’s genteel Countess persona is usually just the vehicle for some sort of passive-aggressive dig. Sample lines include: “Aviva is poised and graceful and charming. You’d never know she had a handicap,” and “Bethenny is up there, doing her Kathy Griffin, trying to be funny… and is!” There is no aspect of LuAnn’s entire being that couldn’t conceivably be a smokescreen for her doing you dirty behind your back.

Predictably, the best LuAnn moments and storylines tend to be the ones where she’s caught doing something that flies in the face of her pretentious Countess persona and is forced to either own up to it or cover it up. This happens constantly, about two or three times per season, but the gold standard is the time she got loaded in St. Barth’s and fucked a 20-something Johnny Depp lookalike, cheating on her long-term boyfriend, and then tried to obscure the whole incident with this weird lie about running into some Italian friends. The whole thing just goes on forever, LuAnn’s terrible acting and constant reference to her nonexistent Italian friends, even after LuAnn has been caught on-mic phoning her friend, and, in the world’s most basic French, owning up to the whole incident and ordering her friend to lie as well. Watching LuAnn flail around and fail miserably to cover her tracks is some I Love Lucy level comedy and I’m there for every second, especially when the storyline resolves itself with the dude returning to the house the next evening and fucking Sonja Morgan in the ass while LuAnn grits her teeth and badly pretends not to care.

The Countess’s star power is such that while she was officially demoted to Friend Of in season six – such an injustice – she received as much or more screentime than most of the official ‘Wives and was quickly re-promoted back to a starring role in season seven. This was great because it gave birth to a new and wonderful LuAnncarnation: The Cool Countess. After LuAnn lucked into a brief change in public opinion and became popular, she changed her entire persona into a laidback, hula hooping catchphrase machine. Think Poochie from The Simpsons. This obviously came off painfully rehearsed and awkward and infuriated all of her castmates. Since then, she has spent season eight on a cokey tear: getting engaged after two weeks to Sonja and Ramona’s mutual fuckbuddy, calling Carole a pedophile, ostracizing herself from the group after deeming them jealous bitches who hate her happiness. I love that almost a decade in, LuAnn is still finding new ways to piss these women off. Never count out the Countess.

Notable storyline: The time Heather Thomson barged into her room in Turks and Caicos demanding to know if LuAnn had fucked a dude whom they’d found passed out upstairs (she had fucked a dude; just not that dude). LuAnn comes swaggering down in a bathrobe and sunglasses, blatantly still loaded at 8 in the morning, and tells Heather off for being a frigid priss and informs her she’ll fuck anyone she wants. She also coins her enduring catchphrase, “Don’t be all, like, uncool,” which was commemorated in her smash banger, “Girl Code.” Bonus points: the guy LuAnn fucked that night was married. Her justification? “Shit happens.” Attagirl.

Hottest rivalry: For someone as long-tenured as she is, the Countess has surprisingly few heated rivalries. She also has few consistent friendships, both of which I put down to the duplicitous nature of her tactics; LuAnn will sell out pretty much anyone if it suits her agenda at the moment. As I mentioned before, though, I do have a warm spot for her feud with Carole. All of LuAnn's previous feuds felt like add-ons to the agenda of some alpha, like Jill or Ramona, so it's nice to see her have a spat of her very own.

Signature moment: Oh my God, her entire manic performance in the Berkshires was pure art. Exhibit A. Exhibit B. Exhibit C. Actually, fuck it, just watch all these clips, with special attenton to the one where LuAnn rambles over Jules’s monologue about her dying father (fourth down). Bonus: the silent reveal that Bethenny is in LuAnn's phone as “Bethany.” Eight years in and LuAnn has still not learned the name of the most prominent cast member of her show. Beautiful. Perfect.

Special bonus moment, just because I'm a LuAnnatic: There’s a vignette in season two of LuAnn visiting this community centre to inspire some inner city Black kids to, IDK, be better versions of themselves, and it’s seriously such an awkward nightmare. I love any scene that highlights LuAnn as a clueless, out-of-touch white lady who’s embarrassing herself with her pretentious affectations.

[rankingthehousewives]

2. KIM RICHARDS

Beverly Hills // 1 - 5

“People try to figure me out, but I’m one of a kind.”

I have this theory that how you feel about the Richards sisters depends on what type of gay man you are (allegedly other demographics watch these shows as well). The gregarious party gay appreciates the lively, outgoing Kyle Richards, who’s more plainly glamorous and capable at parlaying her social currency and so on. The gay intellectual, on the other hand, respects the camp tragedy of Kim. Everything about her seems of another world: her past as a child star of a bygone era, including a weird kid actor school she references constantly which she attended with faded idols like Kristy McNichol. A brain full of loopy non-sequiturs, which can range from charming and wacky when she’s sober to aggressive and upsetting when she’s not. Her sobriety, precarious and fragile and elusive. Her tiny, bird-like body. Kim is poorer than the other women of her series, more anxious, more erratic. She’s a sort of alien who inhabits the sphere of the Beverly Hills Housewives whose unpredictable actions puzzle and challenge the other women. People try to figure her out, but she’s one of a kind.

Kim’s big story is obviously her relationship with her sister Kyle. In lots of ways, the Richards sisters are the centerpiece of Beverly Hills. There’s plenty of macabre storylines holding the series aloft – Lisa Vanderpump scheming for power, the dark downward spiral of Taylor Armstrong – but none is more harrowing or representative of the franchise and its statements on the human condition than the bond between Kyle and Kim. Their story is an almost perfect echo of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, except instead of Kyle locking her infirm child star sister in an attic, she steals her house (and let it be known, whatever the legality of Kyle and Mauricio’s actions, they fucking stole that house from Kim in every possible metaphorical and symbolic way). It’s just this weird tangle of Kyle constantly undermining Kim and enabling her and making passive-aggressive remarks about her and helping her and publicly berating her and gaslighting her and it’s so uncomfortable to watch (cf. my cactus story from the Kyle Richards entry). It helps invest me in the story that I think Kim is a pure vessel of all things light and holy and Kyle is Satan’s literal spawn, but even if my opinions on them weren’t so starkly polarized, I think the Housewives franchise is often at its most fascinating when it covers long-lasting and intense relationships (see also Ronnie and Mary in Vancouver). Kim vs. Kyle is a series of small blowouts that constantly allude to something bigger, something complicated and veiny and horrifying beneath the surface.

