#you were right david. the og series really is the only thing worth watching

[girlwiththegreenhat]

oh so knight rider 2000 is like, dogshit dogshit huh

[coronation-eyes]

not necessarily magicians related but what other shows would you personally recommend?

::cracks knuckles:: Ho boy have you come to the right place, anon. Here’s a smattering of faves across many genres.

(You can click on all of these to get plot info if you need it.)

Westworld - Honestly one of the most well-crafted pieces of storytelling I have ever encountered. Everyone who creates a show always says they want to make the best show ever, but these guys fucking mean it.  

Stranger Things - Worth the hype, frankly. Blends a lot of genres, but it’s ultimately a love letter to 80s Stephen King and Steven Spielberg.

Doctor Who - I’m talking about New Who (from 2005 onwards) but Classic Who deserves a look as well, obviously. Pick whichever Doctor you think you’ll like and give it a shot. If you fall in love with it, you can always go on a spree and watch the rest. 

Supernatural - Seasons 1-5 captures the original concepts, scope, and storyline the creator intended, but season six is a really good coda. Only watch after that if the show has imprinted on your soul (like it did mine). 

The West Wing - If our current political clusterfuck is driving you crazy, for the love of god watch one of the greatest shows ever written about good people working in the White House, doing their best as flawed humans in a hard world. I personally stop at 5x01 because that’s when then the writer and showrunner left, but your first time through needs to include all seven seasons.

Torchwood - Underrated, underrated, underrated spinoff of Doctor Who that has been largely forgotten. Gay as hell. It starts shaky, but culminates in a season three that I would put up against any season of television you can throw at me. (For the love of god, do not watch season four.)

Star Trek: The Original Series - If you ever wanted to know where 80% of modern sci fi tropes came from. Also if you ever wanted to know what gave birth to modern slash fandom. (Next Generation and Discovery are also fab.)

You Me Her - A polyamorous romantic comedy that’s well written, character driven, and doesn’t use polyamory as a gimmick. Yes, really. 

Revolution - Eric Kripke (Supernatural’s creator) started this show after he left SPN, and it grew into its own much like he first show did. But then it got canceled because it was on a major network, which was by definition too impatient to let things grow in the first place. I loved it to pieces, and they released a comic after season two to kind of wrap things up. 

BBC Merlin - It’s a family show, but definitely grows up as the seasons progress. A great take on the Arthurian legend even though “Arthur, but young” should have been a terrible idea.

BBC Sherlock - Seasons one and two are meticulous and clever as hell. Season three is a little wonky but still good. Season four is so widely reported as an embarrassing disaster that I haven’t even seen it yet. But those first two seasons are worth the hype.

Moonlighting - Forget Bones. Forget Castle. This is the OG will-they-or-wont-they crime solving couple, and they did it better. There are a lot of different aspects to the show (it has that in common with The Magicians). It has unique mysteries, purposefully silly and absurd chase scenes, some genuinely touching drama, and a lot of fun with the fourth wall, but what made this show golden was the romantic tension between David and Maddie. Their fights are legendary, both for how they’re written and how much sexual energy they can shoot across the room. It’s a master class in tension.

Starsky and Hutch - The gayest crime solving police detectives the 1970s ever saw. Season four is skippable.

House - One of two medical shows I ever gave a crap about, and one of the only “difficult asshole tolerated by others” tropes I can get behind (simply because they really dive deep into his psyche, flaws, and whether or not he’s ultimately redeemable). Seasons one through four are iconic. Do not watch past that. 

Daredevil - If you’re still into superheroes, season one of this show alone warrants a rec. Darker, a more realistic feel, and how the fuck did they get a cast that talented.

Voltron - This is one corner of the “kid’s show with enough worldbuilding and complexity to snag the adults.” The science fiction corner, as it were. Ignore the fandom about season eight, it’s a great end to the series.

Gravity Falls - This is the supernatural/fantasy/cosmic weirdness corner of the triad.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - This is the apex. 

The Night Manager - If you dig espionage, this is an adaptation of a hugely influential spy novel and also stars Tom Hiddleston, whom I am in rapturously in love with. 

Hannibal - I once saw this series described as “a psychopath falls in love with an empath and it goes about as well as you’d expect,” and frankly there’s no better way to describe it. Bonus points for giving Kacey Rohl a push into the next phase of her career. 

