Scott Black: How do we watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City? Welcome to the Virtual Jewel Box podcast of the Tanner Humanities Center.

I'm Scott Black, director of the Tanner Humanities Center, and today I'm joined by three of the participants in our recent symposium, How Do We Watch—How We Watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City: Marcie Young Cancio, clinical associate professor of communication at the University of Utah and director of Amplify Utah; Renato Olmedo-González, who is public arts program manager for the Salt Lake City Arts Council; and Jordan Rullo, clinical health psychologist and certified sex therapist and adjunct assistant professor of clinical psychology at the University of Utah.

Welcome, Marcie.

Marcie Young Cancio: Thanks for having us, Scott.

Scott Black: Welcome, Jordan.

Jordan Rullo: Thank you for having us.

Scott Black: And welcome, Renato. Thank you so much.

Marcie Young Cancio: Okay, I'm gonna take the mic from Scott here, and we're gonna dive in. We were just having a little bit of a conversation about how these podcasts are most fun when you feel like you're eavesdropping on a conversation.

So we're all out at brunch or a bar, and we have just watched the latest reunion or the latest episode. We're like, "Oh, my gosh, that was crazy." So that's the energy we're gonna try to bring here. Full disclosure, we're recording on a Tuesday morning, so it's a little bit of an energy vibe to hit, but we're gonna do it.

So let's start out. Two and a half weeks ago, we had the symposium, How We Watch, with the Tanner Humanities Center on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. What are some of the memories that first pop into your head, what you take away from that day?

Jordan Rullo: Well, I think the biggest thing for me, the Salty Hoes, their talk, which I don't even know how much I wanna say about their talk. It was maybe a little bit controversial, but they were basically saying where all the Housewives would go based on LDS religion, where they would go when they die.

Marcie Young Cancio: This was fascinating 'cause it wasn't, it was like, where do they go in the hierarchy of heaven, right? Celestial kingdom, terrestrial kingdom, outer darkness, and it was rooted just based simply on their Housewifey-ness. Are they married? Do they have kids? Are they continuing to be married, or are they divorced? And it was rooted strictly on that, no other religious kind of components, but it was very, I think, spicy.

Jordan Rullo: It was very spicy. Yeah. Very spicy. And I did notice all the coverage after the conference, like in the Trib, and no one mentioned the Salty Hoes and their talk. Even though it was an amazing, entertaining talk, it was not mentioned frequently, I think, 'cause it was quite spicy.

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah, they hit into a lot of the kind of taboos of faith, which was really interesting, and there were a lot of chuckles and a lot of kind of uncomfortable chuckles, which is, I think, a really good indication that when you make people uncomfortable in conversations, sometimes that's really good. But I think addressing it in a news aspect is a little bit more challenging when you have maybe 800 words to tell a story.

Jordan Rullo: I do love that they put themselves, they put themselves in whatever, I don't know what the terminology, kingdom, planet.

Marcie Young Cancio: They were kind of meta in their own talk. They're both divorced women, former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, academics. Both are professors at Salt Lake Community College. So really kind of tapping into a lot of the things that this show kind of embodies, right? This struggle with faith, with dating, with relationships, what that looks like, what that means to be a noble and a good Mormon, while also balancing career and intelligence and all of these components.

It was fascinating. And they totally came out wearing the blue coats from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and long wigs, but Claire Adams already has this beautiful long hair, and when she took off her wig, everyone was like, "Did she take the wig off?" It's very funny. We kind of leaned into the other pop-culture moments with the other show.

Renato, what stood out to you? What's one of your big takeaways from the day?

Renato Olmedo-González: Besides all the learning, I think some of my favorite moments, it was right at the beginning, there was some tech issues for playing Britani's video at the beginning, and then people themselves started talking. Someone said Meredith's line from, I think, two seasons ago, like, "Jealousy is a disease," and everybody just started laughing.

So it was a huge feeling of community, even though people weren't introduced. The thing wasn't even set up yet. The symposium wasn't even started, but people laughed, and that just came naturally. So I really enjoyed that because it really set the tone and the mood for How We Watch Salt Lake.

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah, agreed. It was a real community vibe, and there were so many inside jokes that people just kind of laughed about. But there were a lot of folks here who have never seen The Housewives, and it was largely for viewers of the show and for fans of the show. But I know that a dean at one of the colleges came here, came to the symposium, and she said it was fantastic. She loved your talk, Jordan, which we're gonna get into more in a little bit.

But it really hit for a lot of audiences. But I agree, that community aspect, that kind of appreciation of local culture and just kind of the humor of the show, 'cause I don't think a lot of people watch reality TV and think comedy, think that it's funny. But the things that we quote, the things that we remember from it are hilarious and sometimes just outrageously so. An evil-eye eye patch, not knowing how you got a black eye, meeting your husband at the airport in an inflatable costume, a talking voice of an Osmond or a Temu Osmond, as the schoolteachers called Jared Osmond.

Temu.

Talking stuffed animal with his voice that gets thrown overboard during a yacht trip. I mean, this stuff is wild, right? It's just, it's a reason that we watch this.