Obviously, a huge component of Kim’s story and what gives Kyle so much leverage over her is her addiction. I’m not actually sure what she’s addicted to. The Richardses say she’s an alcoholic, which I believe, but I also think there’s some prescrips mixed up in there. Regardless, Kim spent the first two seasons making terrible decision after terrible decision because of her addictions: not showing up to filming, showing up to filming totally incoherent, getting into this terrible relationship with a controlling creep who, per Brandi Glanville, looked like a gay bull mastiff. After that, she was able to dry up and treated us to a couple of seasons of sober Kim Richards. Sober Kim is an awkward delight who spouts off kooky innuendos and nonsense confessionals and spends an entire episode going to a child star convention and holding her fans’ WerePups. I find glam tragic trainwreck Kim and fun daffy loon Kim beguiling in equal measure so both elevate the character for me.

What also elevates Kim, and is a critical component in any Housewife worth appreciating IMO, is that Kim is an absolute terror in an argument. I wouldn’t say she’s perfect– she’s usually impaired and prone to babbling and her obvious flaws are low-hanging fruit – but she just blows in like a hurricane and brings down the wrath of God on her foes, leaving them dazed and confused. Think of how many iconic Bev Hills lines – “You stole my goddamn house,” “You are a slut pig,” “I’ve had enough of you, you beast!” – are Kim Richards fight quotes. The absolute apex of this, for me, was when Lisa Rinna spent all of season five talking shit about Kim’s addiction, so Kim waited until the women were at dinner in Amsterdam to rain unholy fucking terror upon her. Kim nuked the entire table so hard that the scene ended with all the other Housewives huddled crying on an anonymous Dutch stoop, save for a rattled Brandi who was back in the restaurant with Kim, picking the broken glass out of her hair. You can keep your table flips and thrown legs; Kim Richards Does Amsterdam is easily my favourite Housewives fight of all time. Even when Kim doesn't have a stake in an argument, as with The Dinner Party from Hell or the LVP ambush in Puerto Rico, you can always count on her to gamely ram herself in there uninvited. As a Housewives viewer, I do give marks for participation, and Kim's an A student.

That’s it for Kim, really. I don’t even know if I can explain exactly why I like her as much as I do. I know there are people who find her brand of sorrow a little too real to be entertaining and they’re not wrong, necessarily. But she’s a very singular creature. Even on a franchise rife with addicts and victims and washed up celebrities, I can’t quite think of anyone like her. She’s incredibly endearing but constantly moves with a sadness. She’s literary. I like that she sort of inhabits the show like a ghost would – her plotline in season two is her not showing up for things, and after she gets demoted in season six she’s invoked constantly as her life falls apart offstage, always discussed but never quite present. And when she’s present, she does it all. She does comedy, she does tragedy, she does ostentatious reality TV argument. She’s all I want in a Housewife, really.

Notable storyline: Kim spent her most boring season trying to obedience train her pit bull Kingsley, although even that paid dividends when Kingsley ended up biting one of Kyle’s children. I don’t know which one. I hope it was Portia.

Hottest rivalry: Obviously Kyle, though as I said in Kyle’s entry, reducing whatever the fuck their thing is to a “hot rivalry” feels like comparing a mummy’s curse to a head cold.

Signature moment: Blatantly lying to Lisa Rinna about having dirt on her husband, Harry Hamlin, just to watch her explode.

[rankingthehousewives]

3. PHAEDRA PARKS

Atlanta // 3 - present

“Only God can judge me, and He seems very impressed.”

Phaedra Parks is the reason for reality television. Thank God this medium exists to capture this weirdo and deliver her to my television in forty minute doses. She is so much ridiculousness, so much eccentricity, so many contradictions packed into such a tiny person that I can't think of any other way to describe her than to just spew forth all of the Phaedra things I can think of, in no particular order, and hope that gets my point across. So:

Phaedra is a pious church lady who never leaves home without a prayer cloth and holy oil to ward away lustful spirits, but she also cracks constant masturbation jokes and wears beautiful outfits like this and this. She also never leaves home without her stun gun, which she's dubbed "Phaedra Sparks." She's a lawyer with an ex-con husband named Apollo whom she bosses around as her dimwitted piece of man meat until he reoffends, at which point she drops his ass like a bad habit as he's going to jail and cheats on him with a mysterious African man named Chocolate. Her very first storyline on the show was that she was clearly nine months pregnant with Apollo's child but was lying and claiming the baby was premature so she could pretend they didn't have premarital sex, only to be busted by her obstetrician as she was laying in bed giving birth. Her children are Ayden Adonis, aka the Prince, and Dylan, aka Mr. President. She holds ridiculously lavish five-figure parties for them that are usually meant to recall the antebellum South in some overstated way. An example: Ayden's first birthday party involved full suits and gowns at a water park and he sampled twelve different cakes, one for every month of his young life.

In addition to being a lawyer, Phaedra is also a mortician and a fitness instructor. The mortician thing is a manifestation of Phaedra's incredibly morbid fascination with death and came from her love of planning and attending overly lavish, borderline tacky memorial services involving horse drawn chariots that bump music and have strobe lights and such. She spent an entire season trying to strongarm an increasingly green Apollo into accepting the mortuary as the family business. To this day, she makes constant eerie embalming/mortician/death jokes to the discomfort of everyone present. The fitness instructor credentials come from her donkey booty workout DVD, designed to get you the donkey booty of your dreams. This was originally a co-production with Kenya Moore but Phaedra tried to cut Kenya out of the back end (pun intended, I'm sure), so Kenya went ahead and released a competing stallion booty DVD.

While we're on the subject of Kenya, we should probably make a stopover at Phaedra's admitted bad points. It's easy to forget because she's so over the top and hilarious and colourfully expressed in the order of a Johnnie Cochran (Phaedra is among the truly gifted elite of Housewives confessional-givers), but Phaedra naturally lives in the realm of deluded villainy. She's incredibly charming but she's also petty, a sanctimonious hypocrite, slut-shames, regularly uses the most underhanded social tactics she can muster. I consider this a net positive because duh, fun, but it's won her some detractors and I completely understand why. There have been times I've almost gone off her, too, but then she cheerfully declines group therapy because she doesn’t believe in the dark arts and I'm right back on board.

Ultimately, Phaedra does it all for me. Every quote is hilarious. Every storyline she touches turns to gold. She's an amazing find and even when she acts a fool, which is very often, I'm willing to forgive it all for one more piece of shade as transcendent as "Six Flags Scream Machine booty." #fixitjesus

Notable storyline: Every Phaedra storyline is amazing, so I've listed as many as possible above, but I'll highlight the time she accidentally recorded a butt dial saying she didn't give a fuck if Cynthia Bailey came to her party and then continued to cheerfully deny it even after Cynthia played the recording at the table.

Hottest rivalry: Kenya Moore. I might as well put it out there: I love Phaedra devotedly. I don't particularly like Kenya at all. With that said, I can't think of any fight in their extensive battle history where Phaedra wasn't completely in the wrong.

