Vicki Gunvalson: She Who Woo-hoos Last, Woo-hoos Loudest

WashingtonPost.com:

Hard to believe there was once a gentler time in Bravo's sordid "Real Housewives" era - before such women were yanking out one another's hair extensions, sneaking into the White House and inflating tiny grudges into ceaselessly overblown animosities punctuated by overturning tables in one-star restaurants.


Five years ago, in what was supposed to be a larky, reality-TV retort to ABC's fictional hit "Desperate Housewives," Bravo bought into a show in which camera crews hunkered down with five women living in (or very near) a pricey, gated Orange County community called Coto de Caza.


"Really, it's been seven years since they first started following us around," says Vicki Gunvalson. Her son had responded to a producer's search for subjects willing to participate in a documentary-ish look at the privileged lives of Coto teenagers. Instead, the show ended up being about their moms.


"The Real Housewives of Orange County" returns Sunday night for a sixth season, and it doesn't look to be a good one for poor Vicki.


She's on the phone, speaking to us from another sunny Coto day. She's busy at the office, doing Vicki things, between business appointments; keeping herself in the (here it comes) "top 1 percent" of insurance sales agents in the country, whatever that means.


In all, 13 women have rotated through the show, and at one time or another, they've all had something bad to say about Vicki, and vice versa. Since the show began, many of the women on it have split with their husbands. One lost her rich boyfriend to cancer. One left the show to give her family more privacy, including a son who had a drug problem; another left because she was fed up with it. One left under the shadow of eviction and recessionary comeuppance; a current cast member is staving off foreclosure.


Some of these Lost Housewives of Orange County still visit the show in cameo appearances, but only Vicki, who will turn 49 this month, has endured the whole way. This makes her the longest-lasting Housewife on Bravo, an honor of dubious distinction.


Over the years, viewers have watched Vicki cut loose on her party boat at her vacation home in Lake Havasu, Ariz., emitting her trademark cries of "woo-hoo" wherever a margarita could be found. They listened to her talk endlessly about her 12-hour workdays. They watched her needle her layabout son, Michael, into joining the insurance business. They watched her claw and be clawed in the show's usual she said/she said warfare. They watched her complain that her long-suffering husband, Donn Gunvalson, was not "filling up my love tank"; and then they watched her renew her wedding vows with him at a Turks and Caicos beach resort.


It's no secret to gossip-blog readers that Vicki and Donn separated last fall - which looks to provide one of the bigger OMGs of the new season. Vicki won't elaborate on it. "You'll have to watch," she says, ever the good promoter.

Of course, there is some irony that Vicki is the "longest-lasting Housewife" considering how many people (including myself) who can't stand her. But give credit where it's due as she certainly has shared a lot of ups and downs with audiences over the years and yet she's still here...despite what we think. Then too, like I always say in order for a show like 'Housewives' to be successful you need a villain and Vicki has certainly mastered that role to a tee.