So before we get into a little bit of—We're going—We had so many amazing sessions at this symposium, from a session on [babies] and AI replicating some of the scenes of the show, academic talks about relationships, which Jordan's gonna dive into a little bit more. We had—What else did we have? My brain's so fried. We had a whole slate of incredible, incredible panels and incredible sessions.

Oh my gosh, we talked crickets, right? And if you know anything about Utah history, the Mormon crickets, the lore, where the crickets were eating all of the fields, and the Mormons were certainly going to die of starvation, and then the seagulls swooped in and ate all the crickets, and this is why the California gull is now Utah's state bird, right?

There was even a crickets conversation from a scientist who studies crickets from Yale, right? From Connecticut. Yeah, all the way from Yale, came out to join the symposium. Oh, great. There was a great talk on cult cinema and drawing parallels between the cult classics that we like to watch and likening that to The Real Housewives. There was so much great academic content here, but then there was also silliness and tomfoolery with wigs and bonnets and inflatable shark costumes that some fool wore on stage.

Jordan Rullo: Live-action dramatizations.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right, yeah, dramatic readings, which were so fun, and people ate all this up. They loved the silliness of it. But also, to Renato's point, there was so much learning, right? People were eating up what they were learning. So before we move on to this conversation, what was one thing that you learned, Jordan?

Jordan Rullo: I'm still blown away by the Salty Hoes. That is just—I'm not from here. I'm not from Utah, so I don't know. I mean, I know a bit, but I was just like, "Wait." Yeah, so I mean, I just keep coming back to that as the one talk that blew me away.

Marcie Young Cancio: Where are you from?

Jordan Rullo: I'm from Chicago.

Marcie Young Cancio: Okay. Yeah, so it's—And that's one of those things where if you bring that curiosity lens, which is why the Tanner Humanities Center did this, because curiosity is the heart of humanities, right? So you can come into this and be like, "I don't really understand all of these kingdoms," but maybe you leave here and you're like, "I wanna go look, I wanna go learn more," right? Yeah. And this is the magic of The Real Housewives, is encouraging us to learn more about this place where we live.

Jordan Rullo: Culture, yeah.

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah.

Jordan Rullo: I think the other thing I would add, this isn't necessarily learning, but there was a lot of, I would say I felt very validated. And I think, Renato, you said this, something like, "I watch it, and I know it's trashy, but I love it, and it makes me feel good." You said something like that, and it's like, "Oh, these are my people."

Renato Olmedo-González: Yeah. 'Cause the going home after work. You know, you could be doing something during your 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever you do for work, and in my case, I try to link it to, it could be considered more high culture or proper culture or worthy culture. And then you go home, and then I do something that a lot of the people that would appreciate that, or not everyone—public art is for everybody—but they wouldn't necessarily tie the two together.

Marcie Young Cancio: Yes.

Renato Olmedo-González: And I think it problematizes maybe my own identity, but there's something valid about what we do after work. I mean, I don't criticize people for going and watching sports, but I link it to the same thing, you know? It's a form of watching TV, entertainment. It's very personal. It's a very personal thing to be entertained.

Marcie Young Cancio: And those are the things that drive us. Those are—I mean, we don't—Some people talk about work all the time, and sometimes depending on what's going on, but we don't wanna talk about work constantly. These are the things where the conversation lives, where the connection happens, where the bonding of a culture happens.

And so here at the U, I also teach a course called Media and Society. It's an intro-level general education humanities class where we look at all of our mass mediums and how it plays into how we interact as a society. And we talk about culture as a skyscraper, right? That in your top levels, your 50th, 60th floor of the skyscraper, you have Finnegans Wake and Hamlet and [A fellow in RCA], all this stuff that is considered really, quote-unquote, smart.

And then as you go further and further down the skyscraper, you get lesser and lesser kind of high culture. And then when you get to the bottom levels, this is where you have your reality TV.

Jordan Rullo: I was just gonna ask you where is reality TV?

Marcie Young Cancio: Real Housewives is right at the bottom.

Jordan Rullo: Okay. Is that the basement, or is it like the lobby?

Marcie Young Cancio: I think it's maybe the lobby.

Jordan Rullo: Okay.

Marcie Young Cancio: I don't know if it's down with the furnace. But I think that based on these conversations, based on symposiums, based on the way that we can break it down, we can maybe take it up to the 12th floor, right?

Renato Olmedo-González: Wow.

Marcie Young Cancio: I don't know, depending on how you wanna approach it. That's probably the highest I would go. But you can think about culture as a skyscraper, right? And what do you wanna be talking about? Do you always wanna be operating at the highest possible level, talking about macroeconomics, right? I wouldn't even know how to get into that conversation. That's not where we want to spend our time talking.

We wanna be talking about how did Heather Gay get that black eye? We wanna be talking about does Lisa really have seven attorneys? Is it seven on the Sprinter van, right? We wanna be talking about those things. Those are the fun things.

So let's get a little bit deeper into the two things that you guys talked about. Renato was on a panel that was really kind of the embodiment of How We Watch, talking about the local culture and talking about how we watch the show as Utahns versus people who might be watching it from across the country or don't really know anything about Utah other than what they've seen in pop culture, in the news media.

