The Real Friends of WeHo on MTV – I Didn’t Hate it

After all the publicity and self promotion on social media, MTV’s new reality series The Real Friends of WeHo premiered Friday night. And if reactions the following day are to be believed, it’s just bad—as for me, I didn’t hate it. In some ways I kind of related to it. I sort of have a similar friend group, except we’re in a much lower tax bracket.

The premise of the show is a tried and true formula; gather six friends (in truth, they seem more like acquaintances); follow them around with cameras; have them talk about themselves; it’s partly scripted, but make it look unscripted; and hope that magic happens in the form of some sort of bitchy catfight.

The twist is that this time around it’s gay men who supposedly live in West Hollywood. The goal is to get some of that the same magic similar to any of the Real Housewives shows we see today–hence the name, “The Real Friends…”

So far you have the stylist, Brad Goreski. He appears to be the glue that’s keeping the group together.

There is the performer, Todrick Hall. Yes, the one from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Celebrity Big Brother, and if rumors are to be believed, the one who doesn’t pay his backup dancers and pretended to buy a big house.

We have the actor, Curtis Hamilton. Who you ask? Don’t worry, I had to Google him well. He played Dr. Dre in the film Surviving Compton.

There is TV host, Jaymes Vaughan whose claim to fame is that he’s husband to Mean Girls actor Jonathan Bennett. To quote him on the first episode, “the only reason they asked me to be in this is because you said no Jonathan.“

Completing the cast, are social media influencer, Joey Zauzig (with 294K Instagram followers) and Founder and CEO of Buttah Skincare, Dorian Renaud—“Joey is an influencer meaning he’s unemployed” said Renuad—OK, that shady quote was pretty funny.

I know that not everyone is going to be represented. If you want to create true real friends of WeHo, we would have the twink meth head partygoer; The aspiring actor going to Alcoholics Anonymous; the three roommates sharing a room in a single apartment so they can say they live at a high rise apartment on The Sunset Strip, and they would all be on a budget.

But that’s not what we get here.

Instead, we get a glossy version of gay men living in WeHo (supposedly). To their defense, this is just the first episode. Remember the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race? Everybody was so glossed over, that I thought I needed glasses because the screen was so damn blurry.

Who knows where the next episodes will take us. Perhaps eventually it will get just as good as any of the Real Housewives tv shows. Unfortunately, right now it feels more like that I Am Cait (Caitlyn Jenner) TV show that got canceled after only one season. But I will tune in for next week’s episode of the Real Friends of WeHo and perhaps the episode after that. I don’t want to judge a book by its cover. I may end up thinking it’s bad like everyone else, but so far, I didn’t hate it. I’ll reserve my final judgment until end.

The Real Friends of WeHo will play on Fridays on MTV at 9 p.m. ET/PT following RuPaul’s Drag Race.