‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ is reality television that’s quite watchable and in stark contrast to ‘Housewives’ codswallop. Here’s why.
There are few things as hatefully dreadful as The Housewives series. Whether it’s The Housewives of Washington, DC, Pretoria, Durban, Los Angeles or Timbuktu. It’s a concept as far removed from pleasurable entertainment as sandpaper is to loo paper.
And yet, against all logic and good judgment, there is a show in this general orbit that somehow works. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives should, by all accounts, be unwatchable. Instead, it is oddly compelling. Not good in a highbrow sense, but addictive in the way reality television occasionally gets right, almost by accident.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is streaming on Disney, originally a Hulu series. It follows a band of Utah, United States moms who are all influencers on TikTok. Their channel is creatively called Mom Tok, and that’s the glue that holds the collective together. It’s the springboard for all the drama, complexities, joys and disappointments across their personal and professional lives.
It is eminently watchable
And while the cast’s names are somewhat forgettable, the exceptional editing, along with a semblance of storyline, makes it eminently watchable. Wikipedia says the cast are: Jen Affleck, Demi Engemann, Whitney Leavitt, Mikayla Matthews, Mayci Neeley, Jessi Ngatikaura, Taylor Frankie Paul, Layla Taylor and Miranda McWhorter.
The fact that the mom tokkers’ husbands also feature in the show, albeit in bits and bobs, also helps justify why guys can watch it with their wives. It’s the age of inclusivity, after all.
The show’s third season went live in November last year, and its two predecessors are equally as binge-worthy. Apparently, it’s Hulu’s most-watched unscripted show, and it’s easy to see why. The wives all look as if they had just stepped out of the pages of Vogue, without photoshopping, without surgical tinkering, it seems. The conflicts are kind of real, the tension between living your best life and the constraints that a highly religious community and its spiritual rigour places on relationships, expectations and 21st century living, fascinating.
Watch the trailer
Though the faith element is underplayed at times, it would have been great to explore the subject at a deeper level, because we all struggle with the dichotomy of deity from time to time.
The first season starts in the aftermath of the 2022 soft swinging scandal, where one of the Mom Tokkers, Taylor Frankie Paul, admitted online that she and her husband were soft swinging with other Mormon couples. Of course, it solicited the appropriate scandal as the post went viral. It shattered the picture-perfect perception that everyone’s had about the wholesome, good-looking and deeply religious moms.
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Soft-swinging Taylor becomes the main course to both gossip junkies and a somewhat string of broken, betrayed and semi-shattered friendships. And while, at a distance, it feels like a storm in a teacup when considering twenty-first century morality, religious sensibilities and ingrained conservatism sucker punches liberal leanings in the show. From there, it becomes an adventure.
Less staged reality
What’s really refreshing about The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is that it feels less staged, less contrived and far less intellectually offensive than its cousins, The Housewives and spin-off attempts like The Mommy Club. And while reality or unscripted television is a far cry from what its genre implies, the show seems somewhat more amenable to avoidance of producer and director-influenced storylines. Well, it views like that, anyway.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is a show that is couch-friendly, pizza-friendly and device-friendly because its pace allows for multi-tasking. Yet, it is really entertaining, and not since some Big Brother contestant pooed in the garden on live television two decades and a bit ago has a reality show been this interesting and engaging.
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