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Out of curiosity I checked her instagram page and that appears to be her taste level as all of the clothing she is wearing is garish and not particularly stylish. I mean there is good garish like Betsy Johnson if that's her thing but her taste level looked like H&M in loud colors. And even prior to pregnancy she didn't dress in a particularly flattering manner. I don't think she was fat but she seemed to choose stuff that didn't work well with her body shape

While the shows don't have written "lines" that are memorized, my understanding is that scenes may not be continually shot and producers might ask the housewives to go back to the table or whatever. I don't watch the Kardashian shows but I have seen some fanatics pointing out how timelines are impossible and that scenes were clearly shot after the fact to drive certain storylines. However I think the Kardashians are much more scripted than the Housewives with everyone on the same page. It's the reason why Kris Jenner would never be a housewife because she couldn't completely control the "script".

The contracts would specifically list projects that BRAVO doesn't take a cut off. It's standard practice in many "talent" agreements - for example if an actor changes agencies, there might be a list o projects for which the previous agency is owed commissions. Real estate agents also use a list that would clearly define which fall under which agency.

So I assume that Rinna's spawn make a decent living from being influencers. It is astounding to me that sizable numbers of people want to spend time following them. But then I am spending time writing about how others waste time :-).

This is why I don't understand why BRAVO sidelined Sutton. In my opinion, she was exactly what the show should be about - a slightly goofy rich woman showcasing exactly the kind of lifestyle money can buy. And a bit weird to boot. I had seen the Dolce appliance lines several months ago as I had finished a major kitchen remodel and was looking for a really attractive toaster oven. I would have bought the Dolce if it had been expensive but not obscenely expensive - $650 was more than I was going to pay for a toaster oven. But I get why Dolce sent it as her birthday present - even without the show it's great promotional value and gifts from companies are generally accessories and not clothing so they don't have to be a specific size.

My knowledge of forensics comes solely from true crime shows but it seems with all of the DNA cases, the detectives go to great lengths in the first interview to establish that the suspect has had no contact with the dead person. Therefore there can be no innocent explanation for the DNA being discovered. There was one case where the girl was jogging and as it turns out the neighbor boy killed her. He had initially stated he had no contact with her and then at trial claimed he had a secret tryst with her. As I recall, he attempted to get his brother to back him up on the tryst but the brother refused to do it. There was an episode (not sure if it was Dateline or 48 Hours) in which a young woman was killed after ending an affair with a shady very wealthy doctor. The doctor hired a woman to kill the girl. The killer-woman's DNA turned up at the scene. The defense was that somehow the DNA had been transferred because both of the women had been in the doctor's home - months earlier. A DNA expert explained how almost impossible it would be to have someone pickup DNA from one location and then transfer it to another. It was one of those cases where the killer was acquitted and I thought it was clear that the woman had been hired by the doctor to do the actual killing.

I agree with both of you. The circumstances gave Teddi absolutely no cover to attempt to portray her being fired as a mutual decision. It would have been unbelievable given that it was so clear that she was fighting to stay in the show. I think Heather Thompson also walked away from the show as she was afraid that her business and family might start to suffer. I think Heather Dubrow also made a decision to quit because she didn't need it and it was potentially threatening her image, life and marriage. BRAVO must be sending out messages to other of their reality *stars" as they no longer seem to attempt to send out face savings messages as they used to do. In the past even when someone is fired, there has generally been some kind of press release in which it was a "mutual decision" - BRAVO regrets and other weasel words. There was also no leaked information regarding negotiation and contracts like occurred with Leah or even Nene. Nene could have come back I would suspect if she agreed to lower her price. Leah would have gotten the boot if she didn't come down in her asking price.

They sold the one on the cliff and just bought the new one. Maurice handled the real estate transactions as I recall. I wonder how much money John Mellencamp has put aside for the kids. He has five kids. He had a decent career but he wasn't Springsteen - hell he wasn't Tom Petty or even Bob Seger based on number of hits.

