Southern Charm & Summerhouse – love and addiction
Southern Charm
…it’s with a sombre mood that I’m penning the penultimate blog of this quartet on Reality TV.
This is partly because all the fizzy, heavy hitters are now on summer recess – Summerhouse, Vanderpump Villa, Southern Charm…have all coasted into the realms of post show bitching on podcasts. Although, Below Deck is cruising at a weekly pace that can be savoured in morsels. I’ve also rediscovered the joy of borrowing books from my local library, like a true recovering addict.
However, I’d like to ‘hold some space’ for the sweaty joys of Summerhouse and Southern Charm. They are cutely comparable but, between the Hamptons and the deep south of Charleston, have different funky depths.
Both, of course, concern us with privilege – because there isn’t a market for reality based in social housing or vacuums of poverty dug into the Mississippi Delta or The Fens.
Southern Charm is the big brother of Summerhouse in the Bravo universe, (imagine a futuristic Ancestry tree) and unlike the co-ed style of other shows, began in 2014, focussing on the habits of extremely wealthy, middle-aged men – we’re talking generational piles and art collections rather than the odd Air B&B.
…Yes, there was a Republican, country-club rawness to the beginning of the series, which was the brainchild of one of its number – Whitney Sudler-Smith. I say rawness – the show’s unfiltered approach to partying warhorses, Thomas and Whitney, pursuing attentive women in their twenties, is a little jaw-dropping and probably wouldn’t look the same through a 2025 lens. In fact, the nonchalance with which cast members discuss the frequency of wealthy older men marrying considerably younger women in Charleston is a bit of a culture shock by UK standards.
Not all the gang were originally of Dad age. In the beginning, there was Shep Rose, a preppy twenty-something with nice Polo shirts and a loose grasp on daytime or other people’s feelings. He had great hair and some of the charm offensive the others only displayed in pocket-squares. There was also an embryonic version of Craig Conover, a trainee lawyer from a working-class background whose looks and Jack-the-Lad appeal to older carousers gave him a pass into their VIP areas. But more on Craig and his ‘sewing’ later.
The most famous real-life fall-out from the innocence-versus-experience swamp of Southern Charm was that of Kathryn Denis and Thomas Ravenel. As Season One clicks into gear – between clubs, colonial houses and polo parties – we hear Ravenel (53) describe Dennis (22) as a ‘sion’ of two of the South’s great families – a TV moment that stirs toe-curling intrigue as to the priorities of the men in this group. It is as if Denis’ animal attractiveness is due to her Grandads’ penchant for vintage Whiskey and boardrooms. Countering this is the traditional southern impulse of keeping up appearances…
Much amusement is to be had from collisions between old and new world mores at ‘Miss Patricia’s House’ in which the team of perpetually hung-over bad boys dine with Whitney’s Mother, whose contempt for all of humanity is always on the edge of her tongue – an interesting choice when taken care of by a Butler, Cook and Gardener. Yet Dynasty swagger prevails.
As Southern Charm evolves beyond a few series, and Thomas Ravenel’s criminal charges and mentally exhausted ex- girlfriends pile-up, it becomes a much more sunny affair…comparable to Summerhouse.
Summerhouse
Summerhouse launched in 2017 with a banger of a cast, featuring the cream of middle-class New York it-kids, including the impressively tall, blonde and assertive Wirkus twins, Lauren and Ashley, PR Lyndsay Hubbard, wannabe entrepreneur Kyle Cook and good looking, tall guy Carl Radke, who sells beer. There were others who didn’t stay the course and a a hilarious special visit from the loud LA cast of Vanderpump Rules, in which there was a fleeting moment of the servers meet the ‘overserved.’
The premise of hustling middle-class twenty-somethings sharing a New England style holiday-home near the intoxicating Montauk bars and sandy dunes of The Hamptons each summer is perfectly messy and photogenic. I could personally watch anything set against a backdrop of nautical stripes and 100-tog bed linen. Except The Kardashians.
Most of the drama of earlier series is based around candy-shop syndrome, with a modern plantation-style house providing the shop. The girls and boys, (mostly the boys), rampage through evenings and day-parties, switching who they would rather hook-up with every 48hrs. In this time-honoured way, Carl gets an early verbal beating from the Wurkis twins for leading Lauren on. And this theme continues with some stand-out narrative exceptions and audible encounters in cupboards.
…The relationship between Kyle Cook and Amanda Batula, which starts as a sort of summer ultimatum and continues in a marriage of subdued undertones, is traced across eight years of summering. It is coloured by Kyle’s reluctance to let go of partying (and late-night conversations with food) well into his forties and Amanda’s struggle to obtain professional fulfilment and wellbeing.
It is a true relationship of Millennial graduates, in which society exerts no say in when and how maturing and children enter the mise-en-scene. Add financial freedom to the cocktail and you can see the absence of accountability insinuate itself in the relationship. These aren’t the only reasons why Kyle and Amanda slope about in a sort of existential ennui but must surely be among them.
Also on this timeline, is the ballad of Carl and Lyndsay – Lyndsay, who holds a heart-rending story of abandonment by her mother, dreams of meeting prince good-enough and having a family of her own. The soft-core weirdos she sometimes welcomes onto the scene reflect this – the tech nerd who buys Lyndsay, a restaurant PR, take-away fish and chips and gas-station flowers for her birthday provides a chuckle-worthy highlight. I root for Lyndsay, not only because this poignant desire for family life shows, but because, pre-influencer days, she had a real hustle to match her authentic, country-girl charisma.
Unfortunately, Carl and Lyndsay, or ‘Carly’, suffered from the erosion of alcohol infused arguments and came to blows, despite several picture-perfect engagement moments on the dunes. I suppose, it would be more than easy to put a personal relationship on the speed, crash and burn track if it was incentivised by producers and fans…
Addictive TV
While booze addiction surfaces as the common denominator in the challenges of the New York/Hamptons set, powder and pills have a greater silent presence in Southern Charm. Two cast members lose brothers to overdoses within the same year, with one of the tragedies publicised as a Fentanyl overdose. There are segments when distracted baby-lawyer, Craig, uses uppers to recover from the party cycle, yet this is very much posited as background noise.
It almost seems that addiction is endemic to this highly addictive form of television. I’m guessing that the extent to which cast members are coerced into self-sabotaging behaviours by the industry or each other will only really be unravelled down the road…but meanwhile, millions will continue watching the small and large casualties of this new lifestyle.
One happy accident of Southern Charm and Summerhouse co-existing in the Bravoverse was the conjunction of two consummate reality stars. Craig Conover and Paige de Sorbo, for a zeitgeist spell of two years, made exceedingly likeable and relevant long distance lovers…
To be continued.
