‘Wife Swap: The Real Housewives’ Recap: Emily on the Farm

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 seas