One of Hulu’s Best Shows Has Pulled Off the Rare Successful Spinoff

Television You Can and Should Watch Frontal Lobes Develop in Real Time on the New Mormon Wives Spinoff No show has ever been more for women between 30 and 35. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Scaachi Koul? Nov 12, 202612:01 PM Disney/Fred Hayes Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. What an honor to get to know a whole new batch of skinny white arms gesticulating on reality television. This week, the Mormon Extended Universe expands with The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County on Hulu, a spinoff of its original Utah iteration. Eight episodes of lash extensions melting off with tears, attempting to judge one another for benign OnlyFans photos, and launching the world’s most unessential demi-fine jewelry companies. I hope they make 6,000 more seasons. The first iteration of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was mostly about a group of TikTokker friends, all originally from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, fighting for social dominance. Every episode of its five seasons seemed to be about who was leading or dominating “MomTok,” their corner of social media, and who should get credit for getting them several seasons on a Hulu show, plus Dancing With the Stars spinoffs and features on Broadway. The women claimed they were fighting about dignity, respect, and consideration for one another in their small community. What they were actually fighting about was the show. Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County follows a different kind of pugilism. These women aren’t arguing over who gets to run the show or speak for the group. Instead, this series is an exploration of what happens when a bunch of women develop their frontal lobes in real time. Binge the show in its entirety, and you’ll be launched through the urgent development of their self-worth at mach speed. SLOMW: OC follows Jen Affleck (who is, it seems, not related to the Afflecks), a former cast member of the Salt Lake City edition, as she moves to Orange County to start a new MomTok (no one knows what this is, and I think that’s fine) and to maybe end her marriage to a guy who looks like the bad guy from The Incredibles. McCall DaPron, the older sister of Mayci on the Utah cast, tries to step up as the group’s spiritual elder and the most religious of the bunch. (She says she has “McCalling” to convert people to Mormonism.) She brings in her friend Jordan, who is recovering from alcohol and cocaine addiction and who converted to Mormonism—she has plenty of opinions on who is and isn’t obeying the word of God. Madison Fisher, a family YouTuber and influencer, has the distinction of being the one with the worst marriage, which is really saying something, since Jen has been posting videos of her estranged husband making fun of her tits. Filling out the nine-person cast are Avery Woods (of CHEERS! podcast fame), Aspyn Ovard (who fell out of the Mormon church, divorced her husband, and is now in a polyamorous relationship with a man and a woman; good for her), and Bobbi Althoff (whose entire season subplot is that she’s monotone, unfunny, and stoned). The women of the show are all in their early-to-mid-30s, a little older than the original Mormon Wives were. They’re less activated, less disorderly in their arguments; all they ask from one another is a modicum of respect. Many of them were raised under the church’s strictest modalities, and they grew big families in their 20s with men who don’t always treat them with kindness. Aspyn calls the Mormon church “a cult,” and in one episode, two of the other girls in the group share stories about how they were sexually and physically abused as children, often while under the church’s supervision. The tensions in this show are complex and tied not just to their jobs as content creators and Mormon influencers but to the painful realization that the decision you made as an optimistic, sunny, religious 25-year-old might not be the right one for you at 35. Meanwhile, all their husbands suck. Not one winner among them, a sliding scale of the worst of #DadTok (which is just the guys trying to suck the life force out of anything their wives make without them). Aspyn’s ex-husband, Parker, is deeply resentful of his ex-wife getting into a throuple, but he certainly has less ire for himself and the gambling that led to the end of his marriage. Jen’s ex, Zac, isn’t shown this season. She filed for divorce just this month, a decision that seems inevitable once you’ve seen her breakdown this season about how he keeps investing (and losing) their money in crypto. The impossibly hot Salomé starts the season separated from her husband, Aaron, who has the jaw and charisma of Handsome Squidward. In the interim, they both manage to sleep with people that they’re destined to run into after they reconcile. It’d be a classic reality TV plotline, but there’s a Mormon twist: Much like Jen, she ends up pregnant. And then there’s Kyler, husband to Madison, a self-proclaimed country music artist, though there’s limited proof of this. Kyler seems to resent his wife for being the breadwinner while also absolutely needing her to be the breadwinner, much like the husbands on TLC’s Double Lives of Suburban Wives. The season drives toward a finale where the girls host an intervention of sorts for Madison, whose marriage is so bad that all the other girls think it requires immediate and televised intervention. Madison denies that they have any problems, which lands like a lead balloon in a roomful of women who can see her relationship clearer than she can. “You guys don’t know his personality. He’s sarcastic and silly,” she tells them when they talk to him about how angry he gets. “My bad for sharing that.” It’s a confrontation that comes at the end of a season of much lighter arguments, the kinds that come when you’re older and smarter and maybe a little more tired. It’s a season about shifting priorities and hopes; in real time, you get to watch these women enter new understandings of themselves and their lives. Jen might not have filed for divorce in this footage, but it’s clear that the show helped her make the decision. Maybe watching all her other friends suffer in their own relationships—namely the ones supported by the Mormon church—gave her a better frame of reference. In the latter half of the season, both Madison and her friend Ashleigh talk about how they were molested as kids and, almost worse, all the ways they tried to please their abusers. “In the church, maybe you have a part of you that wants to make it look like you have it all together,” Madison said in a talking-head interview. “It’s hard sometimes to speak up and say what’s happening.” Madison’s marriage seems like a wreck, but it’s a lot easier to understand her, for both the cast and the viewership, once we learn about her past. Aspyn’s polyamorous relationship structure seems primed for criticism from a group like this—especially after McCall and Jordan talk about how homosexuality is still verboten in the church—but even they back down when Aspyn starts talking about her daughter’s terminal cancer diagnosis. Who wants to fight about gay rights with the girl who has a girlfriend and a boyfriend while she’s also trying to parent a sick baby and manage a childish ex-husband? Divorces too are treated differently here from how they would be on any of the Real Housewives or even the original Secret Lives. Here, a divorce is an exit ramp to a better, more peaceful life, even though it’s still a hard decision. There’s less judgment for these girls, even from the more hardcore-Mormon among them. This is a reality show by and for women in their 30s. Don’t worry: The girls are still fighting, but the conflicts are more internal than interpersonal. There’s a much, much worse version of this series where the women featured are still too avoidant to even recognize that they’re changing and maturing, one where they fight about their perfect husbands and their fat wallets. Instead, this is a show about your brain catching up with a crummy reality, but one that you can still change for yourself. Growing up in your 30s is painful and ugly, but at least it makes for really good TV. California Mormons Religion TV Reality TV