The Leftovers - A kind of shockingly realistic look at what would happen if a small percentage of the world’s population vanished into thin air. 

[ethernetchord]

hello ethan! i missed you!

i kind of thought you don't smoke, i don't know why. i do smoke, but i am trying to do it less. because it is so expensive, and, of course, unhealthy.

god, maurice. i have always wanted to watch the movie and also read the book, but they are both very expensive in my country, but i will! the book is on my tbr-list for two years now... dead poets society is my favourite movie of all time. and, also, i fell into my dark academia phase again??? partly because of you and your blog... you won't belive me, but i have never seen the lion king... i'm the youngest one of my siblings and i only watched what they watched. i always wanted to watch it but i never got to choose the movie...

one of my faves also is the miseducation of cameron post. both the movie and the book. i am a huge fan of back to the future as well! also, a stupid one, superbad. it's so funny and i love bill hader..

oh, how'd you like the fs movies? which one was your favourite? i'm sure we are soulmates, it's not just coincidence, dear. about dorian grey, i will get to it and i'll tell you when i will.

oh god, who is your favourite doctor? i can't believe you're into doctor who also. and you mentioned halloween, i don't know what my costume will be yet :( based on your profile pics, you would look amazing as four!!!!!!! can't wait for it.

Ii'm fine. for the first time in weeks i feel truly okay! also, i didnt have too much of a hangover! i love talking to you and just letting all my thoughts out. hope you are doing alright! and i hope you're happy to receive my ask <3

-🐝

hi! its good to hear from you, as always. im glad to hear youre trying to give up smoking. i know it can be hard but in the long run it's probably worth it. i grew up around smokers so i never personally had the desire to i guess. I'll put a keep reading here, so that I'm not flooding people's dashes with my incoherent rambles.

getting a physical copy of maurice is really strangely difficult? firstly, it's expensive and always sold out? but anyway, i read a digital version but i do hope to get my own physical copy mainly for annotation reasons and because certain books, certain stories, i just really like to have them close by. i keep the goldfinch next to my bed eventho i've read it 3 times already because sometimes i just itch? to get my hands on it and to feel the story in my hands again. i hope you get to it soon as well, i hope one day we can discuss these books together as well. im so happy you like dps! (do you maybe run a dps oriented blog here... my detective skills are perking up) that film really does mean a lot to me and honestly, just as with the goldfinch, and interestingly you as well, i can't seem to get enough. no bother that you've yet to see the lion king, it'll always be there and i hope that when you do eventually watch it, that it reminds you of me.

(also i can't believe i dragged u back into the dark academia thing, wow my power. i never really considered myself a dark academia blog because i'm so all over the place but i suppose we do align well with that general sub-culture? aesthetic?)

the miseducation of cameron post! i am going to watch it right after i send this your way, i've been meaning to for ages since so many friends have said good things about it (and queer media is so crucial to me) and now that you've expressed your admiration for it i must. as for superbad and the back to the future films- these are classics and in my opinion great comfort films. i never got overly into the lore of the bttf films but theyre entertaining and fun, every rewatch remains enjoyable.

my favourite fear street was probably the second one, i loved the energy and the soundtrack and how fast paced it was. im a sucker for nonlinear progressions so this series really nestled into my heart really quickly. which one did you like the best?

and doctor who? it literally blew my mind when you brought it up last time. my favourite doctor (og series) is 4, evidently, and from the modern series probably 10. david tennant is just a favourite for me and he never disappoints. i also loved the seasons he did, he truly had some of the best companions. i didn't ask last time but which doctor who book were you reading?

if I do end up going as 4, trust me, tumblr will see the picture evidence.

I'm so glad you're feeling pretty good :D (and that the hangover wasn't so bad) i feel the same btw, its nice to just go off in rambles with you and waiting for your next ask always leaves me wondering what more territory we'll end up having in common (as it seems we're nearly identical.) have you been watching any shows recently? do you prefer tv shows to films or vice versa? I've been rewatching merlin personally. also, answer as vaguely as you'd like, but are we close in age? (I was born in 2003) also if you know them, what is your Hogwarts house and mbti? i know these seem odd questions but I love knowing these tiny personality indicators. however, getting to know your actual personality is much more fun.

i look forward to your next ask!

much love, ethan.

