The last time I watched Wife Swap, Jill Zarin was trading places with Jenna von Oÿ. Oh, you read that right. Jill was switching with Six from Blossom. As Jill would say, von Oy vey! The original series was really about classism more than anything. A wealthy woman, often from an urban area, would switch with a less wealthy woman, usually from a rural area. The rich lady would struggle with tending animals, living in a small house, and lacking creature comforts. The poor lady, for lack of better terminology, would love her life of luxury before finding it entirely empty. They would return to their respective homes not just having learned how the other half lived but imparting to the audience that the affluent were more controlled, cleaner, and lonely, while the less affluent were messy, making do, but rich in togetherness (because they couldn’t afford anything else). Even so, it was somehow condescending to both, making fun of our differences rather than using them to bring people together. I was delighted to find that in this Housewives-themed version of the show, that both did and did not happen.
This week’s subject is none other than the very divisive Melissa Gorga. I am a huge Melissa Gorga fan. (I believe we, as a fandom, are called Gordita Crunches.) It’s not as if she doesn’t have her faults as a Housewife (cough, inventing personal story lines, cough), and it’s not just because I hate her sister-in-law and archnemesis, Teresa Giudice, with the fire of a million billion suns. I’ve always thought Melissa was articulate, hardworking, levelheaded, and absolutely gorgeous, which shouldn’t matter, but I’m sorry it does because I am shallower than the Smurfs’ swimming pool. What I never understood about her was that she seemed to let her husband, Joe, run the show and that she was just there to cook his food, clean his house, raise his children, and fuck him 18 times a day so he could get the “poison” out of his body.
After watching this episode, I better understand Melissa. It starts with her in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, enjoying the home that a sprinkle-cookie empire built. We find out she is obsessively clean. That makes sense considering we’ve never seen her house messy, but that’s true for all the Housewives. Kyle Richards has 15 poorly trained dogs, and you never see a single hair on any of her sofas. I figured they always have someone come to clean before the camera crews get there. Melissa and her family make it clear that she is like that all the time, that the trauma of growing up in a messy household has forced her to love vacuuming her home like her sister-in-law loves not knowing how to pronounce words.
In the Gorga household, Joe is gone for 12 hours a day, the kids are off at school, and Melissa is working out, getting glam, and then trying out outfits at Envy by Melissa Gorga. Wait, she gets glam every day? I thought that was just for the cameras. What is her makeup budget? Does she have George, her makeup artist, on retainer? Does he live in a shed in the backyard? Melissa is worried, most of all, that her new house will be messy and disorganized, which, guess what, means it totally will be.
We meet the couple Melissa and Joe will be swapping with, Michelle and Sean. They live in East Point, Georgia, a southern suburb of Atlanta, and they own a business that does double-Dutch aerobics, which looks like the most fun exercise class but also the most dangerous. The gym is in the same mini-mall as a head-injury clinic. (That’s not true, I’m just being silly.) Michelle and Sean are together all the time, they never clean up, and they live in a disorganized two-bedroom house with three small children. One way Wife Swap has changed over the years is that, while Michelle swans around Melissa’s house talking about how big it is, Melissa never disparages the size of Michelle’s house or her living conditions.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Melissa does not like how messy it is, how the clothes are all just thrown into a hall closet, and how they leave the dishes and food out in the kitchen overnight to clean in the morning. I was going to say the only thing worse than waking up to a mess is waking up to a stranger in your bed you don’t remember bringing home, but half the time, that stranger turns out to be a delightful surprise. You never forget about the mess, and it’s always just as bad in the morning as when you fell asleep. Strangers win this round.
