The Hotwives of Orlando (a Hulu original series) is a spoof on all of those Real Houswives shows that America loves so much, starring a bunch of awesome female comedians including Casey Wilson (Happy Endings), Angela Kinsey (The Office), Kristen Schaal (30 Rock, Bob’s Burgers), and a host of others you would recognize. As a lover of these three ladies and an intense hater of reality television, I was rightfully intrigued.
The pilot episode starts off a little slow, as we’re introduced to each woman. They all have hilariously specific personality traits that are clear plays on the kind of women who are on these shows. For instance, Kristen Schaal plays a child star who was the face of Florida prune juice. Having grown up as a star, she has now turned to meth to cope with the real world. And Casey Wilson plays a woman whose rich, older husband is dying and she doesn’t seem upset at all, constantly cheating on him with her personal trainer. We later find out that he isn’t actually dying, she just believes he is because he has allergies. As funny as these back stories were, the show was really lacking with the introductions. Everything felt kind of forced and over the top.
Then at about the halfway point, the show really found its footing and started to click for me. Once all the women started interacting, The Hotwives of Orlando started coming together. Although it’s not exactly a laugh-out-loud kind of comedy, it does hold your attention. It’s everything I’d want from a parody. It also is very good at building jokes, and I believe it will become laugh-out-loud in time.
From just the first two episodes, you can see this show taking shape and becoming something to talk about. The show is completely building a parody world in which “You need to calm down” is literally the worst thing you could say to a person and it’s totally normal to facetime with you friends to show them your reconstructed vagina. It’s tough for a show to create it’s own set of rules in a universe and stick to them, and its impressive that you can already see those rules forming in episode two.
I can see this becoming something really great and different, or I could also see it falling flat and running out of ideas quickly. It’s so hard to tell with comedy sometimes. With this great cast and great concept, I’m hoping for the latter.
To view The Real Hotwives of Orlando on Hulu, click here.
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Marla Pachter is a comedic writer, obsessed with all things television. She doesn’t discriminate against TV shows, which either results in pleasant surprise or an eviscerating review for your reading pleasure. Marla loves Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine Nine, and she will probably be watching new seasons of Grey’s Anatomy until she’s 90. Sometimes she writes TV shows herself, but they don’t air on television. She also likes big butts and she cannot lie. (That was a lie). @MarlaPachter
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