Shannon Beador Is Only Making Things Worse For Herself

By Emma Chance | TV | October 11, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | TV | October 11, 2024 |

We’ve already discussed how Shannon Beador is the main character, for better or worse, of The Real Housewives of Orange County, and how the exploitation of her messy personal life is what drives the narrative of the show. We’ve also discussed how reality television has changed recently, namely by the breaking down of the fourth wall. Shannon continues to be a prime example of the effects of that change, as with her, it’s often a chicken and egg situation: did the show ruin her life, or would all of this be happening even if there weren’t cameras? “This” being an ongoing public lawsuit with her ex-boyfriend John Janssen and his new fiancée, Shannon’s former RHOC co-star, Alexis Bellino, that threatens to grind what’s left of her reputation even further into the dirt.

With each passing episode of season 18, things keep getting worse for Shannon. Thursday’s episode saw her hosting the cast (sans Alexis, who is only on the show as a “Friend” and not a full “Housewife”) on a trip to London for her 60th birthday. Tamra Judge came along, despite her and Shannon’s ongoing feud, and that’s when we seasoned viewers knew we wouldn’t get through even one day in jolly old England without a fight that ended with Shannon storming out of a room.

Well, we were right. At a confusingly smokey dinner, Heather Dubrow confronted Shannon about the selfie she’d shown her a few episodes prior, of her bloodied face after her infamous DUI arrest. Shannon claimed she’d sent the picture to John after the accident and he’d never responded, thus making him look like a complete and total dick. Tamra felt this was a manipulation tactic meant to garner sympathy since Shannon went on (Andy Cohen’s frenemy) Jeff Lewis’s SiriusXM radio show, and when he asked if John had “heard” the accident, which happened around the corner from his home, Shannon answered that the thought hadn’t occurred to her.

This interrogation was too much for Shannon, so she, you guessed it, stormed out of the room. Gina Kirschenheiter followed her to the bar, where Shannon showed Gina a text she’d found from Alexis from 2018, proving an earlier accusation that Alexis had been the one to instigate an earlier lawsuit involving Shannon, Alexis, and Alexis’s then-husband.

The lawsuits are confusing and not the point here. The point is that this is Shannon’s pattern: She delivers what she thinks is a smoking gun when she’s one-on-one with someone, and then can’t take it when it becomes a group discussion. But what she said during the group discussion is the most telling: “This is a reality show trickling into my life,” as in, “The reality show ruined my life” in our chicken-and-egg scenario.

“Isn’t this our real life?” The other women wondered aloud. Shannon wiped away a tear and commenced the storming.

Then she did a really bad job of defending herself on Watch What Happens Live! after saying minutes earlier that she no longer “feels the need” to defend herself.

Now, I don’t think the OGs like Tamra and Heather really believe the “this is our real life” bullshit—they’re old pros at manipulation and story-lining the same as Shannon—but what’s tragic about this is that Shannon is still parsing what’s real and what’s television when, like it or not, what’s happening on the show has become her real life. She’s trying to see the forest for the trees, but her whole world is just trees now, and the only path out is total obscurity, which I don’t think she wants and, unfortunately, can no longer afford.