“If you have been a fan of the show Sister Wives, you’re probably existing in a really confusing state right now, I know that I am. Sister Wives has grown into a community of podcasts, TikTokers, YouTubers, Instagram accounts, whatever the heck you call tweeting these days. Over on X, I wanted to come on here and chat with you guys because like I said in my last video, talking things out helps me immensely, so I thank you in advance for listening to me. What happens when one of our favorite reality shows gets really, really, really real?

We know what the show was like before, what will the show look like after? We have a lot to talk about, let’s get into today’s [Music] video. Hey everyone, what’s up, it’s Sarah and welcome back to my channel. It is a heavy time in the Sister Wives community and I know from feedback that what is going on has triggered a lot of emotions for fans and viewers of the show. So, I continue to implore everyone please take care of yourself and make your mental health a priority. James, Amanda, and I have decided to pause our Sister Wives rewatch series because discussing the early years of the show just seems to be a little too much right now.

So, we have decided we are going to discuss all the glorious hot mess that is Seeking Sister Wife season 5 on Wednesday nights at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. For the time being, we will come back to Sister Wives, we just need to take a few weeks off. We will all still be producing content on our channels as usual. My plan for right now is to kind of play it by ear by what feels right to talk about when it comes to Sister Wives. I do think there is space to discuss what has transpired without being exploitative, where that line is, I’ll be honest, I don’t know. But if we all clam up and go radio silent, I think a valuable discussion will be missed.

And that is the importance of us as a society taking care of each other and our own mental health, especially when it comes to young men. For years, one of the biggest observations that I have had about the Brown family is that as the seasons go on, it had become more and more clear that there was a show persona and however the family was in real life, real life would seep out in bits by way of social media. And when we would compare it to what we watched on the show, the discrepancies were glaring. Even the Brown’s own book told a different story than what we saw on the show. But us as viewers, we’ve kind of just accepted the status quo. Cody and the Sister Wives were going to try to convince us of one thing on the show and we as viewers were left to piece together what we believed to be authentic.

I talk about the Brown family and Sister Wives because this is the show that I have covered for years, but this concept of having a reality show persona isn’t exclusive to Sister Wives. We hear all the time about so-and-so getting a bad edit or another person being really different in real life than on their show. Or we will notice blatant production trolling, Bravo is really famous for that. And speaking of Bravo, I wanted to talk about the fact that there are times when reality shows all of a sudden go very real world when scandal or tragedy strike the cast. We spent 90% of season 10 watching a very obvious lack of chemistry between Rachel and Tom Schwartz, wondering why production was trying to make this a thing. Then scandal happens, season 10 has already finished filming and poor Sheena couldn’t even secure the spotlight surrounding her wedding for more than 5 minutes.

Word gets out that it was actually Tom’s scandal and Rachel that had been having a month-long affair. Ariana and Tom break up, cameras pick back up, and the show catapulted into the mainstream. Everyone was talking about Vanderpump Rules and everyone was anticipating season 11. And if you’re watching season 11, the production’s decisions as far as vilifying Ariana and giving scandal a redemption arc have certainly been a strange choice. This brings me to the recent Lifetime docu-series about Wendy Williams. This docu-series has been very controversial as a lot of viewers have accused the network, producers, and Wendy’s own family and inner circle of exploiting her when they allowed this docu-series to move forward.

The ‘Where is Wendy Williams’ docu-series, while controversial, while eliciting a lot of backlash, also garnered huge ratings for Lifetime, actually surpassing the Gypsy Rose Blanchard docu-series in viewership. Rumors are the Brown family will continue filming Sister Wives. Ultimately, I think that is a decision that the individual family members need to make for themselves. Whether or not they want to share their grief with fans and viewers and whether or not viewers want to continue watching the show is a choice each viewer needs to make for themselves. I’ve had people tell me that they just can’t watch the show anymore and that is completely understandable.

I think one thing is certain though if the Browns do continue filming there’s no longer going to be this division between their show personas and their real life. I’m just going to keep it 100% real here, I don’t think there’s any chance that the network is going to proactively cancel the show and I don’t really think that Cody and Robin in particular can afford to not film the show since they don’t have any other sources of income like the OG3 do with their MLMs. When Christine announced she was leaving Cody, there was a surge of ratings for Sister Wives. Christine and Janelle just did a multi-network press tour when season 18 was airing because there has been more public interest in this family than ever before.

If the show does continue, there is sure to be an even bigger surge in ratings because society is always going to be morbidly curious. In my opinion, producers and the family have an opportunity to speak about mental health issues in a way that may help a lot of families, including their own. My hope for the family is that they are leaning on each other right now. I don’t know what is going to come for the interpersonal relationships amongst the family members. There was a lot of dysfunction when we last left off with them. Will they rally around each other? I sure hope so. The family continues to honor Garrison on social media. Christine just posted a clip from the show when Garrison built a flower bed for Truly so she could have a hobby.