The Real Housewives of Orange County is a reality television program on the Bravo network. It is the first installation in the The Real Housewives of... series. Created by Orange County producer and Coto de Caza ("Coto") resident Scott Dunlop, with music by Chuck Hammer, the show was initially set primarily in the gated community of Coto and followed the lavish livestyles of five "housewives" and their families who resided within Coto McMansions, with the exception of one housewife (Lauri Waring, later, Peterson), who lived in comparatively reduced financial circumstances in a Ladera Ranch, California townhouse. This housewife exception-to-the-rule was used in season 1 as a foil to the (then) extravagant lifestyle of the other four housewives, who lived "behind the Coto gates". However, the show has since expanded its filming locations to include Rancho Santa Margarita, Ladera Ranch, San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente, Costa Mesa, and Newport Coast, and downplayed the exclusivity of living behind the gates of Coto. For example, the opening credits removed the commentary saying, "There's a mystique of living behind the gates." The construction-real estate crash, the beginning of which coincided almost exactly the first seasons broadcast, has since trimmed the housewives' lifestyles, with job losses, evictions, mortgage defaults, foreclosures, and marital stress -- all recorded in progressive seasons of the show.
History
The show's first season premiered on March 21, 2006. The five original housewives were Kimberly Bryant, Jo De La Rosa, Vicki Gunvalson, Jeana Keough and Lauri Waring. Season 1 consisted of 8 episodes, including the reunion. The show's second season premiered on January 16, 2007. Four of the five original housewives returned, with the exception of Kimberly Bryant who was replaced by Tammy Knickerbocker. Season 2 consisted of 10 episodes, including the reunion. Season 3 premiered on November 9, 2007 with De La Rosa replaced by new housewife, Tamra Barney. Season 3 consisted of 12 episodes, including the reunion. Additionally, midway through this season, a sixth housewife was introduced to the cast, Quinn Fry. With the introduction of Barney and Fry and Waring's move to San Juan Capistrano, the scope of the show widened its narrow focus that used to emphasize the privilege and exclusivity of living in gated Coto de Caza to purport the general luxury and materialism of living in the Orange County environment. For example, Waring comments in the opening credits of season 3 that she is now "living the Orange County lifestyle again" with her new wealthy fiance. BravoTV announced the series' fourth season renewal with the return of three original housewives, Gunvalson, Keough, Peterson (Waring, after her end-of-season-3 marriage to George Peterson), and season 3 housewife Barney. A new housewife, Gretchen Rossi, replaces Season 2 housewife Knickerbocker and season 3 housewife Fry both of whom did not return. To compensate for the mid-season departure of Peterson, another new housewife, Lynne Curtin, joined the cast. This season premiered on November 25, 2008. Season 4 consisted of 15 episodes, including the reunion and a 'Lost Footage' special. In June 2009, BravoTV announced the renewal of the show for a fifth season with the entire season 4 cast returning. Season 5 premiered on 5 November 2009, with fifteen regular episodes and a two-part reunion. During this season a sixth housewife, Newport Beach resident, Alexis Bellino, was added to the cast to replace Keough, who departed mid-season, leaving Gunvalson as the only remaining original cast member.
Vicki Gunvalson
(Season 1 to present)
At age 48, (born March 27, 1962) Gunvalson's family includes her second husband, Donn, and the two children from her first marriage—Michael (who attended the University of Colorado at Boulder in early episodes) and Briana Wolfsmith (a nurse who attended Azusa Pacific University in early episodes).
Gunvalson is the dominant force in her family and has been described by her family and friends as "controlling" and a "workaholic." As she is quoted in the show's opening credits, "I want the power and the money and I want them both!" Her children repeatedly call her "crazy" both to her face and during their camera confessionals during all three seasons. She has worked extremely hard to achieve financial success as an independent insurance agent and expects her family to toe her party line. Gunvalson herself admits to having control issues but maintains it is this very characteristic that has brought about her success and desired lifestyle. For example, in season 1, when the housewives go on a private jewelry shopping spree, Waring laments that she does not have a man in her life to buy her the beautiful jewels in the shop; Gunvalson responds by telling her that she does not need a man to buy her things because they can earn the money independently through their insurance leads and purchase the jewels themselves.
In season 3, Gunvalson and her husband are empty nesters and purchase a smaller home in Coto with the goal to downsize and simplify their lives. However, they still reside in their large residence and Gunvalson expresses anxiety of moving to the smaller home because of her perceived connection between financial failure and downsizing her home's square footage. She explains to the camera, "What will people think?" and eventually decides to sell her smaller house (4,000 s.f. initially listed at $2.1M) through Keough.
Gunvalson appears to have expanded her business to include business associates in Bellevue, Washington and Atlanta by season 3. Michael starts an internship in Bellevue saying that he sees the lucrative income that his mom earns in insurance and wants to make that kind of money. Briana, however, thinks that he is crazy to want to work with their mother. Gunvalson is pleased that Michael wants to follow in her footsteps and looks forward to "passing the baton" if he meets her work standards. She announces to the staff in Bellevue that Michael shadowed his father as a carpenter last summer engaged in manual labor and she is glad that he is choosing to use his brain instead.