The biggest sticking point in both households is that Michelle and Sean are vegan. When Melissa finds out that all she’s having for dinner is juice because Michelle and Sean are on the final day of a juice cleanse, Melissa is in the kitchen sneaking fries that are supposed to be for the kids. Michelle hates making spaghetti and meatballs for the Gorgas, particularly because she gets no help. Nor does she receive assistance with any household chores, including changing the dog’s diaper. When she first meets Joe, she’s amazed that they let the dog pee all over their gorgeous house. Joe says she must have put the diaper on wrong. “Who puts it on?” she asks, then points to herself incredulously. “Michelle?” It is the single best use of the third person on a Housewives program, and that includes the Kenya Moore Hair Care marching band.
I’m sorry, I’m with the Gorgas. If someone showed up and forced me to eat a raw vegan dinner, I would be complaining and twisting my face up too. The tensest the show gets, honestly, is when Michelle lets them know what’s for dinner and Melissa’s daughter, Antonia, shoots her a scowl that could burn a batch of Sunday Sauce. But seriously, if I were on this show and found out I was joining a plant-based household, I would gather my belongings and hitchhike back home to free my family and me from these dietary restrictions. I appreciate the Gorga kids for keeping it real with their new mom, just as I appreciate Sean and Michelle’s three gorgeous cherubs for loving the Italian dinner (still vegan!) Melissa cooks for them. The kids are like, “I didn’t know that onions and garlic can make food better.” Okay, what are they seasoning these kids’ food with? I mean, there is veganism and then there is culinary malfeasance.
Speaking of the kids, Michelle’s darlings, Sean Jr., Phoenix, and Maverick, are the absolute stars of this show. Not only are they cute as buttons and down for a good time, they even get the distinct honor of meeting Miss Phaedra Parks at a secondhand shop in suburban Atlanta, which they seem to fully enjoy even if they have no clue who she is. Melissa and Maverick making sprinkle cookies together is so adorable it could definitely cure depression and probably the common cold. I also love when Melissa makes everyone clean and organize, including putting their books in a little stand. I swear, Sean Jr. was in there taking them out and throwing them on the floor to spite her, and that is a reality star in the making. Speaking of which, after meeting Phaedra and seeing Melissa, Phoenix says she wants hair, makeup, and nails just like a Real Housewife. This is how we get ’em. Andy Cohen has destroyed another young mind.
The Gorga kids are a different story. Not that they’re not adorable in their own ways, but when Joe is sitting in a confessional with Gino on one side and Joey on the other, it looks like the waiting room for casting a Jersey Shore reboot. I seriously cannot tell the three of them apart. Melissa and Joe have been wildly successful cloning new versions of themselves, like Barbra Streisand did with her dogs.
It’s in their attitudes, too. When Michelle tells them they’re not cleaning up after dinner, Joey and Gino are fine with it and immediately leave them without saying a word. Antonia, her mother’s daughter, feels like she should clean up, probably to keep her mother happy and probably because she’s been taught that’s a woman’s job her whole life. But in the entire episode, Antonia is the mini-Melissa. When Joe takes Antonia and Michelle to the job site, the two adults work while Antonia is in the backhoe taking selfies and “being cute,” just as Melissa would be. I mean, I don’t mind any of this; the kids all seem great and well adjusted. It’s just amazing how close these carbon copies are to the originals.
The show’s format hasn’t changed much from back in the day, and we definitely still see story lines about the wealthy vs. the less wealthy. But it isn’t all the same. The best part, both now and then, is when the wives finally meet each other and debrief. Before, it always seemed contentious, like what one would fix about the other or how they just couldn’t understand each other. Back then, we loved it because it gave us reality-TV drama of the highest order, like when someone hated their new house in Trading Spaces. Now I love it because it shows two mothers having mutual sympathy. They see the flaws both in themselves and in each other, vowing Melissa will spend 10 percent more time with her husband and Michelle will spend 10 percent less with hers. Michelle also gets emotional about always feeling behind with the kids and the housework, and Melissa tells her just to do her dishes so she wakes up with a better attitude. Life is hard, no matter how much money you have or how big your house is, but figuring out what you can learn from other people and what you can learn about yourself is truly a blessing. And no matter how hard life is, at least it’s easier than teaching a grown Italian man how to double Dutch.