And then Jordan did an incredible session or presentation called "I'm Disengaging," and as a therapist actually broke down how these women engage on the show, and it was truly one of the highlights of the symposium. The feedback that we got showed everyone just really loving this. I wanna go back and watch it again because it was so delightful.

So we're gonna do that. That's how we're gonna jump into the rest of the show. So Renato, let's start with you. Break down what—Before we got started, we were having a conversation about what it means to watch this as Utahns. Break down your thought on that. What does watching Real Housewives look like as someone who is from here, maybe someone who was born and raised here, versus someone who is a transplant here, like yourself, or watching it from kind of through a fish tank from further away?

Renato Olmedo-González: Yeah. I think, for me, someone that's not from Utah, I moved here when I was 15, so I think part of, I'm fascinated a lot by what happens here in culture. Also, the mainstream religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They have their own very specific culture, set of beliefs, that I, as an outsider, became really interested in. You know, it's my neighbors, it's people that live in my community, and there's a lot of lore and a lot of secrets.

You talk about Salt Lake City, and then there's tunnels underground, and you go to the crickets that we were mentioning earlier, all of those things. So as someone that has been watching Housewives for a long time—I started in high school watching Orange County. I think it became a character trait when New York Housewives came out. And then ever since then, I watched pretty much all of them except for a couple that I just wasn't interested.

Anyways, when it was first announced that Salt Lake City was gonna get its own Housewives, it became a reason to be somewhat proud of Salt Lake and where we were on the map, and also just how some crazy, delusional things that you see in this state, and how that was gonna be on TV.

And I found myself wanting, before the show even came out, wanting to compare it to what it would be like. You know, where are they gonna go shopping? We don't have the same shopping here. We don't have those big stores that they have. Now we do, a couple. So part of that fascination started then.

When the show came out, I think it really hit on multiple things that make our state and make our community our community. I think they did a wonderful job at casting the show with the different Housewives that represent different facets of who we are as a community in general. From Lisa Barlow being a Mormon 2.0, Jack Mormon, which is, you know, [called], but then she coined another term for it. Heather Gay, who is probably more mainstream Mormon that you are familiar with leaving the church. Whitney Wild Rose being someone that you could tell she was Mormon, but only in name, and then she's just Whitney Wild Rose.

Marcie Young Cancio: And accent. Her Utah—

Renato Olmedo-González: Her Utah—

Marcie Young Cancio: Her Utah affect is perfect.

Renato Olmedo-González: Even Jen Shah, you know, now that we're not supposed to speak about her. That was, I think, a casting that really made the show quite unique and quite reflective of Utah. So when we watch it here, I remember—did you go to the opening, to the premi—

Marcie Young Cancio: To the premiere, the drive-through. At the drive-through. At the Triad parking lot with the roll-up step and repeat red carpet and the giant screens. Which is fire. Sure do.

Renato Olmedo-González: That was amazing. It was great. It just captured Utah in such a fun way.

Marcie Young Cancio: Well, and the Housewives showed up to that in a really interesting way too. Meredith and Mary were not there, but the rest of that first cast showed up, and they rolled into the step and repeat. Jen Shah showed up quite late, but she rolled up with an entourage, several cars, blowing horns, sirens, plastered Shah Squad. Cha—Cha—Shahmazing. Shah Squad. Yeah, but Shahmazing hadn't, I think, been coined yet.

Renato Olmedo-González: Okay.

Marcie Young Cancio: And it brought this energy to a parking lot. And the reason it was in the parking lot was because the premiere was in December of 2020. So this was not, I think, what Bravo would have done for its typical premiere. This was not the low-budget Salt Lake City thing. It was COVID. But it really did launch the show in a pretty unique way.

Renato Olmedo-González: In a giant parking lot.

Marcie Young Cancio: Giant parking lot.

Renato Olmedo-González: That we have so many of.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right.

Renato Olmedo-González: And we have the biggest city blocks in the entire country.

Marcie Young Cancio: But across the street from the Delta Center, which with Jazz tickets has become a pretty big talking point on the show with Lisa Barlow.

Renato Olmedo-González: Oh, yeah.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right? So there's these—But, and if you're not from Utah, as we say, the Triad Center, you probably have no idea what we're talking about. But if you're from here, you can visualize this parking lot and be like, "What? They did the premiere—"

Renato Olmedo-González: In a parking lot—

Marcie Young Cancio: "—there?" Yeah, it's like where you park to go to the Jazz games.

Renato Olmedo-González: Mm.

Marcie Young Cancio: And the Mammoth games.

Renato Olmedo-González: Yes.

Marcie Young Cancio: So there's this interesting really, going to local culture, that kind of paints this interesting picture. And these characters, did you talk to any of them when you were there?

Renato Olmedo-González: I did not.

Marcie Young Cancio: I was moonlighting as a freelancer for Salt Lake Magazine strictly so I could cover this event. Yeah. So I was working as a journalist and went up and talked to all of them, and it was fascinating to see how their personalities have evolved over time. Heather Gay was really kind of meek. She felt pretty uncertain. She felt certainly like she was putting kind of imposter syndrome out there. She was a lot more fresh in coming out of the church and kind of feeling what this would look like for her.