Signature moment: "And while she's sittin' around, runnin' around talkin' about my husband and the father of my child and she spends her weekends peddling through sperm banks, looking through catalogues, trying to find a donor. Honey, you don't know if your baby daddy will be an axe murderer or a child molester, because what you will know is that he needed $10 to get him a medium-sized pizza, so he ejaculated in a cup so you could have a kid. Now check that." The most savage reunion burn of all time.

[rankingthehousewives]

4. TAMRA JUDGE

Orange County // 3 - present

“I’m the hottest Housewife in Orange County.”

Psychotic angel. Tamra may not be the best Housewife, but she's the best at being a Housewife. Tamra has the perfect amount of histrionic personality disorder for this show. She lives in a soap opera and I firmly believe she would carry herself the exact same way were the cameras not on her. Her tears are glistening and photogenic. Her turn of phrase is quick and scathing. Her schemes are mean. She's full Melrose Place, all the time, and it's a joy to watch. Tamra is one of those HWs whose body of work is too extensive to recap fully, so I'll just highlight some specific stories and encourage you to sample the rest of her portfolio yourselves.

Machiavellian mastermind: You'll notice throughout the ranking that I often have a moment where a Housewife finally clicks to me, her entire character falls into place, and I adjust my opinion of them to love/hate/abject fear accordingly. For Tamra, that moment was when she invited Gretchen Rossi, whom she hated for reasons too mean-spirited and petty to even detail, to a dinner party, simply to get her “naked wasted” (Tamra's words) and entice her, in her drunken state, to cheat on her dying-of-cancer fiancé with Tamra's 21-year-old son. It was then that I realized that far from simply being an abrasive mean girl, Tamra is actually a dangerous lunatic and I am deeply terrified of her. The first several seasons of OC are a snooze, but it was Tamra's willingness to go way, way too far that turned up the volume and let the drama flow freely.

Domestic drama: This is the area where most Housewives falter. It's difficult to do soft-focus family shit well, and even harder when it's “bad marriage” stuff because yikes, what a downer. But the entire trajectory of Tamra trying to prop up her wilting relationship with controlling piece of shit Simon, getting his name tattooed on her finger in a moment of desperation (of all the traits that propel Tamra, “terrible impulse control” is probably number one) and then demanding a divorce on camera on the way to a party... damn. Simon has popped up again and again as the boogieman ruining her life, but she's also aired out her suicidal past, her parenting troubles, her feelings of unworthiness, all to a tinkling Housewives soundtrack. Tamra does tragedy in the most TV-friendly way possible. It makes me feel for her, deeply, even as I have ample evidence she's a psychopath.

Explosive argument: I'm using Simon as my segue here because he was the catalyst in Tamra's legendary fight with Jeana Keough which I could watch again and again. Jeana tried to meddle in their divorce and discredit Tamra's claims of abuse. In response, Tamra did this. Stunning. I'll let her deliver the epilogue to this incident, in the form of a quote from the 100th episode special.

Brutal dismissal: Always. Always.

Fickleness in the name of plot advancement: Everyone knows that Housewives who are blood enemies administering unspeakable torture one day can be best friends the next, simply for the sake of refreshing the storylines on the show. Tamra is the queen of this. She spent years bullying Gretchen, bringing mace to parties to antagonize her, spreading all manner of hideous rumour about her, and then decided to be buddies with her one episode completely at random. She'll shit stir about absolutely anyone and then totally deny it (which led to a moment I'm still fond of, her sprinting away from a dinner barefoot at max velocity). She cycles through identities like Christina Aguilera: now she's a realtor, now she's a bodybuilder, now she's a born-again Christian. Tamra is whatever the plot demands her to be. The best Housewives are the ones with an innate ability to contort themselves to the theatre of the show, and Tamra is on some Cirque du Soleil shit.

Vicki Gunvalson gets props for being the original Housewife, but I think Tamra is the Housewife who elevated the franchise. She was the first one to grasp the potential of the medium and tailor her performance accordingly. The Teresas and NeNes of the world walk in her footsteps. If Tamra weren't there to recognize Real Housewives as an opportunity to unleash her madness upon a parade of interchangeable blondes, it would have remained as it was: a boring documentary about Coto Insurance, fated to the pop cultural dustbin.

Notable storyline: The ebb and flow of her friendship with Vicki: sometimes take-a-bullet close, sometimes resentful and estranged, but always with the shared tacit understanding that they are characters on a television show. Tamra is forever mingling business and emotion.

Hottest rivalry: Officially, Gretchen, but I'm always here for Tamra vs. Alexis Bellino, the Bambi vs. Godzilla of RHOC. You could run that one ten million times in ten million alternate universes and Alexis always gets destroyed.

Signature moment: Rather than a moment, why don't we close on Tamra's many years of taglines, whose internal continuity are unmatched.

[rankingthehousewives]

5. LISA VANDERPUMP

Beverly Hills // 1 - present

“Throw me to the wolves and I shall return leading the pack.”

If you ask the uncritical Real Housewives fan what they think of Lisa Vanderpump, they’ll tell you she’s warm, witty and fair. She stays above the fray in arguments and can be counted on to be realistic and objective. Her bon mots are hilarious, her relationships with her catty husband Ken and her menagerie of ridiculously named animals are adorable, and she tends to be on the right side of any given fight. They feel this way because that is the image Lisa Vanderpump wants to project, and she’s smart, telegenic and funny so she’s very good at it.

However, comma, the real Lisa Vanderpump is an ice cold snake who plots and schemes with a subtlety and ease most Housewives can only dream of. She’s Machiavelli in magenta satin (and this is where I’ll take a brief aside to point out Lisa has terrible fucking taste in everything. SUR looks like a brothel from the ‘80s). I think this opinion of Lisa is becoming more common, but there are still people you need to convince of Lisa’s malintent. That’s absurd to me given that Lisa is pretty much keeping a plot of former Housewives’ bodies in the backyard of Villa Rosa at this point.

I think Lisa’s manipulations are such second nature to her she doesn’t even realize how evil she’s being. She publicly remarks upon other people’s weaknesses, their weight loss or their alcoholism, to remind them that she’s stronger than they are, but masks it in faux-concern to absolve herself of malice. She asks deliberately intrusive and insensitive questions to catch people offguard. She cloaks remarks in playful sarcasm that are actually deeply hurtful and undermining (“Maloof hoof”). She architects whisper campaigns, incites attacks. She pulls off elaborate scams in such a way that it appears she was never involved. She uses her friends as pawns and attack dogs against her enemies. And once those friends step out of line even for a moment, or start to figure out that they’re being used, she ices them as brutally as possible.

