Welcome back to Gabby with Gibb. I'm your host, Gibson-Johns, and today on the podcast, we have a chat about all of the currently airing Real Housewise franchises with Ira Madison III. Ira co-hosts the pop culture podcast, Keep It, recaps Real Housewise for his newsletter, Frank, and has an essay collection

out next year called Pure Innocent Fun. I was a friend of mine. He's been on the show before, and as always, he brought a really fresh, no-holds-barred perspective on what's going online on the shows right now. So I know that you'll love our chat. But before we get to that, there are a few bigger updates from around the Brabaver

that I want to talk about quickly. The first is that the Real Housewives of Dubai is on

pause after two seasons. So the cast was reportedly told a couple of days before us weekly

broke the news on Thursday. Obviously, not a huge surprise. The ratings were not great at all.

And I feel like there was just like an overall

lack of connection from the audience with the audience and an investment from the audience in this

cast and in this show. Obviously, you know, they weren't exactly set up to succeed, you know,

with the big break between seasons and, you know, whether people think it was promoted enough

or whatever. But also maybe it was just kind of an experiment.

It was Bravo's first official international Housewives franchise that didn't quite work,

whether they picked the wrong city, the wrong cast,

again, whether they didn't promote it correctly or the production was off.

Who knows?

I think it was probably a combo of some of those things.

There were certainly stars on the cast, I thought, and it had its moments of being genuinely entertaining, particularly in the second season. There were fun moments. There were some good drama here and there, but it never wowed. You know, it never, I always felt like I was talking about Dubai sort of like on a weighted scale. You know what I mean? I feel like it was sort of like on a curve. We wanted it to succeed. I never want a housewise franchise to not succeed, but also the second season was on at a time when there was less to watch on Bravo. So you really wanted to like it, right? But ultimately, like even I saw in like the, you know, the numbers for my show when I would when I would dedicate episodes to Dubai, the numbers were lower. You know,

there was clearly a little bit of a little... even I saw in like the, you know, the numbers for my show when I would, when I would dedicate

episodes to Dubai, the numbers were lower. You know, there was clearly a lack of interest in

the show overall. So I've seen a couple of people say like, you know, is it possible for a

house-wise franchise to connect in a bigger way at this point? And yeah, look at Salt Lake City.

Where the real house is a Salt Lake City is arguably the biggest franchise on Bravo right now.

And it instantly connected.

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