I mean, if you remember her Season One tagline was something to the effect of, "Like my pioneer roots, now I'm forging my own path." And to see where she's—That evolution of Heather Gay has been really interesting. And I think that's true for a lot of the characters, but even more so for her.

But I think it's really interesting to talk about this cast because at the time, when the Salt Lake City cast premiered, it was the most diverse cast that any of the Bravo Housewives had seen.

Jordan Rullo: Who would've thought Salt Lake City?

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah. I know, right? So Atlanta had an all-Black cast with the exception of Kim Zolciak in Season One. But true diversity came from Salt Lake. New York, Orange County, Beverly Hills, they were all largely white women in these shows. And Salt Lake premiered with a Black pastor, a Polynesian Muslim former Mormon, two Jewish women—well, Meredith Marks, who is Jewish; Lisa Barlow, who has Jewish heritage but coins herself as Mormon 2.0; a traditional kind of former Mormon; and then, you know, a woman kind of Mormon in name only, but very Utah, right?

What an incredibly diverse cast. Am I missing anyone from that first season?

Renato Olmedo-González: No, I think those were the five.

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah, that's really—

Renato Olmedo-González: And Angie, even Angie K later on.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right.

Renato Olmedo-González: Someone Greek is very Utah.

Marcie Young Cancio: Very Utah. I was born and raised Catholic in Salt Lake City, and all of the Greeks went to my high school. Catholicism and Greek Orthodox were very tight, right? So yeah, if you don't know much about Utah, you don't realize kind of that influence of Greek culture or of Polynesian culture, for example. And that's something that both Angie Katsanevas and Jen Shah brought to the show that really made it very local, very Utah.

So let's talk about some of the stereotypes then. If you come in watching this show as someone not from here, what do you think some of the stereotypes people expect would be, and how does the show break them? We were talking about this a little bit when we first sat down.

Renato Olmedo-González: I mean, in pop culture, I think it was you that were talking about the second wave, in a way, of fascination with Utah culture that goes back to Big Love. Right. That probably was the first one, which I love Big Love. I thought it was such a good—It is such a good show.

In this one, it's different in a way that it's, yes, it's still somewhat Mormon, and I'm including Secret Lives of Mormon Wives into this current fascination. It's very women-centered too. And it's—Yes, it's about religion, but less so, and I think it's more about that somewhat local Utah culture that we have here that can be fascinating.

So my mind keeps going back to that, and how maybe nationally tastes in TV maybe have evolved, or there's just something that happened that we were—During COVID, 'cause this also happened during COVID.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right.

Renato Olmedo-González: I always think about The Housewives as happening during COVID.

Marcie Young Cancio: Well, and I think that's when we were all on our phones.

Renato Olmedo-González: Yes.

Marcie Young Cancio: We were all on—This is when I was introduced to TikTok. I had never been on TikTok before COVID, right? We were scrolling social media. It was a prime place to kind of discover some of these women and these personalities because—

Renato Olmedo-González: One of the only ways—

Marcie Young Cancio: We didn't really have much to do. Yeah. Or you were watching Tiger King.

Renato Olmedo-González: Tiger King. Yeah. And so people were baking bread and—

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah, I never got onto the sourdough. I was watching Tiger King and doing a deep dive into Housewives.

Renato Olmedo-González: Same. Same.

Marcie Young Cancio: But it's interest—So yeah, going to that point, I think that Utah has always been this fascination point, and I would love your thoughts as someone who's not from here, Jordan. But Utah has always—We are a distinctly unique state. There's really no state that is quite as unique as the state of Utah.

It was literally formed as a haven of refuge as Mormons were pushing west and trying to—like, from religious persecution. It was an entire religion that was formed here in the United States, a true homegrown religion, an entire culture built around it. Even our landscape is representative of that history with the mountains that surround us, the cereal bowl of a valley that acted as a fortress, a protective barrier.

So we're unique, and I think people have been fascinated by Utah culture for a long time. There's all those multiple wives and that polygamy thing, the not drinking. There's all these things that are very different than the rest of the country, and so I think that's been true really since the beginning.

And then you had Big Love and Sister Wives that came out in the early 2000s that really tapped into the stereotypes of what Utah was, but put it into the Hollywood spotlight. And then 20 years after that, you have The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and then later Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, not doing that heavy lifting of stereotypes, but coming in with an expectation of what it might be and twisting the stereotypes almost immediately.

I think one of the things that makes The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City fun is that they're actually really fun. Growing up in Utah, and I don't know how much you saw as a teenager of this, but kids in Salt Lake are silly. They love to sing, they love to dance. They have these funny traditions of people going and buying ice blocks and calling it ice blocking and sledding down hills on ice blocks, or wearing wigs and dressing up.

There's not a season goes by of the show where they don't dress up at least three times. They are silly and fun. They wore bonnets to make butter, right? And there's just this silliness in the show that I think is also really representative of Utah's culture. 'Cause that's how I grew up, asking people to dances with candy bars and this big massive display. I don't know if that happens everywhere.

