amarante

You can definitely start with four since it really doesn't depend on following the past histories of the housewives. On the other hand, Seasons 1 - 3 have definite charm. Marysol's mother is iconic - may she Rest In Peace. You can fast forward through some of the more boring housewives like the dentist but Marysol and Alexia were enjoyable and you could see her loathsome older son who was arrested at the time for soliciting homeless people to film videos for a small payment.

I have on insight into Gizelle's specific finances but she would have been getting presumably a relatively amount of child support for her three children. There would be enough money from the church for her ex to be on the hook for a good amount since Gizelle had sole custody.

I don't think that Ashley is revealing exactly what is going on in terms of the divorce finances. I think the issue of home ownership doesn't really matter because I suspect that there is an agreement that Michael will have to pay for the home until at least the youngest child is a certain age because he is on the hook for major child support and the children will receive child support commensurate with his income. Her talking about the mortgage is just a form of humble bragging because she isn't going to be financially responsible for making sure the house is paid for - taxes are paid - utilities etc. for at least the next 20 years. That is why Michael effectively owns the new house through an LLC. If they had lived in a more traditional single family home like many married couples, it would not be odd for the wife to continue living in the home with the husband retaining some form of ownership in the home. On Family Karma there is a woman in this situation as her divorce settlement from her wealthy husband evidently provided for her being able to live in the large house until their daughter was graduated from college. And so when that time came she was forced to vacate during this season. Obviously Michael Darby's wealth could be a fake but he is the principal and founder of Monument Realty which from its web page appears to be a profitable major company.

Regarding Ashley's tasteless outfit, I don't know if you have seen the dresses worn by the Miami women for their reunion. They are sexy as hell without being blatantly vulgar like Ashley's. I also feel that way about the ridiculous cat suits that just remind me of cheap Halloween costumes when people dress as black cats. This link contains closeups of all of the dresses. https://www.allabouttrh.com/2023/02/03/photos-rhom-season-5-reunion-looks/ Yes some of these dresses are revealing but they are all have some element of style unlike the Potomac dresses which really were uniformly ugly. I don't "love" all of the Miami dresses but Kiki's dress on the far left is certainly a far more interesting and less vulgar "advertisement" for the wares as is Guerdy's dress which is third from the right. Guerdy's dress With Mia she lies so incessantly that it is impossible to distinguish the lies from the truth because sometimes she will actually make a direct statement that is true - like finally admitting in the reunion that she had used open sex to entice Gordon and she still did it to keep him interested. I thought it was telling that it wasn't that she herself "enjoyed" the "swinging" lifestyle necessarily but it was just a tool in her repertoire like any other. I am reminded of the cliche about lying - How do you know when Mia is lying - her mouth is moving. True for the most part.

She fled to Chicago and essentially disavowed the bigots of her family when she left whatever Bigot City they live in. He had mentioned that she was a huge support to him and I assume that he came out to her before anyone else in the family. I suspect that she knew he was gay before he did since I can't imagine her friend circle in Chicago didn't include a significant number of gays.

I don't disagree with your post at all. I didn't mean to imply that POC had just recently even *thought* of generational wealth as being desirable. I won't iterate your excellent summary of complex factors resulting in the huge divide between home ownership between POC and white folks because for most *ordinary* people home ownership is the biggest asset. Essentially it boils down to racism permeating every aspect organization with redlining of certain areas by banks in terms of even providing mortgages. There was a very recent case in which a black couple owned a very desirable home in the San Francisco area and it was appraised for a figure well below fair market value. They then "purged" the home of anything that might indicate that POC owned the home and had a white friend there for the appraisal and the home was appraised for two or three hundred THOUSAND dollars more. There is a really wonderful book by Isabel Wilkerson called The Warmth of Other Suns which chronicles the migration of Southern Blacks to the North from 1915 and 1970 and how things might have been a great deal differently if racism in the North - of the de facto kind - hadn't been endemic. Recommend it as it is the kind of non-fiction that reads like a novel. What I meant is that I think that there is an educational movement occurring in institutions like black churches in which people are being taught educated as to the importance of basics like home ownership in terms of generational wealth and how that can provide a more stable future for their family and children. I watch House Hunters and many of the POC on the show talk specifically about generational wealth and what buying a home means to them. Mia and Gordon are pretty much the antithesis of generation wealth. 😂😂 Last season Mia was bragging about renting their home and spending $65,000 to renovate it. Who in their right economic mind would spend that amount to renovate a rental.