The case study for the entire Lisa Vanderpump phenomenon is obviously Brandi Glanville. I find their ruined friendship to be the centerpiece of the first five seasons of RHOBH (along with the Richards sisters’ feud). The whole thing is so heartbreaking, because I truly believe Brandi approached it so earnestly and Lisa thinks she did too but she didn’t at all. They’re joined at the hip for the entirety of season three, and Lisa makes tidy use of Brandi as a Rottweiler in her war on Adrienne Maloof. But then around season four, Brandi starts to notice her strings getting tugged a bit and points it out publicly. And that's the thing with LVP: she loves you as long as you tow the line. Submit to her will and she'll protect you forever. But somewhere along the way, she's going to make you prove your loyalty with a messy task: supporting her in a fight you don't agree with, burying a body you had no part in creating. This is where most of Lisa's allies lose their nerve and abandon her, and she holds that grudge 'til the end of time.

Anyway, there’s a big falling out, and the two start season five on the outs. And Brandi makes such a valiant effort to mend fences with Lisa, whom she loves and misses dearly, and Lisa is not having it. In fact, Lisa gets off on withholding her affection from Brandi, on making her bow and scrape in public as often as possible. Lisa is icy, unrepentant, and will concede to absolutely no wrongdoing in the dissolution of their friendship. It’s really harrowing to watch Lisa slam the door in Brandi’s face over and over when they used to be inseparable best friends – and lest you think this is an isolated incident, think about how clearly it mimics the trajectories of Lisa’s friendships with both Kyle Richards and her season one houseguest, Cedric. Lisa uses her pretty young toys until they start to get minds of their own, and then she tosses them away.

It’s also fascinating to watch the other Housewives try to navigate the double-edged sword of Lisa’s status. Lisa is wealthy, pretty, well-loved by the Bravo production team and the audience, has her own spin-off series, etc. She has a lot of currency, so it’s much better to be on her good side than her bad. However, the other wives inevitably get fed up with her constant scheming. But since none of them individually is smart or powerful enough to destroy her, any move against her needs to be made en masse. We've seen this happen a few times: the season two reunion, Puerto Rico, and more recently in Dubai. Lisa is like a reed in a windstorm, though – she'll bend, but she'll never break. She knows if she admits to even the barest hint of her machinations, the whole house comes down, so she remains defiant even as the blows rain down upon her. It's frustrating and riveting.

Lisa on the outs is always compelling viewing, but you always know it’s only temporary because no one on the show is formidable enough to keep Lisa Vanderpump down forever. She’ll always dangle her friendship in front of newbies, always pad her numbers with warm bodies, always rope back in former enemies with her considerable charms. Lisa Vanderpump is proactive and motivated and so good at turning it on for the camera, much of the audience hasn’t noticed she’s been the villain of her series the whole time.

Notable storyline: Um, her plot to dispose of Yolanda and Kyle in one fell swoop using Lisa Rinna as a suicide bomber? The Munchausen's scam was Lisa's most elaborate and insane scheme yet and it's shocking how close she came to getting away with the whole thing. The episode in Dubai where it all comes to light is the most gripped I've been by a Housewives ep maybe ever, certainly on a strategic level.

Hottest rivalry: Brandi Glanville. Brandi and Lisa’s defunct friendship is exquisitely painful, and every time you think it’s going to get back on track, Brandi does something like slap Lisa in the face and ruin the whole thing.

Signature moment: This is an odd one, but my most vivid recollection of Lisa is her having it out with Kyle about their friendship at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Beverly Hills is an especially soapy Housewives city, and Lisa Vanderpump is probably its soapiest character – very Dynasty – and the whole scene, shot during the girls’ trip to Paris, is so stagy and dramatic. I remember Lisa’s wearing this fedora and a pink tweed coat and the entire thing is peak drama and glamour. A very fitting environment for Lisa.

[rankingthehousewives]

6. PETTIFLEUR BERENGER

Melbourne // 2 - present

“I’m in the best shape of my life! Who begs to differ?!”

As far as I can tell, Pettifleur is incredibly unpopular among the fans of RHOMelbourne. This is example #2505B that you cannot trust the consensus opinion of Real Housewives fans. Pettifleur is a constant fountain of absurdity and her delusions of grandeur are the perfect complement to her series. Seriously, I don’t know where they managed to locate someone even more imperious and dictatorial than Gina Liano, but it was a casting coup. It’s even better because while Gina is generally charismatic enough to parlay her self-absorption into some sort of reputation and standing within the group, Pettifleur is painfully awkward and socially inept and so is unable to camouflage how offputting and abrasive she is.

With that said, I do think part of the reason Gina flourishes where Pettifleur falters is race-based. The women of Melbourne predictably broke their backs to establish that there was absolutely no racism being directed at Sri Lankan Pettifleur, but it’s really obvious to me just by the way the other Housewives treat her and mock her accent and make constant remarks about her race apropos of nothing that it’s a huge part of her perception among the group. Even constrained by that albatross, though, Pettifleur is able to exceed her circumstances and shine shine shine (dammit, Jackie).

While Pettifleur has lots of upsides, like her impenetrable condescension and constant gauche jokes about her own vagina and a fashion sense that volleys between stunning and inexplicable, the initial thing that endeared her to me was SWITCH THE BITCH. You see, Pettifleur has a book, Switch the Bitch, which she will explain to anyone she meets, at exhaustive length, in the most confused terms possible. It’s all about the different kinds of bitch you can be, and how to rotate them to your best advantage, or to conquer the various bitches, or to master them all and be a self-actualized bitch, or something. It’s never really clear and Pettifleur is terrible at explaining it concisely, which is of course part of her charm.

A book will only get you a single season's worth of story, though, so Pettifleur used her sophomore season to hurl herself headlong into the world's most hilarious/opportunistic/fickle/doomed alliance with Lydia Schiavello. Not since Jill Zarin and the Countess have two such despised women at the absolute height of their unpopularity joined forces, and it was magnificent. Lydia and Pettifleur were the Dick Dastardly and Muttley of Melbourne S3, just cartoonishly evil and completely inept, and their cycle of Lydia selling out Pettifleur → realizing she needed numbers and begging for her friendship again → growing sick of her neuroses and ruthlessly screeching her down → rolling up and acting like the whole thing never happened was simply enrapturing.

Other than that, Pettifleur is a coquettish smattering of weird inanities. An awkward confrontation with her sister where she tries to deny being self-absorbed while seated under a huge portrait of herself. Breaking into tears because the ladies complimented Lydia's outfit and not hers when they entered together. Choreographing a dance to the song she was named after and performing it at her birthday, then immediately following that with her son performing a clarinet solo of the exact same song, then staking out a visible place behind her son and ostentatiously swaying in ecstasy with her eyes closed while he plays, that kind of thing. Such a tragic weirdo that you barely believe she’s a human being but way too bizarre and incongruous to be made up.