Renato Olmedo-González: I don't know.

Marcie Young Cancio: Did you have that sort of like, did you ask people to prom with these giant scavenger hunts or a dozen candy bars where you would be like, "Hey, big hunk, don't Snicker"?

Jordan Rullo: I'm sure some people did. I didn't in my high school group. When I lived in Minnesota—Minnesota, we're crafty people that had to figure out how to be crafty in the freezing-cold or burning-hot temperatures. And so there is this very Minnesota vibe. When you mentioned the ice blocks and everyone went down the hill, oh my gosh, in Minnesota, you get really, really creative when you walk outside and your nose hairs freeze.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right.

Jordan Rullo: You have to figure out what to do to have fun.

Marcie Young Cancio: Well, Minnesota's got some kitsch too.

Jordan Rullo: Yeah, so there's kitsch here too in Utah. So I feel there's a similarity. One of the things that I think piggybacks off what you're sharing, the biggest thing for me not being from Utah, is that these Housewives, yes, in some way they are incredibly unique, but in other ways they're just like the other Housewives.

When I—so yeah, I'm from Chicago, moved here for school. All of my friends were like, "Where are you going for graduate school?" I'm like, "I don't know." And I ended up falling in love with Utah and realized, like, this is—Utah is a gem. Utah is an absolute gem. The people, the culture, the outdoors. But if you haven't lived here, if you don't know Utah, you kind of say what my friend said back in college, like, "Where are you going? What?" And so I think the Housewives show this beautiful picture of in some ways we are different, but in many ways we aren't different.

Marcie Young Cancio: Because Bravo has a brand to hit too. The Real Housewives have to be a certain thing, right? It can't be totally different or it won't work as part of this franchise.

Jordan Rullo: Yeah.

Marcie Young Cancio: And so I think it does a really, to your point, a really brilliant job at leaning into the things that offer a real sense of place to Utah, but also are women with the fancy bags and presenting as money. And I do also think that's one of the things that makes this show a little bit different than from, say, Beverly Hills, is that their wealth is not so out of reach. I think it's maybe aspirational, but it's not so wealthy that it seems totally unattainable to a lot of folks.

And I do think one of the other things that's really interesting, and Scott and I have talked about this quite a bit, is that the average viewer of The Real Housewives has at least a bachelor's degree, more than 40 or 50%. It's a highly educated viewing group, which I think is really interesting when you talk about the conversations that happen like this and the huge amount of interest that there was in the symposium. We had close to 500 RSVPs, which, you know, and of course, not as many people that RSVP'd showed up. But the fact that this garnered so much attention that we got 500 people who were like, "Yep, I wanna go to that," is really, really interesting because we very much presented it as an academic symposium. We had a list, like you're going to a conference, of all of the things that you would have for the day. And it was infused with a party, but it was certainly not presented as like BravoCon, for example.

So Renato, are there any major cultural things that you think the Housewives gets really right and also maybe gets wrong?

Renato Olmedo-González: Oh my gosh, I'm gonna be cheeky. Going back to the first season, Jen Shah driving around with Stuart, and then they're circling Harmons downtown for half of the episode. It was the funniest thing because if you live here in Salt Lake City, you know that's just two right turns and then you're in the parking lot. So they got that one really wrong, but then they just made them drive around in that little sexy car with red seats. I just remember being like, "Are they just circling around Harmons Downtown 20 times?"

Some things that it gets right, I think going back to the casting, I really love how they casted such unique women that are kind of representative or truly representative of Utah. Other things that they do right is all those little moments where they go to these places, and going back to that churning butter exercise that they did, that's a very Utah thing. That's a very singular thing that happens in this state that it's funny to others that may not see it, but then if you see it from the eyes of someone from Salt Lake City, you totally get what they're doing and why they're doing it. I really enjoy that.

Marcie Young Cancio: Because we dress up. Utahns dress up every Pioneer Day, every July 24th, with bonnets and long dresses and handcarts, and there's a whole parade that is celebrating this culture from a very deeply Utah perspective. So then to see that kind of flipped in this really kind of campy and funny way on TV is like this hilarious little nod.

Renato Olmedo-González: Yeah. And more than just a Utah perspective, I think it's a very singular Utah identity that's very much tied to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the pioneer history that even the church itself is going away from that with the—now that they're redoing Temple Square downtown.

But it is such a fun introduction 'cause I always view the Housewives as having so much camp. And you know, as a gay man, I just love camp and campy things, and it's full of camp, and Utah's full of camp. So I feel like here it's just to the next level.

Marcie Young Cancio: I wonder if there's any drag shows in Utah that have a cast of performers as someone from, of each Housewife. I should—I'd go to that show.

Renato Olmedo-González: I'll go to that show, too.

Marcie Young Cancio: Okay, let's work on it.

Renato Olmedo-González: Work that out, yeah.

Marcie Young Cancio: Okay, let's make that happen.

Jordan Rullo: I'll get academic and then you can—

Marcie Young Cancio: Let's make it academic.

Jordan Rullo: —write your job description.

Marcie Young Cancio: Okay, Scott, you on it? Excellent. Okay, stay tuned.