On a shallow note, I generally think the Potomac women are among the most beautiful of all the franchises and most of them looked beautiful when they were young and so don’t have that awful over plasticized look of some of the women in the other franchises. Except of course for Mia whose facial surgery is just scary. However they all looked really bad in terms of makeup and hair for the most part. Normally Ashley, Gizelle and Robyn look good in terms of face and even hair for the most part but they all looked ghastly. It is obviously a subjective judgment but the platinum hair on Karen looked silly and nit flattering or elegant. And the clothing. Why do you want to appear half naked like Ashley or with yiur boobs squeezed and sticking out like some of the others. The dress Gizelle was working was worse than her generally awful style choices. I kind of liked Candiace’s ridiculous over the top feathered number and I do think she was winking at the audience knowing she was going to get some Sesame Streer memes out of it as she said on the show. They are really angry at Robyn for the Juan stunt as I can’t recall when they have so completely savaged a housewife like this. The editing of the WWHL footage underscored how ridiculous her explanations and excuses were. I think Candiace is one of the smartest of the housewives on any of the franchises. Getting an internship at the Obama White House couldn’t have been easy. I just never understood why she was working at the restaurant given that with her resume and intelligence she could have been in a position that is more typical of an upwardly mobil professional women. For example, she would have made a great lobbyist for example with her brains, beauty, wit and charm especially when the Democrats were in the White House

Thanks for clarifying regarding why Candiace was working at the restaurant as it I don’t remember it being explained in her first season. I just never saw a problem with her mother helping her financially because in my experience it is common for parents to help so long as the kids are doing something productive in terms of attempting to be self sufficient by either working or going to school.

Almost everyone I know INCLUDING my parents got help from their parents for the down payment and most of them aren't in low paying jobs either. It is almost impossible for someone to save money for a down payment even with a relatively good job. My parents weren't wealthy but they were careful with their money and so they gave my brother and I the same amount to help with down payments. Their rationale was that they were going to be leaving money to us anyway so why not use some of it to help with stuff that could help in the present time. Some of my extremely wealthy friends have just bought their children homes outright - cash and why not? I think Candiace was perfectly correct in terms of talking about generational wealth. It's only become a relatively recent goal for POC to think about building generational wealth. If Candiace's mother has enough money to help her kids then why not? It isn't as if she raised a wastrel - Candiace graduated college and seems to have been raised with a good bit of drive. I am not sure why she was being a hostess at the restaurant instead of a more standard corporate position since she obviously had the credentials for it. Maybe she was doing it like many people who want to be in the acting profession because they need flexible hours in order to do auditions. That is extremely common in New York and Los Angeles. Also I am really not understanding a value system in which it is better to get your "lifestyle" by marrying a rich old man versus being lucky enough to have parents who are able to help out financially.

I think Ashley is deliberately confusing about the status of her financial negotiations just as Mia is deliberately confusing about the business takeover by the other owners. Despite Mia's ridiculous attempts to explain it away the takeaway is that Mia was NEVER the CEO or actually ran the company in any manner. There are of course ways to squeeze shareholders out in a closely held corporation like this must be but it isn't as simple as simply cutting off access to a bank account. Sometimes like a stopped clock Mia actually tells the truth as when she "smugly" told Ashley that she continued to engage in non-traditional sexual behavior in a marriage (not sure how else to phrase this) because that was he she snared Gordon and that was the only way to keep it. She was basically telling Ashley that Ashley had no *right* to want to become more traditional. I think Ashley is both a gold digger and an idiot. I just cannot be convinced that she actually "loved" Michael Darby as my test for whether it is true love is whether someone would be with this man if they had no money and the answer is most obviously no. I think that people under-estimate how difficult it is to get a really wealthy guy to put a ring on it which is why you get the most common scenario of young pretty thing married to rich older not particularly attractive man. Ashley will get child support and probably a relatively modest lump sum payment. I think her reference to "spousal support" is that if in the future she becomes destitute, then he would be required to provide her with a modest stipend. This is actually the "law" in many jurisdictions - i.e. that you can be forced to support an ex who is otherwise destitute. Obviously this would only occur in extreme situations when someone is homeless

Her parents owned homes in Phoenix so I would imagine that logistically it was easier for her to move there. She said her parents spent the winter in Phoenix so I imagine proximity to her family was also a factor.

