Copyright Vulture
Three episodes into Bravo’s Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition, I’m ready to call this experiment a noble failure. The highly produced Wife Swap format clashes with the surprisingly nuanced family drama we get on Real Housewives, which means the women we know and love are flattened into two-dimensional types. There’s very little commitment to the idea of actually trading lives — Angie was never going to use a composting toilet — and the show seems completely averse to conflict. On top of that, the third episode of the series sets itself up for failure by casting Emily Simpson, a solid supporting player on The Real Housewives of Orange County but arguably the least dynamic personality in that cast. While Emily’s family has been central to her story line on the current season, Wife Swap steers clear of depicting her son’s emerging diagnoses, reducing the conflict in her household to the idea that she doesn’t appreciate her husband enough. It’s a dull, predictable angle in an episode that repeatedly asks, “Are we doing enough to thank men?” As always, we start by meeting both families. As RHOC viewers know, Emily and Shane have three kids: 12-year-old Annabelle and 9-year-old twins Luke and Keller. Emily estimates that household chores are divided 60-40 in Shane’s favor, while he says it’s more like 70-30. Wife Swap explains this as Emily shirking her stay-at-home-mom responsibilities by ending up on a TV show. As Shane laments, “I’m an attorney and most of my time is spent with domestic duties.” Please don’t gaslight me like I didn’t watch that man fail the bar multiple times; there’s a reason Emily became the primary breadwinner. Emily is also struggling with Annabelle, who has inherited her mom’s attitude and the grouchiness of any adolescent forced to grow up with an Evolution Media camera crew in her home. Over in Park Ridge, New Jersey, we meet Caley and Erik Svensson and their children, Graham, 11; Adelaide, 7; and Georgina, 5. Wife Swap often goes for class-based culture shock, but the Svensson home looks fairly opulent. It just happens to also be a farm with horses, chickens, goats, and an indoor pig named Pikachu. The major contrast between the families here is that in the Svensson household, Caley does all the domestic duties herself, which has created some palpable resentment. “My pet peeve when it comes to Erik … I mean, where do we start?” Caley says. For his part, Erik feels like he’s a “walking ATM,” which is a “thankless job.” I’m sure this man works hard as a medical director, but the editors do him no favors with all the footage of him sleeping in. Caley hopes that doing the swap will show Erik how much she does for their family, and I guess Erik hopes that she might come back hating him less. For now, she squirms away when he tries to touch her (“You treat me like a venereal disease,” he gripes), and they don’t so much as hug good-bye. When Emily gets to her temporary new home, she isn’t put off by the farm of it all, having grown up on 12 acres in the middle of nowhere, but she is very distressed to see Crocs. (She responds to Pikachu exactly as I would, saying, “Oh my God, you’re a pig!”) It’s not long, though, before she’s put to work, first by mucking the stables, a gentle euphemism for shoveling horse shit. “I haven’t worked that hard in 16 years,” she admits. That evening, ahead of the family walk, it’s up to Emily to halter Navajo the horse because Erik is completely inept at anything involving the animals. And it’s not just the animals — Erik has also fully relinquished bedtime duties and meal-making, despite some half-assed offers to help. After one day, Emily has correctly clocked that Caley does everything and Erik hides in his office and “tepidly kind of interjects sometimes.” At least she manages to find joy in collecting chicken eggs with Adelaide, who is about a thousand times more interested in hanging out with Emily than Annabelle is. Emily suggests naming the chickens, which just means assigning them to various RHOC cast members. “The disheveled chicken?” Emily says with that familiar glint of evil in her eye. “That one’s named Shannon.” Over in Orange County, Caley is delighted to discover that she’s traded places with Emily Simpson. (I do wish it had been Heather based on Caley’s threat to Erik, “You’re screwed if it’s Terry Dubrow, let’s just say that.”) I think Wife Swap could have used more fourth-wall breaking to distinguish itself from the non–Real Housewives version. If Caley is a Bravoholic, let’s lean into that! Instead, we just get an intriguingly shady comment that Emily’s house looks bigger on TV. Aside from Annabelle mostly ignoring her as expected, Caley is warmly welcomed by the Simpsons. She’s also shocked to learn that Shane prepares dinner for the kids, and that he’s taking her out for (Brittany Cartwright voice) date night. “Shane cooks, he cleans, he’s scheduling date nights. I didn’t think these husbands exist — apparently they do,” she says in a confessional designed to make Erik