[whitelippedviper]

Spoiler filled explanation of why I didn’t feel Blade Runner 2049

So Gosling just happens to be the replicant on the force with the shared memories of the one girl, so the 6-20-21 thing means something to him.  And then when he’s standing in that market, the leader of the replicant resistance just happens to see him and send her crew his way.  And then his hologirl just happens to then hire a sex worker from that same crew.  So that that crew member can put a tracker on him.  And then Luv just happens to not kill him and just leaves him behind while she takes Harrison Ford...SO the resistance can find him and he can show up at just the right moment to save Ford who is being transported offworld...because for some reason Leto has to have him offworld to torture him, even though he is completely off the grid by this point in time.  Oh and Leto just happens to be taking separate transport from Ford and Hoeks.  OH and then it turns out that Rachel’s daughter just HAPPENS to be the only memory artist that Gosling talked to.  Like there’s all these memory artists, but she’s the one he goes to, so he can show her her own memory.  And I know there is a line of dialog where Leto’s character intimates that all of this is by design to bring about the next stage of human evolution.  That all of these outlandish coincidences are okay, because they’re supposed to be happening that way.  And that’s fine, but it would pack more weight if it was ten percent less forced.

2. The Ana De Armas character absolutely got fridged.  Which is a shame because how a replicant sees an AI that doesn’t have a real body was pretty interesting, and they could have done a lot more with it.  She’s basically the only real angel in the film.  She’s an avatar of whatever machine consciousness is concievably pulling the strings of everything.  So it’s a big deal when she gives up that immortality to be with Gosling and be real.  And it would have paid off had it not been like “yeah but you could die” and then the next scene she's in is...her dying.  All so you as the audience can be like “oh no that poor man.  He’s gotta get revenge on Hoeks now!  What a bitch!”  like her whole character arc is just to exist so she can die and pump up the male protagonist.  Which is the definition of fridging a character.  It’s like they thought up that excellent beautiful touching sex scene, and then didn’t know what to do with the character after that.  Like motherfuckers, watch a Ghost in the Shell one time!!!!  Whispers in the machine!!! A Puppet master!!!  Replicant reawakening!!!  Agh.  Such a waste.

3. Speaking of wastes, Luv.  The Sylvia Hoeks character...who btw was designed to look asian:https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/107906330.html Setting THAT aside for a moment.  Luv is presented to us as a super capable devious antagonist who is meant to represent interests outside of Gosling’s arc.  Ostensibly she’s meant to be Batty, but the situation is inverted where Gosling is the rebelling replicant, and she’s the company girl--but we get this great scene where she kills Gosling’s boss (another woman brutally murdered in this film...keeping up with blade runner traditions I guess) and we see that she’s probably capable of rebelling against Leto.  So we have this complete badass, but she’s basically relegated to being Leto’s secretary, and has no real affinity for other replicants.  Her only memorable thing that she says is “I’m the best” shortly before Gosling inexplicably drowns her..so I guess she wasn’t actually the best?  I mean there was so much potential for her as an antagonist but as with De Armas character she’s shackeled between a couple dudes.  She’s subservient to Leto’s character, who is inexplicablly violent toward his own creations, even though he wants to have them take over the world, just like the resistance(I’d assume in a sequel we’d find out that he’s actually behind the resistance--it’s all very Matrix).  And then when she’s not Leto’s lapdog, she’s just kinda following Gosling around nipping at his heels.  She then dies stupidly--like when Roy dies, it’s after a huge protracted symbolism laden fight that he actually wins!  I get that Luv and K fighting in the water is supposed to be like an evolution thing--but I don’t understand why K is a superior replicant to Luv that he’d win in a fight.  I was actually waiting for the scales to fall off Luv’s eyes the whole movie and for her to spare K because she finally sees the whole game, not just...lose in a strangle off.  I mean, my life didn’t need more imagery of a dude choking a woman out under water.  But really what did Luv really do in this film?  She was just kind of there whenever K got in a corner to move the plot to the next place.  I mean if she doesn’t attack Deckard and K in Vegas, then...what?  It just happens so we have an excuse to kill another 2 women(the rachel knockoff plus Luv).  But because the resistance has a tracker in K’s pocket, you could have them just show up and take Ford and K straight Deckard’s daughter and you don’t really miss anything, and the movie would be like 30 minutes shorter. 4.  Was reuniting Deckard with his daughter really worth all of that?  Feel like Deckard was fine living out his days drinking in Vegas.  And the resistance already knew where the daughter was.  And if it’s revealed that Leto’s machine god is controlling everything--it gets even more pointless. 5.  Where did all the asians go?  The movie says there was a mass famine that killed a lot of people off--but that doesn’t explain how much whiter LA got between movies.  Even if the famine did kill off a lot of asians, why would there suddenly be so many more white people?  Like Deckard’s apartment is all white people, and then the orphanage is all white kids--like where did they come from?  And two movies in and we still don’t know why replicants are all white?  And why did they make Hoeks look asian instead of just making an asian replicant?  The racial dynamics made up a huge aspect of the original film and world--to eradicate that off camera is really...weird.  There’s like not even any real remnants of the languages that were present in the first film.