Except if you have a multi million dollar INCOME you will still come out ahead because your income taxes would be more than property taxes. Property taxes are less of a cost factor to the ultra wealthy than the middle or 3rd upper middle class. Also property taxes are pretty high in many suburban areas that have high income taxes. For example, taxes in the suburbs or New York City are high and you are taxed New York City taxes if you work in the city. Residential property taxes in New York City actually are relatively low because there is a very strong commercial tax base. But a place like Scarsdale will have high property taxes as will suburbs in New Jersey and Connecticut

I wonder how much they were paid (BRAVO or the realtors) to essentially provide a half hour or more of promotional advertising for a boring development in Vegas. And Vegas is indeed a Mecca for very rich people because of no state income tax. I believe Florida also doesn't have state income tax. I know this because my best friend's husband comes from a family where the father sold a business for half a billion or so about 20 years ago and so the family which had been residing in the NY/NJ metropolitan area all bought principal residence in either Vegas or Boca. My friend stayed in Los Angeles because they would rather have a good life and pay a bit more in taxes since what was left after taxes was still millions. Of course the thing about older people retiring is that merely living in a house that large is exhausting because of the extreme distances between the various living areas and of course even if you have staff, you still have to have the energy and desire to manage them. I know this - again - because when the parents got to be a certain age, they down sized to a more manageable home. Still gracious by ordinary standards but not 10,000 square feet. There is so much new building in Vegas for the very wealthy, that the older expensive homes don't keep their value because people can purchase a new home. Unlike metropolitan areas like Manhattan or the west side of Los Angeles, there is no particular need to pay more to live in a specific neighborhood and renovate. At least for the most part since there is always a new development. I did get excited that the lunch was at Xian which is my go-to Chinese restaurant. Not very authentic Chinese food but it is good quality and is essentially just your typical Chinese neighborhood place albeit in the heart of Beverly Hills but it is a good place to watch the natives in their natural habitat. 😂

FWIW people in Los Angeles LOVE Spanish Colonial and there are people who do lovingly restore Spanish Colonial homes even though it doesn't make economic sense. Of course you can't enforce what someone does to a home but you can get a sense of what they intend to do with it. In some of the desirable neighborhoods in LA all the homes except for the old Spanish Colonials will be bought for their tear down value.

It grates on me as does the frequent "me and him" misuse. I am never sure who is the illiterate - the actor or the writer? Or was it deliberate in order to provide character insight - i.e. that the person with the terrible grammar isn't highly educated as a character. In terms of the ghost boundaries, I guess the writers can make up any characteristics they want. I had never read the Ann Rice vampire novels or seen the Tom Cruise movie so when I saw the recent television version of Interview With The Vampire I was confused since I had read the Bram Stoker novel and of course seen the Bela Lugosi movie numerous times so I had always assumed vampires operated under certain "rules".

Tracy's house on Curson is still on the market - reduced $100,000. It is quite expensive for the neighborhood which doesn't have the cachet of more desirable locations. Of course location location location and the house would be more expensive in a better location. Still one of the basic rules of prudent home purchases is NOT being the most expensive home on the block which that one surely is. It's not a bad area. Ozzie and Harriet actually lived there and there are some gracious old homes along those streets. Originally when Hollywood was developed, there were mansions built but those have almost all been torn down with a few existing as schools or equivalent. The Tutor listing is across the street from Wattles Park. Flagg's listing in Bel Air is still available. I thought De Gournay wallpaper was expensive - had never heard of Gracie but when I went to the Grace site, there was an article with photos of Nancy Reagan, Marlena Dietrich and some others in rooms with the wallpaper. Mostly decorated by Elsa De Wolf who was a famous decorator of the early 20th century - she died in 1950. I wonder if Flagg will find someone to restore it rather than just to knock it down. https://www.dirt.com/gallery/showbiz/directors/old-hollywood-director-ernst-lubitschs-bel-air-house-1203584117/lubitsch_belair8/ https://www.joshflagg.com/property/268-bel-air-rd-los-angeles-ca-90077/

I also think the dedicated guest room is also a question of economics. Growing up I didn't know any family that had one room that was used only when guests slept over. There might be a den with a sleeper sofa but in some urban areas even a separate "room" is a luxury as the sleeper sofa is in the living room. Vacant bedrooms only happen when children move out either for college or permanently. If can imagine situations in which a dedicated guest room makes sense - i.e. family lives abroad and the parents actually visit for extended periods of time. But generally if family visits most people are okay with ad hoc informal arrangements - i.e. kids move into sleep together and someone takes a kids' bedroom as a scenario.

Because the police back then didn't get involved with custodial interference cases just as they also didn't treat domestic violence seriously. Also she didn't have the financial resources to hire an attorney even on a limited basis. And as I recall she also said that she was afraid she would be killed if she actually went to Alaska and attempted to get them back.