Gunvalson's opening scene in season 4 finds her shopping for $1 million yachts with Michael. Her plans include selling the family's Lake Havasu vacation home and buying an expensive yacht that she says could be used more frequently as the yacht will be berthed 20 minutes from their home versus driving hours to Arizona. When she initially tells Donn of her plans, he asks her, "When is it ever enough?" Gunvalson replies, "It's never enough." Gunvalson's season 4 motif revolves around her increasingly distant relationship with Donn and their awkward attempts to reintegrate their individual lives.
In season 5, Vicki and Donn are portrayed as becoming closer after the growing estrangement in the season 4 plots. However, Vicki becomes more distant from the other housewives after her season-opening "girls only" trip to Florida is crashed by husbands and a boyfriend without objection from the other cast members. In particular, Vicki's closest ally, Tamra, comes to prefer Alexis, and partially reconciles with Gretchen. Briana reappears in mid-season to provide a cancer-scare plot line.
Tamra Vieth-Barney
(Season 3 to present)
42-year old Chula Vista native Vieth-Barney, who appears on the show as Tamra Barney, joined the cast in season 3 through a casting call launched on the BravoTV website. She lives in Ladera Ranch with her second husband of 10 years, Simon Robert (born 1964). She recently became a real estate agent in Coto de Caza and Ladera Ranch to achieve a sense of "value" in her family dynamic. However, she makes it clear that her job does not provide her family with its primary financial support and that her husband is actually her family's breadwinner. Her family includes three children from her current husband: Sidney, Spencer, and Sophia all of whom are under the age 10. Barney also has a 23 year old son, Ryan, from her first marriage. In season 3, Ryan moved back in with Vieth-Barney after leaving the family home at age 18 because of his contentious relationship with Simon. Although Ryan's relationship with Simon has not improved, without a college education and a job, he is forced to move back in with Barney and Simon. Season 3 documents the strain that Ryan imposes upon Barney and Simon's marriage. In response, Simon has Ryan sign a contract listing conditions which Ryan must meet to continue living in his house. After three months of living with Vieth-Barney and Simon, Ryan begrudgingly accepts a parts picker job paying only $10/hour at the Newport Beach auto dealership where Simon works. Simon gives Ryan the opportunity to attend Universal Technical Institute, which specializes in auto mechanics. By the end of season 3, Ryan moved out of Barney and Simon's home to live with his grandmother.
As a new real estate agent working the same territory as Keough (a more established realtor), Barney expresses feelings of competitiveness with her. Barney asserts that "it won't be long before she's kicking Jeana's butt" when it comes to selling real estate in Coto. Citing the relative slowness of the Southern California real estate market, she is very pleased that she has four listings explaining that a good-looking female realtor will always make money in Orange County. She flamboyantly calls herself the "hottest housewife in Orange County" and works especially hard to keep herself looking "hot" as she approaches the dreaded 40 during season 3.
In season 4, Simon has left Fletcher Jones to become a tequila salesman. He now spends most of his time at home with Barney and their three small children. Barney has also left employment as a real estate agent citing the severe slow down of the real estate market. Barney's eldest son, Ryan, lives on his own since leaving the low paying job that Simon gave him at his former employer to work construction at a higher pay. However, Ryan's lack of career focus and lifestyle choices continue to be a contentious issue for himself and his parents during this season.
Vieth-Barney and Gunvalson grow closer in season 4 taking vacations together out of town (an anniversary weekend in Napa, California and New Year's vacation to Las Vegas, Nevada) and teaming up at an "Housewife" event during opening day at Del Mar Racetrack. While Curtin, Keough, and Rossi socialized with one another in the private box, Barney and Gunvalson (and their husbands) stayed close to one another avoiding Curtin and Rossi, prompting Keough to call them cliquey. Barney explains that their closeness is because she and Gunvalson "share a lot of the same values" and that "Vicki and Donn will be [their] lifelong friends."
The Tamra segments of season 5 concentrate mainly on the growing marital discord between Tamra and Simon, exacerbated by their financial difficulties and continuing conflict over Ryan's behavior. On January 7, 2010, after season 5 filming, Simon filed for divorce claiming infidelity and disloyalty by Tamra, and she moved from their home into a two bedroom apartment. The Barneys subsequently sold their house on May 10, 2010, as a "short sale".
Tamra Vieth-Barney will appear as a guest on Season 2 of Top Chef Masters.
Gretchen Rossi
(Season 4 to present)
Costa Mesa resident Rossi joined the cast in season 4, replacing seasons 2 and 3 housewife Knickerbocker and season 3 housewife Fry. At 32-years old, the unmarried Rossi was the youngest "housewife" of the season's cast.
