Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Recap: Angies Goes Off Grid

We're living in a golden age Real Housewives spin-offs in which the execs at Bravo (and Pikaka, if you're disgusted) throw every possible concept at the wall and see which one sticks. Their latest proposal combines Wife swap with our beloved Bravolebrities – but no, housewives from different cities do not exchange lives with each other. Instead, the glamorous Real Housewives (and Emily Simpson) will be swapping lives with regular people, starting with ROSLCThis is Angie Katsanevas, who trades places with a mom of three living off the grid in Idaho. Classic Crappie Lake a script, if you will.

It's initially jarring to see the scene where Angie is at home with her family filmed completely differently than we're used to seeing on the show. Housewives. Because he follows traditional Wife swap the formula and structure, our introduction to her and her home life (which some of us are already quite familiar with) is much more designed to set out a narrative. Essentially, the storyline they're creating is that Angie is anxious and her husband Sean and daughter Electra want her to relax. They hope the experience will contribute to that, and Angie hopes her family will miss her. Sure, let's pretend that's why we're doing this, and not just because it'll be fun to watch Angie in the paddock.

In fact, “sticks” can be generous. The family Angie changes with are the Flakes (that's what I also call my dating pool), who live completely off the grid in Challis, Idaho. Lindsay and her husband Tanner explain that they and their three young children have made lifestyle changes to try to cope with Lindsay's rheumatoid arthritis, and when they say “unplug,” they really mean it. We are talking about the lack of running water. And yet they seem to have at least some idea of Real Housewivesbecause after Lindsay finds out what city she's going to, she wonders if she'll switch with Lisa Barlow. Can you imagine? Lisa Barlow wouldn't even make it to the driveway before she turned around.

Of course, it looks like Angie might do the same thing after seeing the composting toilet. “I don’t dare use the toilet for the next three days,” she says, horrified. Meanwhile, Lindsey is having a great time checking out Angie's heated bathroom floors, iconic sunglasses collection, and reading her house rules from, you guessed it, a scroll.

When Lindsay's family arrives to welcome Angie, she learns even more about this manor lifestyle, starting with the outdoor bathtub in which she must bathe. Hopefully she stocked up on dry shampoo from Lunatic Fringe before she left, but things look up after they take her to a vantage point on the property with a better view. They get there on an ATV, one of which is driven by a child, and Tanner tells Angie more about his wife's health problems that led them to this lifestyle – and although this gives Angie a better understanding, she still doesn't mind taking a real shower. She also manages to become close to their daughter Hazel, which Angie says is especially nice considering Electra's withdrawal as she enters adolescence.

Back in Salt Lake City, Lindsay is forced to do all the spring cleaning that Angie usually does every night (while Sean and Electra watch TV). But fear not, this wasn't just an elaborate stunt to get a random woman from Idaho to clean up their house—Lindsey gets a taste of the best things the next day when a manicurist comes to the house before her trip to the gym and salon. But while she lifts weights at the gym, Angie carries five-gallon jugs of water around the estate – and that's nothing compared to the need to “change the toilet.” That's right, she has to empty the composting toilet like it's a garbage can. Is Bravo paying her hazard pay?

When it's time for the wives to move into their new homes, Lindsey tells Sean and Electra that they're going to spend the night off the grid in their backyard—and Electra's face falls in a way I've never seen before. No showers, no phones, and I can tell she's hoping the crew will yell “stop” once they get the footage they need so they can go back inside… but alas. “I don’t want to be self-sufficient,” Electra says.

As for Angie changing the rules, she takes them all out to eat—dessert and all—and these organic kids nearly fall over when they see milkshakes being brought to the table. Her next rule is to get Tanner to invite her to the party (despite the kids' fears that it's cheating) so they can let their hair down. “And I say that with all due respect because Tanner doesn't have hair,” she adds. But a trip to the dive bar turns out to be a good reminder of what the chain really has to offer.

Just when I felt the episode dragging on, a hero comes to the rescue. Mary M. Cosby saunters into her friend Angie's house, and I fall to my knees in joy. THIS is what I want to see. “Is she skinning the chicken?” she asks, coming across Lindsay gutting fish in the backyard with Shawn and Electra. Mary's reaction to gutting the fish and her disgust at the “placenta” is funnier than anything that happened in the entire episode (and possibly in the history of television).

Although their attempt to sleep in the backyard doesn't go according to plan (Shawn and Electra are bailed and even Lindsay isn't feeling it), the next day they set out to build a garden to grow their own food. Unless it's grape leaves, I don't think this endeavor will be a long-term success once Angie returns.

Speaking of when it's time to leave, Angie gives the Flake kids a going-away gift that only she could give—Greek flag sunglasses—and talks emotionally about the experience. She says she realized that there really is no right way to do things, and that the whole experience put her relationship with glamor and materialism into perspective.

She returns to Salt Lake City where she can finally meet Lindsay and the pair can talk about what they learned from the classic books. Wife swap fashion. Angie tells her that when she first arrived, she felt sorry for their situation, but soon realized that they actually “have it all.” In turn, Lindsay's own delusions that she would live a calm and easy life were also refuted by Angie's numerous household chores and the need to be “on call” in front of the cameras all the time. To me, this is the most interesting thing that we hardly touch on: the idea that this ordinary mom has to do everything that comes with being a reality TV star. Sure, there are cameras, but how fun would it be to watch one of these swappers have to throw down a glass of wine, make cameos, or maybe even get arrested? Whoever switches places with Melissa Gorga will have to start a life-changing rumor about Teresa! Or at the very least, break the fourth wall and talk about how strange the process of filming a reality show is compared to their regular lives. While Simple life The element never really gets old, further delving into the reality of reality TV would have given this premise something much more interesting to sink your teeth into.