That’s about the gloss on Pettifleur and her prickliness and awkwardness and insanity, so I’ll just wrap up by meditating on the time her Winter Wonderland party was not wonderlandy enough so she held Chyka’s underlings hostage while barking at them that the hallway to her apartment did not look sufficiently like an enchanted forest and it was giving her a panic attack. “It looks like shit, which is brown, not white, like a Winter Wonderland,” should be etched a monument for shared public reflection.

Notable storyline: My favourite part of the endless debate around Switch the Bitch was that there was already a book published, by Omarosa of all people, called The Bitch Switch. Per Pettifleur, that book is about switching your bitch on and off rather than switching between bitches so there’s no overlap of subject matter. Phew!

Hottest rivalry: Literally everyone, because she's so overbearingly self-involved that it drives everyone to distraction. The season three trip to Dubai consists of the women repelling from Pettifleur like south poles of a magnet while she tries to hold them hostage with her personality. Her screaming at the other women "ARE YOU PROUD OF YOURSELVES???" while they looked variously bored and annoyed will forever be iconic.

Signature moment: Storming tearfully off the reunion because of some story where Gina physically assaulted her at a promo shoot, while all of the other Housewives unanimously laughed and called her a liar because in real life, the incident was Pettifleur getting belligerently drunk and starting shit unprovoked.

[rankingthehousewives]

7. SHEREÉ WHITFIELD

Atlanta // 1 - 4

“People are intimidated by my success.”

Although Shereé is mostly definitely An Original and truly one of the great weirdos in a franchise full of them, she’s broadly part of a genre of Housewife I really love – the sneaks. The chicks who love to stir up shit for no reason and have no real loyalties and can be trusted by no one. People like Countess LuAnn, Tamra Judge and the legendary Kim G. You can never let your guard down around these people because they'll act like you’re their best friend in the world and then ruthlessly betray you on a whim. Remember when Shereé narced on Kandi for saying Kim wouldn't visit an African orphanage even though all three of them were super buddy buddy? Remember when she returned as a Friend Of and snitched on everyone for saying Kim Fields's husband was "fruity or gay"? That shit.

While that can be frustrating when you’re watching, say, Lisa Rinna bolting like a cockroach whenever her bad behaviour comes to light, Shereé never backed down from a confrontation and seemed to live for the moment when her shit-stirring was brought to her doorstep. It’s a treat to watch a Housewife who loves her work and Shereé always puts 110% into all of her fights. She makes faces, she gets raunchy, she’ll go waaaay below the belt and expects you to, too. Shereé’s explosions are without exception iconic – her casual yanking of Kim’s wig, the brawl with her wedding planner, the time she trailed NeNe out of a restaurant screaming about her rotten teeth and repoed car, the fight where this happened. Shereé might be shady but she always finishes what she starts.

In addition to her hilariously mercenary tactics, Shereé boasts a million delightful qualities and traits. First off, she has maybe the best personal affect of any Housewife on any series. She only talks in these hushed, stilted whispers, like she’s badly reading a script. It’s so funny and also weirdly soothing. She made a bad go at an acting career that bombed because all her characters spoke and acted like Shereé. Her Housewives portfolio is absolutely studded with these kinds of high profile failures (her house that never got built; the infamous She by Shereé), but of course she never deigns to acknowledge them in public.

If NeNe is the worst kind of egomaniac, Shereé is the best. She completely disregards her setbacks but loudly trumpets her accomplishments. She’s made numerous, ridiculously lavish public tributes to herself, including a wall-sized photorealistic portrait. Her fight with the event planner was because he was bailing on his promises to land Shereé in a helicopter for her independence party where a poet would read an ode to her. There is no lack of footage of Shereé indulging her narcissism.

More than anything, though, Shereé just cracks my shit up on the regular, both intentionally and unintentionally. I love when this show makes me laugh and Shereé is often, often hilarious. Great confessionals, too. A good talking head is an art.

Notable storyline: She’s in dire financial straits but will refuse until her dying day to ever admit it and devotedly rents Bentleys and shit to look rich on TV. Honestly, I respect it. Money shit on Housewives is stressful to watch and I don’t enjoy it so props to Shereé for putting the viewer first.

Hottest rivalry: NeNe Leakes. The very first episode of Atlanta is Shereé having NeNe blocked from entering her house party, photos of which incident Shereé later puts in a photo album and shows off to friends. A+ material.

Signature moment: So good they made it a song.

[rankingthehousewives]

8. DANIELLE STAUB

New Jersey // 1 - 2

“You’re either gonna love me or hate me. There’s no in-between with me.”

Here’s the thing with Danielle: I do think the Manzos bullied her from the outset, I find Caroline Manzo and her self-conscious fetishizing of her family unit annoying regardless, and I instinctively root for an underdog. With all that in mind, I came out of the first season of New Jersey thinking that Danielle was self-absorbed and abrasive for sure, but her worst crimes were being too intense and trying a little too hard to make friends. Unlike many, I found Danielle likeable or at least understandable in moments. She has this weird sordid crime-drenched past that the other Housewives revel in unearthing at any opportunity, which can’t feel great. She’s very obviously on the outside of this huge tight family; I’m sure we’ve all felt excluded before. And her daughters are among the most likeable progeny in this era of show, stacked up against Teresa’s screaming brats, Jacqueline’s delinquent daughter Ashlee and the insipid, ever-present Manzos.

But once Danielle is trying to get Dina’s daughter taken away and bringing Hell’s Angels as bodyguards to film because she’s pretending she thinks the Manzos will murder her, even I am forced to admit that she is out of her fucking mind. Caroline put the boot down on Danielle hard and quick, so she literally has three scenes with the other Housewives in the entirety of season two (Dina storming off the show to avoid interacting with her, Teresa sprinting after her through a country club to call her a coke whore/Ashlee ripping a hank of her hair out, and Caroline destroying her in the season finale). The entire rest of her time is spent summoning up random extras from her criminal past and going on wild-eyed, obsessive rants to them about the Manzos, while pretending she barely thinks about them and hasn’t a care in the world. This practice of one Housewife filming completely separately from the others spawned the necessity of the hilarious and underrated KIM G., a top tier Friend of the Housewives who served as a go-between for Danielle and the other woman, pretending to be innocent despite being transparently two-faced and mercenary. I like my Friends of the Housewives grimy and desperate, so shouts to Kim G.

Anyway, it’s a testament to Danielle’s warped charisma and ability to command a scene that she was such a vibrant and involved character despite never interacting with any of the other women. By season three, Jersey has moved onto the sprawling epic that is Teresa Giudice’s family life, but seasons one and two are all about the saga of Danielle Staub, a desperate and obsessive woman who only wants the other Housewives as her friends and, if she can’t have them, will see them burn to the ground. She props up the entire show and she does it from exile.