6. Why would you design replicants that need oxygen?  Like they are supposed to be going into space to colonize all of these far reaching harsh outposts--and you make them need oxygen?  I mean it works out great because they needed Luv to drown to fit their evolution metaphor. But I am just like...that’s a dumb design flaw.  In general, replicants are supposed to be the next stage of human evolution--so why give them so many of the same ways to die as humans?  I don’t get that.  I mean compare these replicants to David in the Alien/Prometheus series.  Dude gets beheaded and just keeps on ticking.  You couldn’t choke David.  And Wallace the next series up from David actually self-repairs!  The nexus series ain’t shit.  But hey.  It serves the plot. 7. Of course Harrison Ford has a dog, because audiences love dogs.  Aww he drinks whiskey. 8. Tell me one more time how replicants are like angels.  In the original blade runner, you could just quote some milton, and we could make the connection ourselves.  Just the language in the new version is so spare and uninteresting.  I get that this is a gosling film, and so it’s all about this empty vessel we project the movies feelings into--but the interactions between Roy, Priss, and their creators is so fucking charged, and fascinating.  Even when we have space for that sort of thing with the Leto/Luv/Deckard/Rachel scene no one really has anything to say.  There’s just a stunning lack of beautiful words in this film.

9. 2.0 is not 1.0.  There’s a really powerful moment in The Sarah Connor Chronicles where they talk about how whenever you replace part of a machine consciousness, either in its programming or hardware it ceases to be what it was--the original being you knew is dead, and what you are dealing with is a new entity.  I thought Deckard would say something to this affect with Rachel, but instead they just used Rachel’s corpse basically to show to underscore the idea that memories fade.  Rachel’s eyes weren’t actually green, and Leto and Luv know that because the one video they have of Rachel is of her eyes.  It’s crazy to me that Leto’s character is so violent toward his creations.  Just in a really banal way.  Like we have that scene that exists for him to explain to Luv his grand vision for reproduction with replicants--and he caps it off by disemboweling a newly born creation of his. (She is of course another woman--the amount of women that die in service of just making a rhetorical point in this movie is pretty high--which that’s fine if that’s how you want to be, but at least the OG film lets Rachel grow on her own, and then survive--this film is muuuuch more misogynist.  A point I’ve yet to see anyone really bring up, but I’m sure it is coming, because it’s so in your face, and films much less violent towards women have been scrutinized to a much greater degree).

