From Real Housewives to Keeping Up with the Kardashians: COVID has broken reality TV's bubbles

VICE

"For the first while, things proceeded as normal, at least on screen," says Kate Dries. "While we were told to stay home, our entertainment was going out and living life as they normally would, every last misdeed carefully edited and presented up to us to live vicariously through. What would come later would be far worse: watching every show have to address the profound reality bursting through its doors, the simple fact that the rules of its own universe would be destabilized, and have to be adjusted. This has happened on scripted shows, to various degrees of success, and one would assume it’d be worse with reality programming, what with the alleged basis of the format: real people, doing real things. In actuality, the genre just handled things differently, unintentionally revealing more than ever before how the cookie crumbles: exactly however its maker intends it to. As if the ghost of Bethenny Frankel was floating above them all, these shows would, whether they meant to or not, 'Mention it all,' as what they left out became more obvious than ever. Like their scripted sisters, each reality show has its own narrative of 'real' for that universe, and when outside events get in the way, the fabric of that universe is upset, its puppeteers shifting things to account for them. Cracks start to show; the rules of each respective environment must be updated."