Rossi attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she studied psychology. A native of La Crescenta, California, Rossi initially met the other housewives through Keough as she used to be employed as a real estate agent. Unlike Fry, Rossi is connected through her past real estate experience with several housewives; namely, Keough, De La Rosa, and Curtin who used Rossi to help her look for a piece of land.
She met her now-deceased fiance, Jeff Beitzel, when he was looking to buy a home in Orange County in 2005. At the time, Rossi was married to first husband Chris Rossi, whom she divorced in 2007. However, she left the real-estate business after becoming engaged to Beitzel, who was 24 years her senior. Jeff had been married and divorced five times and had four adult children. Although Rossi confesses that Jeff was not her "type", and she was not physically attracted to him at first, she called him her "Prince Charming" and chose to nurse him after his diagnosis of acute leukemia, until his death on September 13, 2008, after the close of season 4.
By the start of season 5, Gretchen was dating Slade Smiley, who first appeared on the show in season 1, as the cohabitant of housewife Jo de la Rosa.
A little over five months after Beitzel's death, on February 22, 2009, Slade Smiley was allegedly arrested at Gretchen’s home for failure to pay child support. Gretchen had starred in Slade's ex-fiancée's music video. In the last few years, photographs that show Gretchen with various men and explicit photos have been turning up. Some of the photos shows her in different compromising positions. These include photographs of her and her ex-boyfriend, who she says was stalking her. There is no proof to solidify when these pictures were taken, though she was accused of being with this boyfriend while engaged to Jeff. Jeff reportedly left her US$2.5 million, but Rossi claims she received none of it due to debts owed by his estate. Gretchen put out a restraining order against the alleged stalker (boyfriend), but the court case was dismissed.
Lynne Curtin
(mid-Season 4 to present)
On December 16, 2008 , 52-year old Capistrano Beach resident Curtin, joined the cast in the fourth episode of season 4 to replace Lauri Waring Peterson. She has been married to Frank Curtin for 18 years and is a stay-at-home mom for her two teenage daughters, Raquel (19) and Alexa (17). Her role as a stay-at-home mom and accompanying interpretation of appropriate parenting style is her storyline in season 4. She mentions that her "carefree and laidback" parenting style where she strives to be her daughters' best friend differs greatly from her husband's. Raquel is turning 18 and angling for a blowout bash and a car (preferably a BMW, Mercedes or Audi) as Curtin debuts in season 4.
While her younger daughter, Alexa, stays at home, Raquel prefers (in her words) to "party with her friends as often as she can" throughout Orange County. She is shown eating out in Laguna Beach restaurants ordering alcoholic beverages and smuggling bottled alcohol into a bowling alley to surreptitiously drink with her fellow underage friends in the bathroom. Compounding her image as a "problem child" (as Curtin teasingly labels her eldest), Raquel discloses to Keough that she graduated from a high school program called Access at Horizons, which Keough explains is designed to cope with children with disciplinary problems.
A leitmotif is Curtin's reluctance to accept that she is getting older. When pressed by Rossi, Curtin will not divulge her age confessing that she is absolutely afraid of getting old when she just wants to "have fun." She prides herself on looking young and wearing the same size clothing as her teenage daughters. At Raquel's birthday lunch, Alexa wears a form fitting short dress that incites Randy to respond that he did not even recognize her and that she looked like a stripper. Curtin's response is that the dress is very "classy" and it actually belongs to her.
The other Housewives label her and Frank as "so laid back," with Barney and Gunvalson implying that they both use marijuana to achieve that level of calmness. Barney, Gunvalson, and Keough observe that the Curtins differ so greatly from the rest of the Housewives and their spouses because of their "mellowness." Barney comments in her camera confessional that the Curtins remind her of "70s surfers" and Gunvalson calls Curtin a "pothead."
Early in season 5, the Curtins were evicted from their home for non payment of rent, and the property owner filed a police report for the loss of several expensive pieces of furniture, events which were not covered by Bravo. Later, in episode 12, they were again evicted, with the service being filmed and used for dramatic purposes. Both Lynne and her husband, jointly, are subjects of a $1,200,000 court judgment in favor of a former business associate.
Lynne Curtin will appear as a guest on Season 2 of Top Chef Masters.
Alexis Bellino
(Season 5 to present)
In July, 2009, Bravo TV announced that a new "housewife", Alexis Bellino, had been signed for the upcoming fifth season. Bellino is a 32-year-old (in 2009) stay-at-home mother of three young children. She is in her second marriage, to 47-year-old Jim, a house-flipper/pawnbroker.
Bellino was raised in Hannibal Missouri, but she now resides in Newport Beach.
In the press release announcing her casting, Bravo described Bellino as someone who "likes to work out to keep herself looking and feeling her best" and as a "spicy blonde who unabashedly lives life on her terms."
Alexis Bellino will appear as a guest on Season 2 of Top Chef Masters.
Credit: Wikipedia