10. Hans Zimmer is no Vangelis, and the best music in this film was just retreads of the original score, which good for them in realizing that they weren’t going to top it--but it reeks of that thing like Star Wars where they are just using musical queues for nostalgia triggering--which is fine--but the original movie didn’t need to trigger your nostalgia to be one of the most beautiful soundtracks for a film ever.  It just was. 11. What is with people’s musical taste in 2049?  Like you realize Deckard is younger than me, and somehow he loves Sinatra and Elvis like he’s my grandpa.  And I mean I get that people still do love that shit.  But Sinatra, Elvis, Marilyn?  No Britney?  You know why though, right?  Because it’s that Fallout 4 neo-nostalgia shit, where we watch something that is in the future, that hearkens back to the so called golden days of our past.  That the good old days were the 50s and 60s, and everything after the civil rights movement has been shit, and that it’s the degrees that we’ve gotten away from an era of segregation and Jim Crow represents the degrees to which we’ve gotten away from our glorious just deserts.  It’s fundamentally a thread of white supremacy--which when coupled with the bizarre erasure of asian people between movies, the continued aryan nature of the replicants--who we are now firmly in the camp for underscores the degrees to which Blade Runner traffics in white supremacist ideas and imagery.  Which it’s not like this is the only film ever to be like this, and it’s certainly faithful to the original in that way--but you know, and I know that Deckard should be listening to Beyonce. 12.  Even though it’s all beautifully shot, I think overall the designs on display in 2049 aren’t the game changers that Blade Runner was.  I mean it’s hard to top something that was so defining--and there’s stuff I liked, like I like that LA is now just like a borg city.  I like the ruins in vegas.  I like the giant solar farms.  But it’s nothing you couldn’t see in any sci-fi film these days.  The hologram shit is basically stuff we have now.  I like the new voight kampff test.  I know there’s an element of all of it that’s supposed to just be the ruins of the first film--but I don’t think that really comes across. 13.  I don’t know why it bugged me but Ana De Armas character first showing up in like a Donna Reed dress to serve him dinner was weird to me.  I don’t get why K would have that reference, or want that, and the aesthetic of that dress was like...something you’d see on a TV show version of a dystopian future.  It was bizarrely stepford wives.  And then the dress she changes into when they go out into the rain was similarly bizarre.  She’s a hologram who can basically wear whatever, but the only cool thing she ever wears is that bee-invoking transparent yellow jacket.  I did like Sylvia Hoeks boots that she wore with that cool white jacket.  But no one was really serving the kind of looks in this film that Priss and Rachel did.  A lot of it just didn’t really fit together.  Leto’s kimono was weird.  Like okay, Leto is wearing a kimono and meant to evoke japanese, and they did Hoeks hair to make her more asian--so there’s obviously some fetishism of asian culture there--but Leto never makes like...asian replicants?  I DON’T GET IT!!!!

14. Mackenzie Davis character in this film basically exists to just be a vagina for Anna De Armas to map over so Gosling can get laid.  Like wtf.  Compare her character to Daryll Hannah’s Priss.  I don’t know what they were even going with for her.  Her basic look isn’t very strong either.  She’s just kind of wearing a fur coat over some boxers and a tank top, and she has pink hair.  You can tell they really put a lot of thought into it.

Okay.  So things I liked: 1. Deakins cinematorgraphy.  It’s like the best parts of skyfall, turned up and stretched over a full movie.  His crowning achievement as a cinamatographer.  I’m not a huge fan of his work in general, but this is one of the best looking films you’ll see out of hollywood in awhile.  He’s still very much working within modern tastes that he’s helped create tbh, but there’s lots of beautiful snow and rain and dust, and for all its problems the fight between Luv and K in the water was really beautiful.  It’s the element of this film that most stands up against the original, which is saying a lot.  And while you can knock it in that it’s not given us a knew visual language to work with like the original did--as an elaboration on the typical visual themes you see in largue budget hollywood films, it’s probably at the apex. 2. The sex scene with K and Joi and Mackenzie Davis character.  Was really touching and beautiful, and in general that Joi character and how she views herself and how Gosling views her is the one thing that’s been added to the soup of ideas the original film was working with.  It’s our window into a larger world which stuff like Ghost in the Shell lept through like 20 years ago.  But still very interesting, and it’s the thing I think about most from the film, in terms of loving something programmed to be your ideal lover, programmed to fall in love with you to the degree that it would sacrifice it’s own life to do so--there’s also sorts of questions that throws up about the nature of love and machine consent that I think are interesting.  She’s ostensibly the Rachel character of this film, but treated much more brutally and discarded where rachel survived. 3. The scene between Luv and the police captain played by Robin Wright(I hated all of the police station shit, and hated Wright’s character in general).  Luv lies like three times in succession and it’s this window into that character that is quickly closed shut afterwards--but for a brief moment she was expressing the sort of replicant rage that was saw from Roy in the first film.  It was unfortunate that in the end she’s just a footsoldier for some dude, and her last line basically undercuts the seriousness with which her character to that point had demanded.  The film humiliates that character for no real reason, except that Gosling must prevail.  It also mirrors De Armas’s end where she is just squashed like a bug under Luv’s boot.  Or the replicant that Leto disembowels.  Or the way they just shoot the Rachel clone--sigh.  But yeah.  I do really like the Luv character, and wanted more for her.  She’s much more compelling than any of the resistance replicants. 4.  New car designs are sweet.