It is not that strange for homes in the Northeast which have winters to have a pool especially in a family home where children would be using it all summer. Buffalo might have colder winters than New Jersey but the reality is that "swimming weather" is pretty much the same - roughly the time period from Memorial Day to Labor Day however harsh the winters are. Most of them are above ground pools like the one in Buffalo which are less expensive and aren't meant for swimming so much as playing in water when it is hot. Smaller and not as much water needed to fill. Lots of them in certain neighborhoods even in places like New York City. That backyard was particularly well done but very specific to whoever designed it with that huge expanse of concrete and the oasis effectively hidden from view. Most people want their beautiful backyard to be visible from the house because it provides a "view"

I don't mean to make generalized gender statements especially with a gay wedding but I do think in terms of wedding preferences Nicholas is analogous to the bridegroom in a heterosexual wedding. Amrit's mother said that Amrit ALWAYS wanted the large Indian wedding. Even as a child he was fascinated by it and so I think this wedding was as much about his fantasy wedding as much as his parents wanting the large wedding. Left to his own devices, I do think Nicholas might have either eloped or had a much smaller wedding in which there were elements of both cultures but not a three day Bollywood extravaganza. And I do reiterate that I also think that viewing the acceptance by Amrit's family has got to be painful when contrasted with his family. His parents are showing up grudgingly but don't really want to acknowledge they have a gay son. His sister isn't even willing to show up because she is against the marriage completely. This is just in his face even though he can ignore it for the most part since the contrast isn't so blatantly in his face.

Most of the men have ugly faces and bodies which to me aren't particularly attractive as I am not into the Frank type of steroid look. Evan and the new woman's husband actually have attractive faces and if I am recalling correctly actually have good bodies - i.e. athletic without being bulked out through steroids and pumping heavy iron. To me it is the male equivalent of over filled faces and lips. I just find it aesthetically displeasing. But the faces - Louie, Paul and Frank are especially unattractive. Shoot me but Gorga actually has a decent Italian face. I mean Pacino and DeNiro have those kinds of Italian male faces and they are not unattractive.

And he will earn every penny. As the saying goes, marry for money and you will earn it. 😂😂

She looked so good last night on WWHL without the extensions and a very sleek modern style. But I also don't understand how woman who get the extreme plastic surgery with the puffy shiny faces and the duck lips look in the mirror and think they are aesthetically attractive. And my god I thought Jen's nose job was terrible but there is a new housewife on the show whose nose compares to her nose as being one of the worst nose jobs I have seen.

Even Amrit acknowledged that Nicholas is experiencing a lot of pain in terms of comparing his family's essential rejection of him versus Amrit's family - and indeed the larger Indian community of Aunties/Uncles embracing gay marriage even though gay marriages also is not part of their tradition. Last season Amrit's grandmother was told and was able to feel glad that Amrit had found love and a life partner. Nicholas' parents are truly awful. So they have grudging agreed to be at the wedding despite signaling that this is something they will do DESPITE their feeling it is morally wrong. However the rest of the family including his sister will not even attend the wedding to show their complete disapproval of gay marriages. The only family member who is actually embracing the marriage and genuinely happy he has found love is an aunt who evidently ran away from wherever these horrible people are located to Chicago and leads a life in which gay is not grudgingly accepted. All of this is playing out while these huge and exhausting event is being planned - and in front of cameras. Most people planning a wedding or other huge life change can have moments when they are snippy or otherwise having some type of emotional behavior driven by the stress and latent emotions being stirred up.

I think one can differentiate between the two wives who were interviewed and whatever girlfriends or others who came into his life later. First wife who lost her sons - he was a charming guy who had returned from a Missionary stint with the LDS. Her sons were pretty young when she escaped from him and then he kidnapped the children. She evidently hired lawyers who told her that based on the facts she was pretty powerless to do anything. I think she said that she had no money working as a waitress. Second wife also married what seemed to be a normal guy - and then had difficulty leaving. At one time it domestic abuse wasn't treated at all seriously by law enforcement - and I suspect it was even worse in the kind of "religious" small towns they lived in where the "patriarch" of the family was accorded wide discretion in terms of discipline. Her account of what she had to do to make her escape - with the aid of some kind of organization that specifically helped abused women flee was terrifying. The most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive relationship is when they attempt to leave. Pregnancy is another high risk - especially for women who aren't married to the father of the child. What I have more difficulty understanding is how women allow themselves to be abused by boyfriends when there isn't the same kind of financial pressure there is when there are children involved or when there is marriage and so there are often financial implications that have to be dealt with. The first time any man ever hit me; attempted to control me or otherwise act in a suspicious manner I would be gone - and hopefully before he had invested enough emotional energy in the relationship to hunt me down and punish me for leaving.