squirm. At dinner, Caley explains that her husband wants a traditional housewife and that she feels guilty about not bringing in money. Shane counters that domestic work is still work, a point that I did not think needed making in 2025, but here we are. The next day, Caley gets to sleep in and then go out for coffee with Emily’s bestie, Gina, which feels a little more like living a Housewives fantasy. (Or would if they were using that time to shit-talk Katie Ginella.) Gina is visibly depressed by Caley’s description of a life free of me-time and social engagements, where, “I’m usually talking to the pig who’s eating lunch next to me.” When Caley says, “The last person I please is myself,” it really looks like Gina might cry. She does offer some helpful advice to Caley about the importance of taking time for herself, and I found myself grateful that Emily’s closest friend is one of our most level-headed Housewives and not, well, the namesake of a disheveled chicken on the farm. When it comes time to institute new house rules, Caley goes easy on the Simpson family, though I’m sure Annabelle would beg to differ, given how horrified she is by the limited screen-time policy. Caley also has Annabelle help her prepare family dinner, since Emily asked the new “mom” to try to break through Annabelle’s shell and bond with her. This is a hilariously big ask for anyone encountering a 12-year-old they’ve never met, but particularly silly when you consider Wife Swap’s brief filming schedule. Nevertheless, Annabelle does sort of warm up to Caley, especially after she’s allowed to choose what to put on for family movie night. On the whole, though, there’s really so little conflict here — Caley’s new rules all fall under the umbrella of the Simpsons spending more time together, and that’s not something any of them (except maybe Annabelle) would push back against. As nice as this is, it makes for a largely boring hour of television. At least Emily is putting Erik to work on the farm over in New Jersey. When he finds out Emily’s first new rule is that he’s in charge of the animals, he moans, “Why does everybody hate me?” When he learns the next rule is giving him bedtime duties, it looks like he might jump out the nearest window. I can’t say any of this makes Erik likable, but his dramatics do give the editors something to work with. Naturally, when it comes time to actually perform the household chores he’s foisted entirely on Caley, Erik marvels at all that his wife gets done. “How does she do this every day?” he wonders. He’s equally unprepared for the date night Emily requests, especially after she reveals that Erik has to prepare something himself. It’s clear she’s going to regret that when we see his cooking method, which involves dumping a pile of ground beef in a pan. Thankfully, his kids are eager to help. I was particularly charmed by little Georgina, who dresses up as a chef and comes up with the restaurant name Glorious. Over the course of their dinner, Emily uses her self-producing Housewife skills to get at the root of the conflict between Erik and Caley. It turns out that Erik doesn’t do more around the house because he doesn’t feel sufficiently valued. Personally, I think a great way to be more valued would be to do more around the house, but the situation is more complicated than it looks, according to Emily. Because Erik doesn’t feel appreciated, he’s stopped trying and instead hides out in his office. He is particularly lacking in gratitude and affection from Caley, who low-key forced him to get all these animals he never wanted and won’t sit down to watch basketball with him. I can understand Erik’s perspective here, but it’s frustrating to see Wife Swap brush off his learned helplessness as a reasonable response to not getting enough credit for being a financial provider. Emily says she sees her own husband in Erik, and it makes her sad that she isn’t more thoughtful about Shane’s feelings. Fair enough, though I can’t help but wonder how often Shane expresses his gratitude toward Emily for the six-figure Bravo salary she brings in. On her last day, Emily decides the whole family should go fly fishing because that’s one of Erik’s favorite activities, and while it ends up being a total disaster, he appreciates that she tried. “I realize that I never actually just make the effort to do some type of activity that Shane would like to do,” Emily shares. She’s also emotional thinking about all the good times she’s had with the Svensson kids, wishing for the same kind of bonding activities with her own. “Why do I not put more time and effort into my own family?” she wonders, which is a more important takeaway to me than how she needs to give Shane more credit. Meanwhile, it’s not clear what Caley got from the Simpsons, except confirmation that it’s nice to have a husband who helps out around the house. I did laugh when she said good-bye to Keller and Luke and asked if they might want to get a pet pig, to which Keller replied, “If it’s big and juicy.” That kid has exceptional timing.