But now let's move over to Jordan. Jordan Rullo, who is a clinical—

Jordan Rullo: Clinical health psychologist.

Marcie Young Cancio: Psychologist. I wanna make sure I use the right word. So clinical health psychologist who studies and engages in relationships. That's your whole thing, right?

Jordan Rullo: Whole thing, yes. I'm a Gottman-certified couples therapist, and for people who don't know Gottman, it's just a guy's last name, John Gottman. But he's done decades and decades of research following couples and really identifying what makes happy couples, what makes unhappy couples, and a huge component of what makes happy and unhappy couples is how they communicate, and there is a lot of communication in The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right, and these women spend so much time together. They're coupled or paired or—

Jordan Rullo: Yes. It's not just romantic relationships. It's dyads. And the Housewives is just a mix of different dyads.

Marcie Young Cancio: So your talk was so brilliant, and I do—It's not recorded, I don't think, but it was, ugh, it was so brilliant. Jordan did a great job at showing scenes and then breaking down the communication failings and successes, which were much fewer, between these women. So can you kind of break down your process on how you presented this and maybe give an example or two?

Jordan Rullo: Yeah, absolutely. Well, maybe I'll back up just a little bit. One, I'll say this was the most fun presentation I have ever put together, and I've been working on it since my proposal was accepted, somewhere, sometime in like—

Marcie Young Cancio: November.

Jordan Rullo: November, yeah. November. And then it was like, all right, game on. So evenings, weekends, I am just watching old episodes of the Housewives, trying to find these different communication examples, and just watching the episodes. I've got my headphones on. I'm just cracking up rewatching these old episodes. So this was so much fun putting this talk together.

But what I was looking for were these four specific communication styles that we know in couples research are the most damaging. And so the four are, I'll list them and then I'll explain them: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling.

So criticism is when you attack someone, you attack someone's character, not their behavior. So let's say someone leaves a bunch of dishes in the sink, your partner does, and instead of saying, "Ah, you know, I hate when you leave all your dishes in the sink," instead, when you criticize, you say, "You know, you are so lazy, always leaving your dishes in the sink." So you're attacking the person's character versus attacking or complaining about the behavior. So that's criticism.

Defensiveness is you're defending yourself. You can defend yourself in a couple different ways. You can counterattack: "Well, you always leave dishes in the sink." So that's the defensive counterattack. Or you can play the helpless victim and say, "Well, I can't do anything right. I'm always getting in trouble." So those are the two ways to be defensive.

The third is contempt. And when I was watching these Housewives reruns, hands down, contempt was the most common. And contempt, of these four horsemen, is the worst. It is the most damaging. So let me describe contempt, and I'll share a little bit more about it. Contempt is, it's like criticism on steroids. You are saying things to your partner or to your friend in a way where you are acting like you are above them, they are less than you.

You can think about the one word that I think really best describes contempt is disgust. I'm disgusted by you. That is how beneath me you are. So that's contempt. And it can be verbal, like calling someone a name, or it could be rolling your eyes or laughing and mocking the other person.

So that is contempt. That is the gnarliest. When you see contempt in a relationship, and let's talk about Housewives or in a dyad, that is one of the best predictors that that relationship or that friendship is going to end. Because think about that. If one person is acting like they are better than or you are less than me, that is not a formula for a good friendship, relationship.

The other fascinating research around contempt is that when you are the one receiving contempt in your relationship or your friendship, you are more likely to get sick, to have more colds, more illnesses. It impacts your immune system. It's really damaging. It's incredibly abusive. And like I said, it was absolutely the most common communication style I saw among the Housewives.

And then the last one of the four horsemen is stonewalling. And stonewalling is when you just kind of shut down. You're in a conversation, and probably the tape playing in your mind is something like, "You know what? This is not gonna get any better. If I say anything, I'm just gonna make it worse." So you shut down.

And the longer that shutdown happens, it can elevate to what's called flooding. And flooding, physiologically what's happening is there's a rush of adrenaline, there's a rush of cortisol, your heart rate's over a hundred beats per minute, and you are in fight or flight. And someone can be flooded and they can look really calm, but if they had a heart-rate monitor on, their heart rate would be over 100 beats per minute even though they look calm. So you can look calm, but internally you can be flooded.

And when you're flooded, you cannot think clearly. You cannot problem solve. The person you're talking to could tell you the funniest joke ever, and you are not gonna find it funny. You are in fight or flight. And then that is, that's—for Meredith, "I'm disengaging." Every time she's disengaging, she is flooded. And we can talk more about how actually she's doing a great job when she disengages, so we can go into that.

So those are the four communication styles. And let me—okay, some examples.

Marcie Young Cancio: And I don't remember if this was an example again, that first communication style. Remind me what that—

Jordan Rullo: Criticism.

Marcie Young Cancio: A criticism is, I just immediately think of Season 1 where Jen Shah says, "You're gonna go with Mary who bleeped her grandpa." Right? That's a great criticism, right?

Jordan Rullo: Yes. And this is where there's this fine line of is that criticism? Absolutely. Or is that criticism on steroids? Is that contempt?

Marcie Young Cancio: Right. As you were talking about contempt, I was like, "Oh, maybe that's contempt."

