You know what you’re going to get from The Real Housewives franchise. Cameras follow a gaggle of ladies as they go about their highfalutin lives, juggling cocktail parties and galas, strutting red carpets and posing for pictures, hanging out and complaining about how simply awful their lives are.
So, is The Real Housewives of Toronto—bowing Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Slice—like all the others? Yup, and that’s just fine if you enjoy it. If that’s not your cup of expensive, shipped directly from the source, organically-grown tea, then you should skip the program altogether.
“When you have money and a fabulous life, lots of people want to be your ‘friend,'” fashionista Kara Alloway warns during the opening tease. (Thankfully, I have never had that problem.)
Set against a poppy, bass-driven soundtrack we meet Roxy Earle, who is equally unapologetic about her body as she is her personality. And why shouldn’t she be? Confident and opinionated, she’s the type of woman who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, and I love her for it. (If only she wouldn’t refer to herself in the third person.) Roxy’s husband is older than her, her dog has a private chef and is groomed every other week, and she spends weekends in Turks and Caicos.
Then it’s on to Ann Kaplan Mulholland, who lives in tony Forest Hill and started a finance company when she was a single mother. Now it’s one of the biggest in Canada. Ann is a sharp contrast to Roxy; older, married to plastic surgeon Stephen Mulholland, and an avid collector of diamonds.
I won’t introduce the other ladies in the cast—I’ll let viewers enjoy the entrances and backstories of Kara Alloway, Grego Minot, Joan Kelley Walker and Jana Webb themselves—but suffice it to say slow-motion walking, clothes shopping (in Kara’s case, with Jesus as her wingman), smoothies, workouts and lunches are the most stressful events faced by the six in Episode 1.
The Real Housewives of Toronto certainly isn’t Cardinal or Bellevue and it’s not supposed to be. A series like this is meant to be ogled, analyzed and enjoyed like the entertaining confection it is. So go ahead and do it.
The Real Housewives of Toronto airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Slice.
Image courtesy of Corus.