That said, by the end of her Housewives stint, Danielle’s paranoia about the other women was so rampant and exhausting, and the other Housewives were so polarized against her, that it got a bit tiresome (reliable high-octane drama though it was). Caroline finally put Danielle out of her misery at the end of season two and she hasn’t been back since. That’s probably best for everyone. The Danielle era at its height, though? God, the dizzying highs. Teresa’s table flip is arguably the iconic Housewives moment of all time and that’s all Danielle’s influence.

Notable storyline: The ladies unearth “Cop Without a Badge,” which makes public the gritty details of Danielle’s past. This cracks me up because on any other franchise, this info would have been broken by TMZ or Radar Online, but here it comes in the form of a true crime novel from the ‘80s that Caroline Manzo presumably checked out of the library. Do they even have the internet in New Jersey?

Hottest rivalry: One of Danielle’s big selling points for me is she has a different antagonistic relationship with every woman in the series. Her beef with Teresa is weirdly impersonal but also littered with rage and public violence, her rivalry with Jacqueline is a graveyard of betrayal and hurt feelings from a curdled friendship, and her relationship with Dina is steeped in naked jealousy and desire for approval. But I’m going with Caroline Manzo for this one. The organized push to marginalize Danielle off the show was all Caroline. Jacqueline is too soft to pull a move like that off, Dina’s too laidback and Teresa is too dumb. Caroline, on the other hand, worked behind the scenes to take Danielle the fuck out. They never even had to be in the same room.

Signature moment: I’m torn between her showing up to a fundraiser for a baby with cancer with a posse of Hell’s Angels, or her entire ridiculous performance at the country club that ended with her sobbing in the back of her car, clutching chunks of her weave while Teresa Giudice stood menacingly outside in her chinchilla.

[rankingthehousewives]

9. ALEXIS BELLINO

Orange County // 5 - 8

“God is my saviour, my husband is my king, and my body? It’s sinful.”

“Alexis Bellino has the mind of a child!” - Joan Holloway from Mad Men, paraphrased

I fucking love Alexis Bellino, unreservedly and with all my heart. If you hate religion, Alexis is the religious person you want on your reality show. She is what happens when a group of Evangelical missionaries stumble across a Real Doll. She's unspeakably vacuous, plainly hypocritical, her husband is a bad pantomime villain, you can always count on her to invoke the Lord's name at the height of her idiocy (for example: that fucking tagline oh man). Alexis Bellino is the inept born-again Christian of my dreams, Helen Lovejoy's brain transplanted into the body of a lesser Kardashian. If you’d like some evidence, how about this, or this, or this?

Predictably, Alexis was despised by absolutely everyone, largely because of her inability to hide her agonizing neuroses. She and her husband flexed constantly about money they didn't have and rented like six different cars as their house went into foreclosure. She She-by-Shereéd a clothing line called Alexis Couture, despite not knowing how to design clothes or what the word “couture” meant. Housewives like Gretchen Rossi and Peggy Tanous would befriend her and then flee upon realizing she was a social toxic waste dump. The entire Costa Rica trip was a pretense to swarm her for being a phony. By the end of her stint on the show, it was just a queue of Housewives lining up to slam dunk Alexis over and over while she monotoned confused monologues about God (and make no mistake: there is absolutely no Housewife, perhaps in the entire canon, who could not utterly destroy Alexis Bellino in an argument).

For my money, there is no light entertainment in this world better than Alexis Bellino. Couturier. Hard-hitting booty reporter. Trampoline park entrepreneuse. Actor. Sometime artist. I would watch uninterrupted live feed of her life. She's probably in a grocery store right now, staring blankly, trying to figure out what polenta is. Just imagine.

Notable storyline: One of the greatest subplots in Housewives history is Alexis Bellino's stint as a lifestyle reporter for Fox 5. It is my dearest hope that some overachieving reader makes a montage of all of Alexis's attempts at reportage because holy shit. In the meantime, have this.

Hottest rivalry: Heather Dubrow. Hit it, Tamra: “She's everything Alexis wants to be and isn't. She's elegant, she's classy, she's smart and she has real money.”

Signature moment: “Costa Rica is in Mexico, so it's South.” I haven't looked it up but that's almost certainly true!

[rankingthehousewives]

10. MAGALI GORRÉ

Cheshire // 1 - 2

“If you cross me... you better don’t cross me. Don’t mess with Magali.”

I’ve gone over a few of the standard Housewives archetypes in previous entries: the queen bee, the loose cannon, the hapless beta. Magali is actually a fairly unique creature but easily synthesized – a straight-up brawler. She brute forces her way through every interaction and rules through fear and intimidation. It makes sense, too. The passive-aggressive and prissy Cheshire wives can’t handle themselves in the face of an aggro Dutch ice queen who assumes anytime any of them speaks to her it’s actually a coded attack. Magali has been on the defense since day one and she firmly believes the best defense is a good offense.

This resulted in scene upon scene of Magali reaming the other Housewives in confessionals, savaging them across dinner tables, spreading the most petty gossip she can muster and enacting paranoid episode after paranoid episode to the horror of the women around her. It’s hard to capture Magali’s essence without having access to her reams of quotable quotes (“BYE LEANNE! HAVE A SAD LIFE, BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT YOU HAVE! A SAD LIFE! BITCH!”), but she seriously has a greatest hits reel as long as my arm: loudly invoking Leanne’s past as a lap dancer, getting caught on video having a screaming, silverware-rattling anti-Dawn meltdown on a train, telling the world that Dawn and Leanne were lesbians and that Dawn stole from her charity, a million different talking heads denouncing her castmates as disgusting trash. The Magali experience is comprehensive and constant.

All that said, she ranks highly in my estimation for two reasons. The first is that she’s blatantly the standout of her series, and elevates the entire enterprise through her participation. Without Magali around cutting through the wan strategic attempts of the Cheshire Housewives with her scary faces and scathing remarks, the early seasons of the franchise would have been straight garb. The second is that I honestly believe that for all her bluster, Magali is mostly just misunderstood. That’s not to say she’s a flawless angel – she’s obviously kind of an arrogant nightmare in any context – but she has a sly little sense of humour and some surprisingly cute, vulnerable moments. I think Dawn’s determination to ostracize her from the outset really dictated her strategy for navigating the show, and while that’s a shame as far as denying us of the lovely fun Magali who obviously exists somewhere deep down, I wouldn’t trade the aggressive, distrustful Magali we got for the world. Salt the earth, Mag. Take ‘em all down.

Notable storyline: During a rare moment of group harmony, Magali announces that she’ll be renewing her vows soon. Cue a slow, agonizing process as Magali individually delivers her invites to the girls one by one over a period of days based on whether she feels they’ve earned her friendship. You can see Magali just reveling in her self-appointed power trip and it’s fantastic. Ultimately, she gives one to everyone but Dawn.

