Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers.
Like many of you, I have had my feed filled with advertisements and analyses of Hulu’s newest reality series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. While I am not a reality television fan, nor a follower of “MomTok” as the group of mothers and influencers calls themselves, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by this series. The major scandals within the group, like the “light swinging” or arrest of Taylor Frankie Paul, one of the stars of the group, made their way onto my TikTok For You Page, and I was excited to see how the show hashed out the drama. So, on a chill Tuesday night, my roommates and I snuggled up on our couch to see what the show was all about, and boy were our minds blown…
The first episode of the show starts out slow, and left me skeptical of whether or not I wanted to keep watching. It mostly is just laying out the drama that played out prior to filming as well as introducing the moms and their dynamic with one another. However, it ends with Taylor’s arrest, and quickly grabbed my attention to tune into other episodes.
From there, the focus of the show primarily becomes about drama within the group. There were several moments each episode that had all of us dropping our jaws and too stunned to speak. The way some of these women would speak about each other or their actions had us all shocked time and time again. But this led me to wonder: how much of this drama was producer driven and how much was genuine? Stars from many popular reality series, like The Bachelor or Dance Moms have come out and discussed how a lot of the drama portrayed in their respective shows was created and edited by producers. For example, when they whipped out the confession box and everyone had to hash out their beef, I did not believe for one second that the women actually wanted to do it. In what world would anyone do something like that, unprompted, at someone else’s birthday celebration? Maybe dramatic middle school girls, but certainly not grown adults! It really does make you wonder how many of the show’s plot lines were orchestrated by production rather than the women.
Another thing I was shocked about was how much these women went against the values of the Mormon Church. While some of the group, known as ‘The Saints’, held very true to the values of their church, ‘The Sinners’ were on TV promoting drinking, premarital sex, swearing, and other activities that go against their faith. I understand that the purpose of both their social media platform and the show was to help promote change within the church and “modernize” Mormonism, but the online backlash disagrees. I have seen a significant amount of discourse online about whether they could even consider themselves to be Mormon anymore.
Since watching the show, I have recommended it to everyone I know, including all my guy friends. It’s a great show to laugh at with your friends or roommates, keeping you engrossed with the plot without being too heavy of a watch. I imagine there will inevitably be a second season and look forward to that when it drops as well.