The Real Housewives in need of reality check

Last May, when the season three premiere of The Real Housewives of New Jersey started off with a full-out brawl at a baby's christening, it was apparent that it was going to be just as, if not more dramatic than, the previous two seasons.

While the show appears to only be about five rich women from New Jersey who talk about the same issues over and over again, this season proved that it was much, much more interesting than that.

Once Danielle Staub left after the second season, viewers wondered where the crazy would pick up. Not only did she have a scandalous book written about her, but she was also the catalyst for a table-flipping incident and a hair-pulling lawsuit.

However, this season started off just fine without her there. Teresa Giudice's sister-in-law Melissa Gorga and cousin Kathy Wakile were the two new housewives, who Giudice did not want anywhere near the show. This, and long-standing tensions between Giudice and her brother, Joe Gorga, caused the aforementioned fight at Gorga's baby's christening.

The hullaballoo set the tone for the entire season, as almost all the housewives did on screen from May until last Sunday on the reunion show was discuss the relationship between Giudice and her family and how they were going to fix it.

In the beginning, it seemed as if Gorga and Wakile were only nuisances who were on the show to get their 15 minutes of fame and to fight with Giudice. The other two housewives, Caroline Manzo and Jacqueline Laurita, certainly believed so.

However, as the season unfolded, Giudice got more and more annoying and Gorga and Wakile, though they were still the typical New Jersey ditzy, started to make a lot more sense. This happened right around the time when Giudice started lamenting about how Gorga had once brought sprinkle cookies, not pignoli cookies to her house.

Nobody else really seemed to care, but somehow the issue of sprinkle cookies never went away. Giudice became plain obnoxious. Every time she screeched her spoiled daughter's name "MILANIA" in her high-pitched voice and every time she made up a new word ("ingredientzes"), she stopped being cute and instead made viewers cringe. Manzo and somewhat Laurita started to feel this way as well, wondering why on earth Giudice couldn't just stop talking and start getting along with her family again.

There were a few other arcs throughout the season, such as Manzo's radio show and children and Laurita's devastating time dealing with her bratty 20-year-old, Ashley (or is it Ashlee now?).

However, these did not seem to matter as much when compared to the scope of Giudice's full out vendetta against common sense. The show became about the same thing every week — will Giudice and Melissa finally get along? And will Giudice forgive Wakile for saying her children were unattended?

These issues were hashed out over and over again during the two-part reunion, with over three million viewers watching.

Predictably enough, there was a lot of the screaming and name-calling that viewers have come to expect from these reunion shows. But, when one looks at it from a bigger perspective, it was really just a group of women arguing about their own lives.

So why have so many people tuned in over the past few years?

The Real Housewives franchise was created partially because of the popularity of ABC's Desperate Housewives. Why not take a show that is so popular and make it about real people? Granted, in doing this, the "real husbands" become far less attractive — think James Denton (Mike Delfino) and Richard Antonio Chavira (Carlos Solis) versus the "real Husbands" Joe Gorga and Joe Giudice.

They're just not as appealing, no matter how many times Joe Gorga talks about how much he wants to expel his poison from his body (in layman's terms, have sex multiple times a day with his wife, Gorga) or Joe Giudice does the splits. The characters on Real Housewives can never be as dramatic as the ones on the ABC hit. Joe Giudice's largest offense is forging his driver's license, while the girls on Desperate Housewives are currently trying to cover up a murder, one of several never-ending entertaining trysts with the law.

Obviously, people cannot do this in real life, or the entire cast would be in jail, though Joe Giudice is almost there. The women on Desperate Housewives are also actually somewhat intelligent, and would be appalled to know that Giudice thinks the current vice president is Bill Clinton and that Gorga thinks Cairo is in Antarctica.

But these differences in quality do not seem to affect the ratings at all, as there are people that are so obsessed with these women that they read their blogs faithfully every week and go to as many of Giudice's book signings as possible. This may be because viewers are either so happy that they do not have the lives of these women, or because we are jealous of their instant stardom.

Bravo TV seems to have a knack for reeling their viewers in, which was even more apparent this Sunday, when season four was discussed, but no details were given about what happened.

All the viewers knew was that Laurita was not on the reunion show because of something that had happened during season four filming.

It was an intelligent choice on Bravo's part to start filming the next season while the third one was still airing, as now people are very invested in what is going to happen next year to Laurita and Giudice's relationship.

There's only so much that can be learned about their lives through Twitter, which means that people will keep watching next season, especially if it stays as dramatic as it was last Sunday.