Hottest rivalry: Dawn Ward. Dawn thinks it’s because Magali is jealous, but Magali clearly loves herself so that’s not right. It’s more likely because Dawn is a wannabe alpha who tried to mean girl Magali early on and Magali is the kind of chick who, while lacking the social graces to be an alpha herself, does not fear them even remotely and in fact gets off on taking them down.

Signature moment: Approaching Dawn at a polo match to cheerfully inform her she was an evil bitch who would burn in Hell. I can’t believe their attempt at détente didn’t work out.

[rankingthehousewives]

11. KELLY KILLOREN BENSIMON

New York City // 2 - 4

“I’m living the American dream, one mistake at a time.”

Okay, there’s no other way to start this: Kelly Bensimon is nuts. Let me clarify what I mean by that. I think a solid 75% of these women are nuts, but I use that as shorthand to say they’re eccentric personalities with strange priorities. When I say that Kelly Bensimon is nuts, I mean I actually wonder how she functions in day-to-day life. She might be the most erratic Housewife ever. She’s at least top three. Maybe Danielle from New Jersey or Ronnie and Jody from Vancouver give her a run for her money but I can’t think of anyone else.

The moment this came to light was when she called nemesis Bethenny Frankel to a private meeting at the Brass Monkey. Talks quickly degenerated as Kelly ranted incoherently at a bewildered Bethenny before storming off to meet a date. I don’t know if it was pills or a panic attack or she was on coke or she was having some sort of mental health episode, but her behaviour was intense and jagged and completely out of nowhere. Later on, she acted confused and like she didn’t remember what had even happened. I don’t blame Kelly for disliking Bethenny, who’d trolled her since she joined the cast, but it was just enough to make the discerning viewer pause and wonder if maybe Kelly should be somewhere other than a reality show, perhaps somewhere with dedicated security (for the record, I’m definitely sympathetic to concerns that Kelly is a little too far gone for this kind of show, but I think she’s with-it enough to consent and doubt any lasting harm has come to her because of it. Your mileage may vary, though!).

If we’re talking about Kelly Bensimon meltdowns, though, we need to jump right into Scary Island. Scary Island is one of the iconic Housewives episodes and it’s entirely because of Kelly. Kelly consented to go on a group trip to wherever the fuck Scary Island was, the Caribbean or something, even though her besties LuAnn and Jill opted to sit out. She started sniping with the other girls a bit and eventually it somehow turned into a days-long wild-eyed babbling meltdown so bad the producers were forced to intervene and remove her from the situation. Like I want to convey to you what she said and did but it’s hard because none of it made any sense. She was insisting that Bethenny tried to murder her every night and was “full of knives” and intimating that Ramona was a lesbian and wandering around cheerfully eating jellybeans while the other women shrieked at her to go to bed. People would say shit to her and she’d respond with gibberish like, “Satchels of gold!” That kinda stuff. Even the other Housewives, who never pass up the chance to savage someone during a moment of weakness, had to change direction midway through when they realized Kelly was actually losing it and the arguing needed to stop immediately. The source of the meltdown still hasn’t been explained and as far as I can tell, Kelly never really took responsibility for the whole thing and never sought treatment and seems unconcerned that it ever happened. Hilariously, despite reasonable questions of whether she was even mentally competent, Kelly was invited to participate in another season of the show. And people say reality TV is exploitative!

I haven’t gone much into Kelly’s character outside of her seething mental and emotional volatility, but she also has a lower-level, day-to-day insanity with which she carries herself. Kelly is only interested in speaking to men, whom she will gush and fawn over rapturously as though their every word is gold. When forced to converse with a woman, Kelly completely disengages and barely acknowledges their presence in the room. Multiple women have revealed on the show that they’ve met Kelly several times over many years and she never remembers them. I think this is because Kelly is a beautiful woman who’s decided that flirting with men is her currency and other women get in the way. If you read that and immediately thought joining Real Housewives is an absurd and obviously foolish move for someone with that personality trait: congrats! One more piece of beguilingly bad judgment to add to the Kelly pile.

Notable storyline: Not really a storyline but I liked when Alex McCord interrupted her getting henna in Morocco and she started stomping around complaining that her “tattoo” was ruined and demanding to know if Santa was going to come and fix it. That was actually one of the more coherent sentiments she ever expressed on the show.

Hottest rivalry: Bethenny Frankel. Bethenny hated Kelly from the jump because of some years old incident where Kelly had treated Bethenny like shit while hanging all over her then-boyfriend (such a Kelly move). Bethenny argues in logic and Kelly takes her cues from alien radio waves so the two of them didn’t even fight in the same language, making their arguments exceedingly pointless but still strangely satisfying.

Signature moment: The time her and Sonja were walking on the beach having some serious convo and Kelly stopped to do a sand angel. Kelly Bensimon tries to present herself to the world as a carefree feminine barefoot Bohemian chick, so she’ll often make a point of doing these very explicitly whimsical things like spontaneous cartwheels or jogging in the middle of Manhattan traffic (!). Unfortunately, Kelly doesn’t get that she’s also super paranoid and aggressive so when she does these big showy happy-go-lucky things, it just makes her seem even more threatening and unstable.

[rankingthehousewives]

12. DORINDA MEDLEY

New York City // 7 - present

“Diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend – martinis are!”

Dorinda. Dorinda Medley. I just want to type her name over and over. Dorinda Medley is the Earth's purest angel. Dorinda has a little extra bit of God's love. She is a beautiful coked out daffodil who managed to spend the first seven episodes of her sophomore season in a BLATANT drug stupor and still project a mystique I would call “enchanting.” Dorinda is pure. P U R E. She has a special section of her closet just for stolen hotel slippers. She has a collection of fabulous costume tops she only wears to dates on Broadway. Her mother ices her name onto a storebought cake every year on her birthday. She used to be a step aerobic instructor. She steals Splenda from the table to restock at home. She snuck out of an hours-long screaming match at her own home so she wouldn't miss Law & Order. Dorinda is everything amazing in this world.

But most amazing about Dorinda is the way she interacts with the rest of the cast. She is a true, devoted friend who serves as trusted confidant to all. She's also a gleeful shit-stirrer who has had hostile interactions with all her friends. She's a chilled out woman who radiates positivity, but nearly every scene ends with her bellowing at someone to get the fuck out of her sight. She clearly knows her boyfriend is a piece of shit and that she's only using him and his drugs to fill the void left by her deceased husband, yet loudly defends him in public because that's the thing you do, and then destroys him the second his attacker leaves the room. Dorinda does it all. Dorinda is everything.

