Every Sunday, as I go into my Bravo reality TV watch, I find myself more entertained watching “Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard” than “Real Housewives of Atlanta,” a longtime staple on my watchlist. Don’t get me wrong, both are boring in their own ways. But I find Kandi and Marlo dragging their beef out this season on “Housewives,” the bad, overly produced kind of boring. On “Summer House,” the pointless house meetings and deadass arguments over a an emotional support dog had me hooked early, and I think I figured out why.
There’s something special about the unremarkableness of “Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard.” A group of regular-degular friends (using that term loosely) gather in a house in the historically Black Oak Bluffs to spend 15 days, where the objective isn’t to find love or compete for a prize but just to exist. And at a time when dating reality shows are plentiful, and celebrities are obnoxiously oversharing and dragging out dumb storylines, a little relatable simplicity is welcomed.
The cast of millennials is assembled around the friendships of Jasmine Ellis Cooper and Silas Cooper, the couple who won’t let anyone forget that they’re married. For a little over two weeks, we’re introduced to about a dozen other young Black professionals: Jordan Emanuel, Nick Arrington, Bria Fleming, Shanice Henderson, Alex Tyree, Amir Lancaster, Preston Mitchum, Summer Marie Thomas, Jason Lyke and briefly, Mariah Torres and Phil Brooks.
If you took a shot for every petty conflict in the house, you’d need a new liver. Off rip, the drama unfolds over Bria bringing her dog, Milo, without letting the other guests know, leading to arguments with Jasmine and Mariah. A house meeting ends with Phil getting voted out of the house after stirring up shit (literally) hours after entering. Mariah also gets (questionably) voted out after she and Bria argue over her dog’s laundry mishap, which Amir later admitted to.
Throughout the rest of the getaway, we find that Jasmine and Silas’ honeymoon phase isn’t so sweet; Nick has been hiding his girlfriend while flirting with other women in the house, Amir is trying to profess his love for Jordan to no avail, Jordan is fed up with all the straight men in the house, and Shanice’s dating past becomes a topic of discussion. Not to mention, we all have to sit through cut scenes of Jasmine and Silas having sex (loudly), then turn around and argue about burnt breakfast sandwiches.
The fact is, a lot of reality TV isn’t that great right now and hasn’t been for a while. (I’ve never watched the original “Summer House” and don’t intend to.) Shows like “Love Island” and “Love Is Blind” follow a predictable formula in which the Black cast members are usually paid dust. And with a wide-open lane for a TV show that depicts young, Black people who aren’t famous or fighting after the cancellation of “Sweet Life,” “Summer House” had plenty of room to capture an underserved reality TV fanbase.
And it makes sense why.
There’s something very nostalgic about reality TV that’s not overproduced. “Martha’s Vineyard” doesn’t try too hard, and that’s the magic of it. Though the producers will always edit to make storylines more compelling, it feels akin to an older format of reality TV where things are raw and naturally unhinged. We know Silas is an asshole because we see how situations within his marriage to Jasmine and as pseudo-leader of the house unfold. We know Bria is a drama queen because she’s naturally at the center of most of the problems that arise in the house. And we know Nick is a fuckboy who thinks he’s a nice guy after hiding that he’s been in a whole relationship for a year meanwhile sliding in every single woman on the show’s DMs.
This crew is messy. But the kind of messy that feels relatable, like you know people who act like this in real life. And given the nature of reality TV, it’s easy to engage, judge and chime in, which has also made it a playground for folks on social media to chime in and share their thoughts.
It’s giving a taste of the reality TV we watched in the 2000s. “Real World” and “College Hill” walked so that “Summer House” could saunter. It’s not a perfect show, of course. Like many predecessors, it still centers on heteronormative values and relationships.
Mitchum, an attorney who’s the only queer person on the show, told HuffPost he hasn’t seen “many Black queer people have a multidimensional representation on reality TV,” often casting them as side characters.
“I really took it as an opportunity, not to be the one, because I’m never comfortable being the only one in any space,” he said, “but hopefully as someone who has an opportunity that can be told in a multidimensional way, that will then allow others to feel vulnerable enough and brave enough to share their own stories, even if that means more in private settings than in public settings.”
According to Mitchum, what we see on Bravo Sunday nights is pretty accurate to what they experienced in the house. Amongst the dull moments and drama, he said the mostly Black production team made it easier for them to be themselves.
“I’m really grateful that what you see is what you get a lot of times. Also, I think what makes our show a successful show is that it is really relatable for many people. If you are a Black person and most of your friends are Black, I can guarantee you that if you’ve gone on a trip with them, you’re going to wake up in the morning, you’re going to have some bad hair days, you’re going to put your bonnet on, you’re going to put a durag on, you’re going to make breakfast, you’re going to [have disagreements],” he said. “ I think it makes the ‘real’ in reality TV even more like an emphasis on it.”
The final episode of “Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard” airs on Sunday at 9 p.m. on Bravo. The cast hasn’t filmed a reunion for this season, and there is no word on if there will be a Season 2 yet.
However, the reality TV lesson we can all gather from Season 1 is that less is more.