The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip - Season 3

“In The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip, everyone’s ridiculous but no one feels like a stereotype.”

Title: The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip
Episodes Reviewed: Season 3 (Thailand)
Executive Producers: Lisa Shannon 👩🏼🇺🇸, Dan Peirson 👨🏼🇺🇸, Darren Ward 👨🏼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, John Paparazzo 👨🏼🇺🇸, Glenda Cox 👩🏾🇬🇩🇺🇸, and Andy Cohen 👨🏼🇺🇸🌈

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 2/5

You’ve probably heard of The Real Housewives before. And if you haven’t, you certainly know its legacy: Ever watched a group of affluent, larger-than-life women squabble on TV? You have Housewives to thank.

Maybe you’ve been like me, stubbornly avoiding the reality series since it began in 2006. But egged on by a friend, and promised beautiful, beachy visuals of Phuket, Thailand, I finally sat down to watch Season 3 of Peacock’s spin-off, The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip, where Porsha Williams, Alexia Nepola, Marysol Patton, Leah McSweeney, Gizelle Bryant, Candiace Dillard Bassett, Heather Gay, and Whitney Rose live it up and duke it out.

If engineered drama and shade for shade’s sake sounds like a good time, more power to you. But beyond nice production values, it’s hard to rate Ultimate Girls Trip on any type of technical prowess. Catfights blur into an unintelligible mass of personal vendettas, and unless your tolerance for people yelling over each other is sky high, you won’t miss a thing by skipping this particular trip to Thailand.

Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

The season follows all women, but with mostly male executive producers and a wildly stereotypical (if tongue-in-cheek) premise of high-maintenance ladies who lunch, it’s hard to call Ultimate Girls Trip an empowering watch.

Race: 4/5

Season 3 has a racially balanced cast, including Black, Cuban American, and white women. Everyone’s ridiculous, but no one feels like a stereotype. And when cultural markers do come up, they’re portrayed in ways that feel realistic. For example, in the first episode, Gizelle (who’s Black) shuts down Miami-based members Marysol (Cuban-Irish American) and Alexia (who was born in Cuba) for conversing in Spanish in a group setting. While it’s clearly inappropriate to tell other people what language they should be speaking, viewers quickly learn that Gizelle is simply projecting her own issues with her daughters, who “talk about [her] in Spanish because they know [she doesn’t] understand.” The three women have a respectful conversation, and while Gizelle never explicitly apologizes, she does explain herself and they all move on.

Looking beyond cast members, the season’s backdrop of Phuket showcases Thai culture, scenery, and food in idealized, but respectful ways that cater to a Western audience. Still, Thai representation finds a surprise champion in the villa’s concierge, Pepsi. Though Pepsi starts off as stereotypically gracious, fulfilling every outrageous request by his ultra-wealthy guests with a smile, we get to see his human side as well, whether it’s his frustrated tears during confessional scenes, to the sometimes bawdy way he jokes around with cast members. Still, Pepsi never graduates to being fully realized, and the rest of the Thai workers who flit in and out of scenes as resort staff, drivers, or restaurant workers, are mostly ignored by Ultimate Girls Trip’s narrative and camerawork.

On the topic of whose lens we’re viewing this through, a glance at executive producers shows a mostly white group—among the six people listed by Peacock, just Glenda Cox is Black (Grenadian American). When looking at co-EPs, however, Shanae Humphrey (Black) and Alfonso Rosales (Latino) help ensure the season isn’t being produced by an all-white team.

LGBTQ: 2.25/5

While none of Season 3’s Ultimate Girls Trip cast members discuss being anything other than straight, the concept of sexuality is fluid thanks to casual mentions of bisexual exes. In addition, the housewives also attend a ladyboy show; though a cast member mistakenly calls it a “drag show,” she’s quickly corrected by onscreen graphics that give a crash course on how ladyboys are actually a third gender. And behind the lens, producers include out gay men Andy Cohen and Rosales.

Bonus for Religion: +0.50

Hailing from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (2020-present), Whitney and Heather discuss their contentious relationships with faith and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a source of drama when Whitney, who has fully resigned from the church, finds Heather’s approach—choosing to stay on the temple prayer rolls while denouncing other parts of the religion—to be hypocritical. Unsurprisingly, plenty of Latter-Day Saints have balked at Housewives’ representation of their faith. But overall, it’s positive to see this seldom-depicted religion debated onscreen to such a large audience.

Mediaversity Grade: C 2.94/5

The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip isn’t for everyone, but it’s racially diverse and does feature a lot of women. That’s more than we can say for many other reality series (I’m side-eyeing you, The Bachelor).

Like The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Grip? Try these other non-fictional takes on women and their lives.

Grade: CLiMay 4, 2023