I'm obsessed with Dorinda. I have Dorinda on the brain. I think about her all the time. I think about her house in the Berkshires festooned with Christmas decorations because of course Dorinda loves Christmas. I think about her trying to break the tension by busting out one of her multiple Twister boards with Jules. I think about that top with the Mandarin collar she wore in that one talking head. I think about how she's somehow the most New York person in a cast that includes Ramona Singer, Jill Zarin and Bethenny Frankel. It's just Dorinda all the time for me. Dorinda, Dorinda, Dorinda. Oh man if something happened to Dorinda I don't know what I would do. Please be safe, Dorinda.

Notable storyline: Going to London with Carole Radziwill. Carole was there to claim her late husband’s ashes and Dorinda was returning for the first time since her own husband, with whom she’d lived there, died. It was a really lovely, earnest episode, super affecting, and ably carried by Carole and Dorinda who are likeable and endearing and compelling throughout.

Hottest rivalry: Ramona Singer, because Ramona talked bad about JAHN MADESSIAN. HE IS A SAINT. YOU ARE NOT FIT TO SHINE HIS SHOES! HE'S A BEAUTIFUL MAN. OUR FRIENDSHIP IS DONE BUDDY! TAKE THE BUS HOME! YOU'RE A DISGRACE!

Signature moment: Fifth vid down. I taped it with my phone and watched it 5-6 times a day after it happened (c/o Jezebel).

[rankingthehousewives]

13. GAMBLE WOLFE

Melbourne // 2 - present

“Gamble on me, and you're sure to win.”

Each of the other Melbourne women has a very obvious angle – Gina is arrogant, Pettifleur is haughty, Lydia is stupid. Gamble, on the other hand, is more a series of random outbursts and non-sequiturs which resist categorization. She has this crazy voice that’s 95% vocal fry and 5% raised inflection, like she’s always asking a question. She has a husband whose surname is Wolfe, whom she variously calls Wolfy and Wolf Pup, but it sounds like Woofy. Her life’s motto is to calorie count. She quotes Ron Burgundy. She’s a devout Darwinist. A woman of layers, our Gamble.

Politically, Gamble spent her entire first season as a Gina Liano minion, allegedly just because she was a Gina superfan from season one (weren’t we all?). When she wasn’t acting as Gina’s mouthpiece, she was beating back a dogged rumour circulated by Janet Roach that she was an escort who hosted sex parties. The rumour lasted all season and incorporated like five of Janet’s random acquaintances and reliably prodded Gamble into meltdown after meltdown so we all owe Janet and her huge, constantly flapping mouth a debt of thanks.

Gamble should also be propped up for her stellar sophomore season, the front half of which she basically carried on her own. Her wedding was hilarious and drove a million fun plotpoints – Gamble hurling Pettifleur's invitation into the bush and telling her to get fucked, Gina sneaking away from the festivities to have a Celebrity Apprentice viewing party – and Gamble herself was a delight. She's the rare Housewife with the charm to effortlessly carry a large amount of story without feeling overbearing.

I also rank Gamble highly because even though she acts like an idiot, I do think she’s deceptively clever, or at least very witty. “Unreliable Source Barbie” as a nickname for Janet is pretty inspired, and the way she carelessly hurls the Ron Burgundy book off camera suggests that she’s at least in on her own joke. Once we get into dottiness as a smokescreen for wit and Machiavellianism, that’s Janice Dickinson territory. That’s where I wanna spend my time.

In general, ideal mix of intentional comedy, unintentional comedy, cattiness, conflict-hungriness, quotability (“I'LL SUE YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE FUCKING EARTH!”/“EEEEEEVEEEERYBOOODY IN MEEEELBOOOURNE!” *lasso swinging gesture* ) and genuine warmth. Every franchise should be lucky enough to have a Gamble.

Notable storyline: Being joined at the hip with Gina, even as Gina manipulated her and casually insulted her behind her back. This would be sad except people constantly brought it to Gamble’s attention and she’d just shrug it off and not care because she’d picked her side and it was too much work to shift allegiances.

Hottest rivalry: Janet Roach, enough that Gamble hilariously keeps a photo of Janet in her freezer as a superstitious ritual to keep her from selling stories to blogs.

Signature moment: Spreading a rumour that Janet “fucks for heroin” as petty revenge. This is what I love about Melbourne compared to, say, Beverly Hills. The BH women are so cagey and circuitous about their scheming. The Melbourne women say whatever the fuck pops into their head and worry about the mess later.

[rankingthehousewives]

14. KIM ZOLCIAK

Atlanta // 1 - 5

“People say I'm a gold digger, but they just want what I have.”

Kim Zolciak is the best kind of Housewife because she drives the people around her into fits of white hot rage simply by existing. And I get it. She half-asses everything she does and puts absolutely no effort into being a human being, yet always seems to succeed in spite of her incompetence. She wants a music career even though she's a horrific singer who refuses to take voice lessons or even stop smoking a pack a day, and she gets it. She burns all of her friends by being a casual liar, flaking out of vacations last minute, snaking Kandi Burruss on the residuals for the song Kandi dragged her through kicking and screaming, but is given chance after chance to make amends. She bumbles her way from trainwreck relationship to trainwreck relationship, including a long stint as mistress to her anonymous sugar daddy and a publicity affair with a lesbian DJ, yet somehow ends up happily married to a hot young football player who dotes on her. She barely fulfills her responsibilities to the show that made her famous and then Bravo gives her a spin-off. Kim attributes her success in life despite her staggering ineptitude to "dreaming, believing and receiving," and honestly, I buy it. Kim Zolciak is living confirmation that you too can be handed all your dreams even if you're a complete fucking mess.

I also appreciate Kim for being the rare Housewife who seems completely unconcerned with how she comes off on television. She's never seen without a cigarette and a red Solo cup full of white wine, even in the middle of her own kitchen (or, in one scene, behind the wheel of her car, yikes). Her walls are festooned with giant, obnoxious topless portraits of herself. She spends her first three seasons shamelessly living an over-the-top nouveau riche lifestyle on Big Papa's dime. She inexplicably wears a series of cartoon Barbie doll wigs at all times; in a crowning character moment, she spends one reunion vaguely pretending it's because of cancer and then badly backpedalling the second she's pressed on the details. Kim applies the same laissez-faire attitude she takes toward life generally to her stint as a Housewife: drunkenly stumbling from scene to scene, exhibiting not a hint of self-awareness, blindly confident that people will love her... and they do. WTG, Kim.

Notable storyline: Her time on the tour bus with Kandi, which not only collected and amplified the usual nightmare Kim traits (her loudness, her delusion, her total lack of consideration for others), but laid bare a lot of the weird racial shit that surrounded Kim and her role as the only white Housewife of Atlanta.

Hottest rivalry: NeNe Leakes, with whom she was friends for a single episode before shit irreparably, explosively fell apart. People would spend the rest of the series in nostalgic thrall to the Kim and NeNe friendship even though in television terms it lasted about forty-five minutes.

Signature moment: The ring didn't mean a thiiiing... noooo.