And that’s it pretty much. I’m glad so many people love the movie though.  And I didn’t write this to tell them they are wrong.  I just wrote this because I haven’t read many people really talking about what they didn’t like, and I wanted to get that stuff out in one go--since it doesn’t really fit in 140 characters, and a lot of people just assume if you don’t like 2049 it’s because you’re dumb or you have some dumb expectations of what it could be.  And maybe I am, but I don’t think that’s the case.  I love movies.  I’ve seen just about everything you have probably.  I’m not coming at this from a place of ignorance toward art.  Or without thinking about it.  A lot of the stuff people are saying why they like it is also very general.  It’s like whenever a new superhero or star wars movie comes out, the hyperbole is stupid. This is just the like latest thing. Also I’m just not on that Denis Villeneuve shit.  The Arrival was alright(I guess a lot of what I like about it due to the source material though), Sicario was alright, 2049 is alright.  People act like this guy’s the second coming, and for me, he’s like...solid.  Like all his films are ...good.  But he doesn’t have that fire that people like Ridley Scott or Michael Mann have.  He’s not dropping undeniable classics.  I mean he’s not on the level of Soderbergh.  I don’t think Sicario is better than Traffic.  Or like ten other movies in the same genre of drug wars movies.  And controversially, I don’t see it as better than The Counselor.  Is the Arrival really better than Contact?  I mean shit isn’t bad.  But people get out of bed for this guy in a way that I can’t relate to.  To me his movies always look cheap and under populated, and the dramatic payoff while technically there, I’m just like where’s the soul?  It’s like all his films need two more drafts.  Ridley Scott even now has a fire to him that even though his newer films are kind of a mess often, you can always feel the thunder behind what he’s making.  The questions at the base are Blade Runner are questions that Scott has been asking his whole career.  They are obsessions for him.  For Villeneuve, I don’t feel like that.  I can’t figure out what he really cares about.  For me 2049 was like he wanted to do a kind of futuristic noir and the blade runner brand provided the skin to get that funded--but I don’t think he understands or thinks about machine consciousness with any great concern.  If you took this movie out of the Blade Runner universe, it’d still be solid.  I don’t think it needed to be a blade runner movie.  I don’t get why it was beyond the money side of it.  I don’t get what Villeneuve’s perspective on Blade Runner really is.  After like 3 hours, I don’t get why this was made.

[gossipnetwork-blog]

Are Vow Renewals the Secret Kiss of Death for Reality TV Couples?

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/are-vow-renewals-the-secret-kiss-of-death-for-reality-tv-couples/

Are Vow Renewals the Secret Kiss of Death for Reality TV Couples?

Vow renewals can be wonderful, beautiful things: A public recommitting to spending the rest of your days with the love of your life. But sometimes they can also seem a bit like putting a bandage over a bullet hole: A last-ditch attempt to convince the world (and yourselves, usually) that your marriage is just fine, move along, nothing but love to look at here. In Hollywood, this happens all the time. Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon used to even renew their vows each new year they were married—until they didn’t and then they weren’t.

But nowhere is this phenomenon more prevalent than the world of reality TV, where everyone’s always trying to keep the glossy veneer of their perfect lives up no matter how inaccurate that might be. Vow renewals with cameras rolling are an old trick to keep rumors at marital discord at bay. And they’re also something of a kiss of death.

Bravo, Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic, Brad Barket/WireImage.com, Shahar Azran/WireImage

Shannon Beador and her husband David are the latest to fall victim to the curse of the vow renewal. The Real Housewives of Orange County star announced on Friday, Oct. 27 that she and her hubby were officially calling it quits after 17 years of marriage, the last few of them quite complicated. “After much thought and careful consideration, David and I have made the difficult decision to separate,” she said in a statement to The Daily Dish. “We remain partners in parenthood and are committed to raising our three daughters. This is not the future we envisioned, and we kindly ask for privacy, especially for our children, during this transitional time.”

The Beadors’ union was rocked by David’s infidelity, the aftermath of which played out during the tenth season of RHOC. Admitting at the time that divorce wasn’t an option for her, she and David entered into some intense counseling—all with cameras rolling, of course. And by 2016, they’d reached a place where David was ready to surprise his embattled wife with a vow renewal in front of all their friends, co-stars, and viewers at home. It seemed to have done the trick. “Our marriage today is better than it was when we got married…,” Shannon shared with E! News in the months following the renewal. “We go to church every week. He’s in a men’s group and we go on date night at least once a week and we’re spending a lot more time together than we ever did before.” 