Because the store paid to be featured in the show. There had to be some kind of ostensible purpose to get the mother and sister together so shopping for a dress theoretically was the opportunity. Discussing Michael with the mother assured that the scene would be shown on an episode. Ashley got dresses for herself and the sister bought a nice dress somewhere else at a store more suitable for a teenager.

And that was because the sleeves made her look fat or some other odd reference to fat body shapes which leads one to the inevitable conclusion that Teddi MUST be the kind of woman who complains continuously about how fat everything makes her look. She and Rinna are both modeling body disorder and eating disorder behavior for their children.

Even with the Coogan Law, parents can benefit enormously from their children earning money. They are allowed to use money for their "managerial" services and can also use the kids' earnings for housing, food and other expenses. It's a certain percentage of gross that is put in a Trust which means the rest of it can be spent by the parents. It tends to create a terrible dynamic in which parents use their children to financially support the family instead of vice versa - even if theoretically a certain percentage of the child's income is saved for them. Very few financially secure parents drag their kids to Los Angeles for pilot season for example. Also the Trust is given to the kids when they turn 18 which means that most of the time it is completely spent in a year or so. In general, when people set up Trusts for their kids, they deliberately don't have the proceeds distributed when the kid is 18 to avoid money being wasted with nothing to show for it. With the Coogan law there is no way to prevent this - fast cars; expensive homes; entourages; drugs - money doesn't last long when you are an 18 year old with no life skills. And like pro athletes most of them have not been given the luxury of college being an option - again with a few very notable exceptions which are always brought out as if they represent the standard adult child star.

I worked in Legal/Business Affairs in the "business" for many years. The so-called Jackie Coogan law doesn't really do that much to protect child celebrities. It is only used when a child is signed to a long term project and so doesn't cover children who pick up guest roles or whatever. It also does nothing to protect the psychological issues that arise from being a child working in the business. Most sane individuals do NOT want their children becoming child actors or singers. It's a potentially toxic environment and very few child actors emerge from it unscathed emotionally. I don't want to out anyone specifically but those who went on to become productive adults had to work hard to do it and many of them carry the emotional scars. And for every adult success, there are a slew of damaged and dead kids. It's not just about the money which is what the Coogan Law theoretically did. It's about the emotional issues. Watch Alex Winter's interesting recent Showtime documentary - Showbiz Kids Paul Peterson, who was one of the stars of The Donna Reed Show started a group many years ago called A Minor Consideration which tried to protect the rights of minors in the industry. http://aminorconsideration.org/amc-history/

I know the Allin Plan discussion has been superseded by the exciting news of her possible permanent departure. I would just like to weigh in (no pun intended) on what an incredible rip-off her plan is - besides being dangerous and ultimately ineffective in terms of weight loss. I lost a lot of weight and I went to a psychotherapist who specialized in eating disorders. She was very well versed in nutrition as well because of her speciality. It was LESS expensive than Teddi's plan. I saw her once a week and we went over my weight and eating plans. We also did actual therapy including behavioral modification and cognitive therapy to learn actual coping skills. Yes I was "accountable" because I knew there was someone who I would be seeing every week to discuss the past week and the future - but in a therapeutic way and not in the form of the kind of "shaming" texts that seem to be what Allin thinks are inspiring. I do think being accountable in some way is helpful as long as it is done in a manner that inspires growth and not shame and disorder.

BRAVO gets money for businesses started after the housewives appear on the show. As I recall, they didn't do this originally and obviously regretted it when Skinnygirl blew up because the success of Skinnygirl was due almost entirely to being promoted on the show. Obviously Bethenny and her partners were shrewd as well but the amount of free promotion she got from ordering it in every episode was extremely valuable. The housewives would have to exclude business in the contracts signed. For example, I doubt Bravo makes money from Vicki's insurance company because it would be a going concern. Maybe they also negotiate certain stuff like the Cut gym in terms of whether Bravo gets any take since it's more than just a book, record or licensing of a name. Teddi's accountability would be in a gray area since theoretically she had the business before she started but apparently it grew tremendous after she was on the show since the first season it seemed as if she was some kind of one on one life coach and not a pyramid scheme peddling an expensive diet. It is interesting that the nature of Teddi's actual business was never discussed on the show at all as it was still vaguely billed as some kind of life coach aspirational goal versus what it really is which is a scam anorexic style diet plan and the life style coaching consists of texts from unqualified women telling you that you are eating too much and not exercising one hour.

