TVSquad

A whole heck of a lot, apparently. And not because it's a so-bad-it's-good kind of a show. It may have started out that way, but now, after four seasons and multiple spin-offs, has just veered into the worst kind of train-wreck TV.

This past season, the fourth of The Real Housewives of the OC, has gotten unconscionably shallow and I still can't click way. I'm not going to argue that the show wasn't always that way, but watching the housewives in this season's first episode, not just ogle new addition Gretchen's breasts, but physically poke them (to test, what? elasticity? bounce?) was perhaps a new low.

So, the question I keep asking myself is why am I still watching this show?

To my credit, I don't watch first-run episodes on Tuesday nights anymore, but I do catch up in binge and purge way on Saturday mornings.

There's nothing good about these people; they have no redeeming qualities what so ever. Their marriages are imploding and rather than feel sympathy or sorrow for them, I'm mainly wondering, 'Well Vicky, I'm amazed he stayed with you for as long as he did, you controlling shrew. ' I can overlook bad behavior; bad behavior is why we watch reality TV. But shouldn't there something else that keeps my eyes glued to the TV?

Not only are the Housewives incorrigible materialists, but they're not even good friends to each other. Back stabbing, conniving, and snide, they're setting women as a gender way back. Why take the worst qualities typically (and wrongly) associated with your gender and emphasize those, taking away any redeeming qualities you might have?

Over the time it's been on, the show has hasn't changed, but hopefully, we've changed. Rising unemployment, a self-destructing economy and sky-rocketing rates of foreclosures have a way of putting bad behavior in a new, even more unflattering light. Maybe a few years ago, when the show premiered, we could overlook their conspicuous consumption and materialism as amusingly shallow, but now it just seems wrong.

Watching Jena, Lori and Tamara run rampant in expensive clothing boutiques, get expensive spa treatments and Botox their way back a few decades used to be amusing and perhaps even aspirational for some, but now seems outright vulgar.

I think I keep watching because it makes me feel like a better person, in comparison. I mean, I may be bitchy, but I'm certainly not as mean as Sheree. And I may be shallow, but even I'm not so shallow that I'll get a boob job because "everyone else has one". And perhaps I spent a little too much at the mall this weekend, but even I wouldn't pay over $400 for a zebra print halter dress that screams: cougar.