Bravo's unscripted series offers that horror movie gimmick of showing you unlikable people doing ill-advised things that you can't prevent no matter how loudly you yell or curse at the screen. But because the characters are -- in the physical sense, at least -- "real," and the world-shattering plot twist at the core of this season was telegraphed to the audience long in advance, what might otherwise seem a guilty pleasure seems instead a travesty, as depraved a spectacle as anything that has ever appeared on American screens.

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In the Los Angeles Times this morning, Armstrong's friend William Ratner said that the show "was [Russell's] downfall. The TV show put a lot of pressure on him to produce financially. You're on a show with a couple like the Maloofs, who are verifiable billionaires, and you're not," said William Ratner. ("Housewife" Adrienne Maloof's family owns the Sacramento Kings and the Palms casino in Las Vegas.)

Armstrong's lawyer, Ronald Richards, speaking to ABC, noted that: "These couples join these shows, and then they keep trying to outdo each other and they end up spending all their money trying to sustain a lifestyle that's unrealistic and wasn't there prior to the show," said Richards. "The weekly social events, the dinners and all the BS, trying to pretend you have unlimited resources in Beverly Hills is tough."

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2. Cancellation of the day: Sorry, Kate Gosselin, your money train is at an end, as TLC has just canceled " Kate Plus 8."  Don't worry, I'm sure you will find other ways to exploit your children for cash ... maybe have the younger ones try out for "Toddlers & Tiaras"?

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The 48-year-old mother of two daughters -- best known for her Teresa Giudice-bating antics on "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" -- has, like vast hordes of reality stars before her, kept herself in the public eye over the past few years through a variety of stunts and ventures. Last year she released the prophetically titled memoir "The Naked Truth," had the inevitable sex tape scandal, left "Real Housewives," and briefly reinvented herself as a quasi lesbian chanteuse.

Then, this week -- in a move that somehow coincided with the season premiere of the now Staub-free "Real Housewives" -- the news came that Staub, who celebrated her last birthday at Scores, had signed a three-year contract with the famed gentleman's club to perform "raw and fully uncensored" for its clubs and Web site.

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Yes, "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" (9 p.m. Thursdays on Bravo) are just as terrifying as the others of their kind. In fact, these housewives – soaking in the relentless Southern Californian sun, sucking in the toxic, smoggy air, injecting themselves with the finest biochemical concoctions money can buy, rubbing bony elbows with the rich and famous but never getting close enough to the camera to assuage their oversized egos – may be even more frightening than the rest of their brood. They've come close to the holy grail of fame, but have never sipped from its coveted chalice. And that is what they desire, more than money, more than enormous mansions, more than breasts as buoyant as overinflated water wings. They want to be celebrities, damn it. Sure, they have everything a woman could ever want, but they're still starving for more, more, more!

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I'm not much of a reality show fan. Besides the occasional TLC show about cake or polygamy, my DVR is otherwise packed with critically approved scripted television, like "Modern Family" and "Boardwalk Empire." But despite the bottomless spate of new "Housewives" series that Bravo keeps trotting out, the "Real Housewives" franchise still fascinates and enthralls me.

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Sure enough, when Salahi appeared on "The View" this week with the other Housewives, things quickly devolved into a bickering fest -- until Whoopi Goldberg emerged from backstage, nudged her and told her, "Excuse me, could you get back to the White House, please?"

That was motivation enough for Salahi, who promptly decided Whoopi had hit her.

Now, whipping up a catfight might play with the Housewives, but your mouth better not start writing checks to former Week in Crazy winner Goldberg unless your ears are ready to cash them. Backstage, Goldberg, by her own admission, had some "choice words" for Salahi.

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I envy them. They have exactly what I need: a worthy target for my unfocused spite. Without an easy scapegoat in my sights, what happens? Innocent husbands get criticized for the shoddy way they wrapped up the pork loin, causing it to bleed all over the vegetable bin. Innocent little doggies get snapped at for dragging their innocent butts across the fluffy shag carpet, which they believe was purchased for that purpose. Innocent little children aren't sung the "Wizard of Oz" songbook at the dinner table because Mommy is searching for something new to complain about instead.

This is where the "Real Housewives" franchise comes into play: Instead of needing an actual arrogant boss or nosy neighbor or meddling ex-girlfriend in your life, you can hate the filthy rich, self-involved, surgically sculpted social climbers on your TV screen each week. It's engaging, it's cathartic, and no innocent animals get their feelings hurt along the way. In fact, it's just like high school: You listen to everyone's self-deluded, vainglorious stories, and then you choose teams.

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Bravo has eagerly promoted the girl-on-girl-on-girl-on-multiple-innocent-bystanders action ever since the hair-pulling, expletive-enhanced throwdown occurred at a New Jersey country club last November. And why not? As Jerry Seinfeld explained years ago in a memorable, claws-out episode of his sitcom, "Men think if women are grabbing and clawing at each other there's a chance they might ... somehow ... kiss."

There's a thriving genre of catfight porn, but there are plenty of mainstream examples of the sexy catfight that becomes so much more. I'll never forget seeing "Wild Things" at a crowded theater. When Neve Campbell and Denise Richards started kicking each other's asses in that pool, you could hear boners rising in the audience well before they got around to kissing. Those clothes-ripping Miller Lite campaigns and Ginger vs. Mary Ann cream pie battles all tap into that simple, Seinfeldian allure of the catfight -- the way it combines our love of lesbianism with our love of a good hate fuck.