Frankly I don't particularly care about who was right or wrong as none of these women - with the possible exception of Sutton and Dorit (although it kills me to state) have clean hands. I don't care if people tell normal white lies about why they aren't flying to New York to view a talentless performance of a stunt role. The problem is thet the past two seasons have been dull and depressing. The women of Potomac and New York and even Atlanta go at it but they don't seem to gnaw the same meaningless bone OVER AND OVER AND OVER again and attempt to make a whole season out of a nothing. Dorit might be a shady grifter but by god she amuses me in terms of her over the top styling and by god pretending that decorating a room at Bucca is some kind of feat worthy of Architectural Digest - I mean that is the kind of snark worthy behavior that I watch for. The show has just had two dark boring seasons. It's not that I find the "mean girls" to be to immoral to be watched. It's that they are so goddam boring. They need to do a drastic reset and bring the show back to watching stupid pretentious women wasting money - More scenes like Sutton at Dolce and shopping in Prada. An entertaining villain that one loves to hate is fine - Rinna and Kyle are no longer love to hate - they are just hateful. Teddi is dull and unless there is a season where her anorexic MLM scam is shown to go down in flames she needs to exit as well. One can only hope that both PayPal and the IRS are investigating her request to have users pay through PayPal "friends and family" to avoid her paying fees to PayPal as well as eliminating buyer protection that one normally has with a PayPal transaction. Evidently her husband has doxed the Instagram woman who exposed her pro-ana scam.

The Charlottesville homes were exceptionally ugly. The woman's delight in hideous features being quirky was ridiculous. A hulking stone fireplace in the middle of the room is a design flaw. A hole caught in a staircase to the basement is a design flaw as all it does is prevent one from utilizing a wall as one might like. I lived in Charlottesville for awhile and I don't remember the homes being quite so bad. I lived in the overseer's house on the grounds of an old plantation for a year. That place actually did have a fireplace with the brick chimney running up to the second floor but it was a nice design element. It was a two sided fireplace with one side on the living room and the other side on kitchen. But it didn't bisect the rooms or the home bizarrely and was a really nice authentic design element as it would have provided the heat source prior to central heating and might also have been used for cooking on the kitchen portion back in the day. And it didn't just hulk on the second floor the way it did in the HH home - the chimney ran through my bedroom and again was just a nice discrete element like one might have an exposed brick wall in a hipster pad. Probably helped that it was brick and so was tidy instead of bulbous.

I read that the ladies could only have one stylist so they had to choose between makeup or hair person. Ramona chose makeup because she thought she would need makeup touch ups during the day and so her hair person put in the straight extensions since theoretically they wouldn’t require skilled maintenance. But they looked pretty terrible as a fashion choice and were unflattering. I think Luanne does her styling impeccably generally and her short dark hair is so much more flattering than the fake blonde extensions

I was thinking about the business she made which was selling overstocked clothing to discount wholesalers. I think she made a decent living from that business, but I don't think she was a millionaire and I think it was Mario's money that bought them the lifestyle. She didn't seem to be running a business even in the earliest years. There was one episode where she was dreadful to an assistant she was interviewing and insulted her skin. But there didn't seem to be any kind of business like Heather Thompson or even Vicki from OC had built. As I recall, Mario's family business had a pretty lucrative niche market in trophies and religious icons. There was an episode where they attempted to go into the religious jewelry market. But I always had the sense that it was Mario's family business that funded their lifestyle. I don't think Ramona was in the same league of gold digger as either Luanne, Sonja or Dorinda but I don't think her current net worth would have been the same without her marriage to Mario and of course her employment as on RH. Besides the salary, there are so many financial perks these women get - Dorinda managed to snare herself a pretty juicy deal with free rent of a $10,000 per month apartment for several years - just an example. They are all plugging something all the time so a good percentage of their recreation is paid for by payment for promotions - even just posting a picture generally means they are being paid to do so.