Jordan Rullo: Yeah. There's so much where even when I was creating the presentation, I'm like, "Ooh, is that criticism or is that contempt?" How do you start defining criticism?

Renato Olmedo-González: Can you be guilty of two at the same time?

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah. Is there a Venn diagram of criticism and contempt? Can you exist in that Venn diagram?

Jordan Rullo: Yeah, that's a good—I'm sure you can. Yeah. I don't think the research has got that fine-tuned.

Marcie Young Cancio: Well, we need it. We are gonna find that out here.

Renato Olmedo-González: Yes.

Jordan Rullo: Yes. So, I mean, contempt is any of the—I'm not gonna say it, but the [gout Richard sucker]. If the [gout Richard sucker] comment, that absolutely is contempt. Think about that. You're disgusting. You're so disgusting that you're a [gout Richard sucker]. I'm better than you.

Marcie Young Cancio: That's also like taps into the humor. It's just the most ridiculous—

Jordan Rullo: It's hilarious. Okay, so that would be an example of contempt.

And then let's go into Meredith's disengaging. Okay. So when someone gets flooded, like I said, you cannot—if you're having a conversation with someone, having an argument with them, you get flooded. Again, rush of adrenaline, rush of cortisol. You cannot think clearly. The conversation really needs to—You need to end it at that point because you're not gonna get anywhere. It is not gonna be a productive conversation.

So what I teach couples in couples therapy, and this is what the research supports, is there's a five-step flooding protocol. When you get flooded, you do these five steps. So let's say—What would be a good example of—Yeah, Meredith and Jen. This is the example I use in the talk. Meredith and Jen are arguing. And Jen, they're both, they were both flooded. Jen's getting up.

Oh, this is when they were arguing about—A few of them saw Jen's vagina. And Meredith's like, "I saw your vagina." And Jen's like—

Scott Black: "No, I have sons. You didn't say that."

Jordan Rullo: And like, "Meredith saw your vagina. We all saw your vagina." And they're screaming at each other about whether they did or did not see the vagina. And Jen's standing up, her finger's in Meredith's face, and Meredith's getting up. So they're both clearly flooded.

So ideally, what you would do if you're in a situation where one or both partners are flooded, is you stop. Someone calls a time-out. So you would actually call the word flooded. You can pick whatever word you want. But let's say Meredith says or Jen says, "Flooded." Once that word is called, all action stops. So both parties have to agree that when that word is called, everything stops.

So the way I describe this is this is like being in a hospital and there's a code blue that's called. If there's a code blue that's called, you don't finish having your coffee or finish having your conversation with your colleague. You stop everything and you run to that.

So you call the word flooded. Second, all action stops. And sometimes what happens with couples or I would imagine even with the Housewives, let's say someone calls flooded and the other one's like, "But I just have one more thing I wanna—" Nope, all action stops.

So all action stops. Then the third step is both people separate. So imagine if we could redo the scenario where they're screaming at each other about seeing Jen's vagina. They would call flooded, all action would stop, and then they would go in their separate areas. And maybe Jen would stay outside and Meredith would go back in the house. But you go in your separate areas. You cannot be around each other because you're seeing each other as enemy.

So you go in your separate areas, and during that break you have a guaranteed plan to get your heart rate down. So during that break, it is not about thinking, "Oh, I should have said this, and I knew I saw her vagina." Nope. Uh-uh. During that break, you read a book, you listen to some music, you go on a walk. The entire plan during that break is to get your heart rate down.

So what the research shows is for women, it takes about 20 minutes to get their heart rate down. For men, it takes about 30 minutes. So the recommendation is you take a break for at least 30 minutes.

Then after 30 minutes, you both come back to the conversation, and hopefully you're not seeing each other as enemies, and you can revisit the conversation. You know what? And here we go. This is what would be amazing if Jen said this. This would be a non-defensive way to respond. Jen might have said, "Yeah, I did. I wore a pretty short dress that day, and I think some people saw my vagina. Ah, yeah, I'll have to be careful about that next time. Thanks for the heads up."

That would've been a very lovely, non-defensive way for Jen to respond about that comment.

Marcie Young Cancio: But not great TV.

Jordan Rullo: Exactly. Exactly. And so this is another point I wanna say about these communication styles. If all the Housewives were communicating in a healthy way and taking responsibility and just complaining versus criticizing and not having an ounce of contemptuousness and doing a lovely five-step flooding protocol, no one would want to watch it.

And the other piece is what floored me as I was putting this presentation together is if this is the only way they communicated, just those four horsemen—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling are so rampant. If this is the only way they communicated with these four horsemen, these relationships would not survive. These friendships would not survive.

What the research shows is that you need to have a five-to-one ratio, five positives in your relationship for every one negative in order to just maintain a relationship. But the best relationships have on average a 20-to-one ratio, 20 positives for every one negative. And I bet if you coded, if you watched the Housewives episode and you coded their ratio, there's no way it would be five to one. There's no way it would be five positives to one negative. Absolutely it would be flipped. I think it's gonna be more negatives to positives. You cannot maintain a friendship or relationship that way. It will implode.