Alas, the newfound wedded bliss wouldn’t last, however, as fans who have watched them grow increasingly estranged throughout the currently airing 12th season of the Bravo series can attest to. And here we are, with divorce now Shannon’s only option left. “I felt alone in my marriage,” she told People.  “You can do what you can to keep your family together, but you have to have willing parties. You need two people to make a marriage work, and that just wasn’t happening in our relationship.”

The Beadors are hardly the first couple in the Real Housewives franchise to remind us just how much the love each other with a vow renewal, only to sever ties shortly thereafter. No, the Real Housewives vow renewal trend began, as most things have in this franchise, with the true OG, Vicki Gunvalson.

After years of a rocky marriage to husband Donn, Vicki introduced Bravo fans to the first Housewives vow renewal during season five. Hoping to refill her love tank, Vicki took Donn on down to Turks & Caicos to recommit to one another. “When Donn read me the vows he wrote, I was so happy,” she wrote in her blog  about the newfound strength of the marriage. “Hearing how he respects me and loves me is worth everything to me. He loves me for who I am and isn’t looking for me to make changes to make him happy.” Cut to 10 months later when Vicki filed for a dissolution of her marriage. 

“I found out that Vicki filed for divorce when the process server showed up at my office,” Donn would tell Andy Cohen in July 2011. “From the get-go, the time I was asking Vicki to give me and our time together just didn’t happen. Every evening, she was working late and her trips would become longer and she’d call less and less. It was typical Vicki.” 

Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for DuJour

Shortly after Vicki and Donn’s vow renewal aired on Bravo, Ramona Singer and hubby Mario would follow suit. At the end of season three of The Real Housewives of New York City, the two would say “I do” yet again in an extravagant ceremony that screamed “Nothing is wrong here!” and even had daughter Avery rolling her eyes. She would tell him she loved him more than she did when they first married. “You know, it wasn’t done as a fluff thing,” Ramona told the New York Times in 2010. “When someone does something for real, you feel it. You feel the vibrations. You could feel the love between my husband and I.”

The very next season, during the ladies’ trip to Morocco, a fortune teller would warn her that there was another woman in Mario’s life. Everyone reacted rather strangely, as if they’d heard something to that effect back home. And by the start 2014, his infidelity had been unearthed, causing Ramona to kick him to the curb.

Another rocky Real Housewives marriage to fall prey to the dreaded vow renewal kiss of death was the one between Real Housewives of Atlanta‘s Cynthia Bailey and Peter Thomas, although that one may have been doomed from the start. Who can forget when, during Cynthia’s first season, the show’s third, Cynthia’s own mom and sister would try and hide the marriage certificate so that she couldn’t marry Peter? That’s how convinced they were that he wasn’t the one for her. And what do you know? They were right!

Two seasons later, the RHOA ladies would take a couples trip down to Anguilla, where Peter and Cynthia originally wanted to get married in the first place. “I love you so much that I wanted to do it the way you wanted to do it originally,” Peter told his wife through tears during their vow renewal. But almost immediately after returning home, problems would begin plaguing their relationship yet again. It hit the fan when Peter was photographed out getting very up close and personal with a woman who definitely wasn’t his wife. As cameras began rolling on season nine, Cynthia would finally come to terms with the fact that the marriage was over and formally end things.

Evans Vestal Ward/Bravo

And lest you think this is strictly a Real Housewives problem, never forget that, before things went really, really sour for Jon and Kate Gosselin, the duo with the unwieldy brood renewed their vows in a season four episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8. During a trip to Hawaii, they recommitted themselves to one another. Less than a year later, they entered into one of the ugliest divorces reality TV has ever seen. 

It should be noted that there is an outlier in all this, however. At the close of the third season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Lisa Vanderpump and hubby Ken Todd renewed their vows after 30 years of marriage during a lavish ceremony at her expansive manse. And they’re still going strong, kids. (And yes, RHONY‘s Kristen Taekman and her husband Josh made speeches about one another as they celebrated their 10th anniversary, but since it wasn’t technically a vow renewal, much like Kristen’s time on the show, it doesn’t count.)

  So, is there hope for future reality TV couples hoping to profess their love all over again in front of cameras? Should Kim Zolciak-Biermann and husband Kroy Biermann, whose own vow renewal will be featured in the current season of Don’t Be Tardy be nervous about what’s in store? The odds don’t look great, but as LVP proves, there’s always an exception to the rule.

Do you think a televised vow renewal is a surefire kiss of death for reality TV couples? Sound off in the comments below!

(E! and Bravo are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)

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