A burglar is not considered to be a non-violent offender FWIW. It is considered to be quite a serious offense and is generally a felony. Non-violent crimes are those like possession of pot or other so-called victimless crimes. And the poor are disproportionately jailed for those types of crimes and often spend long periods of time prior to trial because they can't make bail. This then plummets people and families living on the economic edge in the best of time into economic catastrophe. When was the last time a white college kid was jailed for pot. Years ago there was a huge discrepancy between sentences for coke and crack cocaine because coke was generally the drug of affluent white people.

Not to go wildly off topic of dresses but I could tell from reading the recipes in his book that they would be good and a lot of them were not crazy hard. I'm not about to start making dim sum 🙂 but almost all of the recipes seemed geared to a home cook.

Did I miss the housewives pointing out the hypocrisy of Dorinda chastising Tinsley for being a gold digger? Dorinda came from a very modest background as did Sonja, Ramona and Luanne. They seem to have grown up in blue collar homes. Their current wealth and social status is solely because they married wealthy men who left them money - either in a divorce settlement or in the will. I am not sure what Tinsley's current financial situation was but she was born into wealth - married and divorced a wealthy man - and seemed to live a relatively affluent life prior to the show. I admit to being a bit confused about her wealth as I had read that her father had lost the family fortune but the mother seems to live well. At any rate, how insane is it for Dorinda of all people to try to shame Tinsley by bringing up Scott's wealth.

I thought the desirable demographic was to some extent based on whether advertisers thought that target groups had settled into their buying patterns and so were likely to actually act on advertising they saw. Of course my question is who actually WATCHES advertising on television anyway since everyone I know has a DVR and fast forwards through all advertising. At any rate, boomers with lots of money have targeted stereotypical advertising. Golf games are notorious for having ads for retirement funds and Cadillacs 🙂

BRAVO seems to be playing hard ball on salaries on the franchises. I think Leah is overplaying her hand. I personally didn't enjoy watching someone out of control drunk nakedly hurling tiki torches. I am amazed that this women think they actually merit high salaries. They have no discernible talents and should consider themselves lucky to have been plucked out of obscurity. The promotional tie-ins are huge - any place they frequent - anything they are photographed with is done for promotional benefit. How else would these people merit being photographed and invited to all kinds of events - that's catnip for the kind of narcissistic souls that inhabit reality casts.

My my but my personal hell has frozen over as Candiace appears as a mature person who was attempting to successfully handle this kind of disclosure while being taped. I would imagine there is a lot of pressure to move the storyline along by the producers and she managed to do it in a way that Ashley and everyone else acknowledged as the appropriate and ADULT manner to do so. I do have a trivial question - could someone please explain the various hair styles? Is Karen wearing a blonde wig? Is Gizelle always wearing a wig in the champagne tone. I assume Robyn has her own hair because it is generally in that kind of short style Monique's current hair style - I am assuming that is her own hair at the moment Candiace generally has a lot of extensions - is that right? I am assuming when she has the shorter styles, those are wigs. Is Wendy's long straight hair a wig or is it extensions. To the best of my memory, she seems to always have that look.

That was really my point. The high income is going to be limited unless the player is extremely fortunate. Therefore their "real" income isn't really the high amount in the same way that someone who earns that salary as part of their adult job can budget. In other words, a doctor who earns $500,000 a year is likely to earn that income for 30 or more years and will probably see income increase through the years. An athlete is not going to be making that income until they are 65 and therefore needs to figure out how to be the ant instead of the grasshopper.