So one of the big takeaways that I have when doing that presentation is there is so much friendship, there's so much relationship, there's so much happening that we don't see on television, or there's no way that these women could maintain their friendships, and we're only seeing the worst and funniest parts.

Marcie Young Cancio: Interesting. Well, and that also brings a lot of context to these other franchises as well, that they've had to disband, like New Jersey, for example. They just ended that because the relationships between these women were so fractured that they simply could not go forward with the show anymore.

Jordan Rullo: So I wonder if those women, they weren't having repair. The relationships were not being repaired outside of being filmed.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right. And there's other dynamics in that particular franchise 'cause they're family.

Jordan Rullo: Yeah.

Scott Black: Okay.

Marcie Young Cancio: So you have actually sister-in-laws and brothers and a lot more complications than, yeah, but not the distantly related cousins that we have with Heather and Whitney.

This session was so absolutely fantastic. I would truly, really love to see you come onto the show. And do you remember first season where they had a therapist? They were in Arizona or St. George or somewhere, southern Utah maybe.

Jordan Rullo: I do.

Marcie Young Cancio: And they were on couches, and Jen was there, and they had a therapy session basically.

Jordan Rullo: I think—was it all the women? It was like a group therapy session.

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah.

Jordan Rullo: I watched that and I—

Marcie Young Cancio: What were your thoughts on that episode, on that session?

Jordan Rullo: That was not a session.

Marcie Young Cancio: Oh, tell us more.

Jordan Rullo: I mean, from my recollection, 'cause this is a number of seasons ago, they all just started to argue in that session. And the type of couples therapy I do, no. You, as a therapist, you jump in. So the moment I start to see a session going off the rails or someone's flooded, pause, jump in, time-out.

I jump—There's a huge portion of what I do as a couples therapist where I'm a little bit of a referee and a coach. So I'll jump in and say, "Oh, I'm hearing criticism." The antidote to criticism is to say how you feel and what you need. So I'm gonna coach you right now. Let's do this differently right now.

And then I watched that group therapy session, and they—I don't remember really any kind of jumping in.

Marcie Young Cancio: No.

Jordan Rullo: I don't remember. It just turned into a mess.

Marcie Young Cancio: That would be so fascinating to see that unfold, especially since, to your point, Meredith, in many ways, is the healthiest kind of approach, that "I'm disengaging," and she walks away.

Jordan Rullo: Yeah, that's her flooding protocol. Disengaging.

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah. I mean, so much so that it's—

Renato Olmedo-González: Jen Shah's always flooded.

Jordan Rullo: Jen Shah has a lot of dysregulation. Yes.

Marcie Young Cancio: Yeah, that's fascinating. This session was so great because it really, not only did you break down the show itself in this really dynamic and funny way that everyone got, but I think that people learned a lot about communication styles, which was the goal, right? It wasn't just to talk about The Real Housewives, but actually to walk away with some learning and feeling like you left the space knowing more than what you came with. And your session completely just nailed that.

Jordan Rullo: And I also think, I wanna add another piece of it's interesting, 'cause where else, unless you go see a couples therapist or a friendship therapist—I don't even know if that exists, but a therapist for friends—

Marcie Young Cancio: For friends, yeah.

Jordan Rullo: How else do you learn healthy communication? If your parents or your family didn't model that, where else do you learn it? And maybe people aren't learning it, and what we're seeing are things like the Housewives. And really, my public service announcement would be do not take the Housewives as a model of healthy communication.

Marcie Young Cancio: Right? Yeah, no, certainly. I don't know very many people who are like, "That's how I wanna communicate. That seems like the gold standard."

Fantastic. Okay. Well, any thoughts, Renato? What did you take away from Jordan's session?

Renato Olmedo-González: That you should be involved in contract negotiations for all the [C-sec]. You could keep this show going for decades.

Marcie Young Cancio: Oh my gosh, you have a side hustle, Jordan, that is emerging from this. Maybe a couple, actually.

So fantastic. Okay. So one of the fun things that we did was we gave the audience kind of a heads-up that we're gonna call volunteers to come and read their taglines. And there were some really, really fantastic ones. There was a woman who was a seismologist who talked about earthquakes in her tagline. That was hilarious. There was somebody who was talking about resting bitch face, and that was woven into her tagline. And there were some really, really funny ones. Mine was something like, "I teach the news, but I watch the drama."

Renato Olmedo-González: That's a good one.

Jordan Rullo: Yeah, I like that one.

This transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors. 

Scott Black: So mine was, "I don't throw shade, I annotate." Oh, yeah, no. But I also had a backup one: "You've got your story. I've got your narrative theory."

Marcie Young Cancio: So good. So good. Well, thanks to Jordan Rullo and to Renato Olmedo-González for being here. Thank you to Scott Black and the Tanner Humanities Center. I'm Marcie Young Cancio, and this was just fun. I wanna go grab lunch and keep the conversation going.

Jordan Rullo: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Scott Black: Thank you all for coming. You've been listening to the Virtual Jewel Box podcast of the Tanner Humanities Center. Our music is by Jelly Roll Morton. Thanks for joining us.