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On Monday's "Watch What Happens Live," Staub performed her new single "So Close" with "lesbian superstar" Lori Michaels, and either we've had a little too much Benadryl lately or it was a pretty damn respectable live performance. The slow, melancholy ballad might not make anybody forget Alicia Keys, but in the pantheon of "Real Housewives" singles, it's no "Tardy for the Party" or "Money Can't Buy You Class" abomination. If we heard it on the radio, we might not leap to shut it off right away. And that's straight from the heart, Danielle.

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Salahi and her husband, Tareq, crashed president Obama’s state dinner in November, snapped photos with President Obama, V.P. Joe Biden, Katie Couric, called Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel “Ron,” and then simply went home and posted the pictures on Facebook.

Bravo had announced in May that the "Real Housewives" would be "scouting the D.C. area to identify...women who have their pulse on the most important cultural events, political galas, gallery openings and fund-raisers in Washington society,"noted NYDaily News. Given the caliber of main characters in the series, Michaele Salahi should fit right in.

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Today's revelation that Hustler is releasing a 75-minute opus of "Real Housewives" star Danielle Staub doing the nasty is just the latest in a genre that wore out its welcome long before Dustin Diamond popularized the Dirty Sanchez. At this point, if you're a contestant on "Survivor," ever ran for president or have the name "Kardashian," we just assume there's a video out there of you making your O face. And our fatigue from your narcissism has actually finally won out over mere prurient curiosity.

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Jacquie frets about her 18-year-old, Ashley, who refuses to heed her warnings about the dangers of going to clubs.

"Ever try knocking the shit out of her?" Dina says.

Both women laugh.

"I just think that she maybe needs to open a can of whoop-ass, kick her ass, and then maybe she'll listen," Dina clarifies. "She needs a good old-fashioned Italian beating."

Rest assured, the RHONJs do not actually beat their offspring on camera. That would be illegal. What they do instead, on a weekly basis, is harass, humiliate and exploit them.

Consider housewife Danielle. She's the designated villain of the program, a skeletal divorcee with a dark past and money problems. During the same episode, we see her informing her 15-year-old, Christine, that a modeling agency wants to hire her.

"When you make it big, you gonna remember me?" Danielle asks.

"Yeah," Christine mumbles.

"Promise?" she says, nudging the girl with her sandal.

"Yeah," the girl repeats.

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Don't get too sidetracked by such distractions, though, because over on Bravo, six women with great shoes, fragile identities and blurry ego boundaries are taking the genre to a whole new level of postmodern, high-capitalist sophistication. If you ask the ladies of "The Real Housewives of New York City" (premieres 11 p.m. Thursday, March 4, on Bravo), of course, they don't have a lot in common, but to the outsider's eye, they share an uncanny inability to distinguish their own needs and desires from their promotional aims or to separate their personalities from their brands. As a result, "friendships" between the women are currently viewed primarily through the lens of determining which strategic alliances might best facilitate their individual attempts at self-branding. Is Ramona throwing a party on her yacht, or just hawking her new jewelry line? Is LuAnn really hurt by Ramona's husband, Mario, calling her "Count-less" (in the wake of recently having been thrown over for a younger woman by her husband, the Count) or is she enriching her brand by conjuring up a little empathy-inducing back story? Who can really say?

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Of the many gifts that "Will & Grace" bestowed upon my generation of gay men -- increased visibility, cultural cachet, a naive understanding of New York apartment sizes -- one of the most significant was the popularization of the fag hag (a term the show's buttoned-down characters were too demure to even utter on air). The sitcom made being a gay man with a  female best friend seem pretty darn fun. Will and Grace had a fabulous Upper West Side apartment. They had dinner parties, and screwball banter, and sassy, sassy friends. Their life was a series of hilarious pratfalls.

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They've also become very easy to parody -- although not to parody well. Thank goodness for the folks at KCS Cougar Productions, who have uploaded their smart and creepily dead-on Bravo reality-show cartoon parodies to YouTube. They're all worth a look (especially if, like me, you enjoy watching dramatic readings of "Cop Without a Badge"), but the best place to start watching is their recent "NYC Prep" takedown, which manages to capture the essence of the show's characters (Jessie's money quote: "Brah brah brah, Barney's, brah brah brah, Operation Smile") with remarkable efficiency, if not subtlety.

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Being stupid is fun and relaxing. That much is obvious, and it enrages the non-stupid to no end. Just look at the Letters pages here on Salon: Filled with intelligent, tormented human beings, angry at everything under the sun, absolutely furious -- livid! -- over the existence of television sets and octuplet moms on disability and fat kids and Sarah Palin and anyone insensitive to the plights of polar bears, severe allergy sufferers, the home-schooled and, of course, intelligent, tormented, lactose-intolerant human beings like themselves.

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In her essay for the New Scientist titled "Why Do We Need Bras for Babies?" (short answer: We don't), the British writer Susie Orbach claims that over the past 25 years, "the notion of the empowered consumer, along with the workings of the diet, pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic surgery and style industries, and the affordability and availability of their products have made us view our bodies as something we can and should perfect." Taken together, she writes, these forces have conspired to create a global "beauty terror" whose symptoms include penis pill spammers, baby bra sets and stilettos and extreme makeover shows. She writes:

So why is bodily contentment so hard to find? Why are body transformations, from sex change, to the drive to amputate good limbs, to cosmetic surgery, if not ubiquitous, then a growing part of public consciousness?

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