Hey, Hey, Can We Get Michaela Kell On 'The Real Housewives'?

Despite Twitter discourse proclaiming Homer's The Odyssey either canon or completely irrelevant earlier this year, one of the epic's mythological creatures, known as sirens, have only become main characters again this summer thanks to Julianne Moore (and Netflix). In ancient mythology, Sirens were first depicted as half-women, half-birds, whose sensual calls seduced sailors so hard they wrecked their boats, driven crazy by feelings of pining and desire — not totally unlike how straight men crash out over Hollywood starlets on Elon Musk's internet. Over time, these devious divas' iconography became reimagined with mermaid tails and pastel scales. In a very un-Disney universe, Ariel's voice was never stolen, and Eric drowned to hear it under the sea, instead.

Netflix's seasonal drama, Sirens, paints Michaela Kell's sweetly sapphic world in pale nautical hues. Michaela's siren call clearly worked on her husband, Peter (Kevin Bacon), and was in the middle of working its mystical powers on Simone, too, when Peter intervened. Simone's obsession with Michaela's effortless, addictive wealth is relatable, considering it's the way watching The Real Housewives was once unstoppable in making viewers feel. Like Simone watching Michaela with a stare suggesting she might want to wear her skin, Bravo fans used to revel, without fail, in the parasocial pleasure of devouring the lives of the stupid rich and even more stupidly shameless. Now, Homegoods-decorated casitas and financial crimes-related prison sentences are the norm. 

Only vintage Housewives-level wealth and star power can create the kind of enmeshed hero-sidekick duos that once kept us entranced on screen: LVP and Kyle, Nene and Cynthia, Carole and Bethenny. The Real Housewives reign is far from over, but it's impossible to ignore that the institution has strayed away from peeling back the curtain into co-dependent, complex 1%er female relationships; new Wives are often too concerned with building a fandom to actually be fan-worthy. That's why so few Wife-duos seem to last these days. They ought to take a page out of Michaela's gilded book because she (and Simone) delivered more Housewife energy in four episodes than the entire season of new RHONY.

One of the trickiest components of becoming a household name Housewife is having an authentic brand that radiates from the inside out. Bravo newbies like Brynn Whitfield and Brit Eady got the memo (mailed first-class by Bethenny Frankel) that brand is king, but failed to realize that their brand can't just be a surface-level accoutrement for social media. Our most beloved OG Cougars Without A Cause were never wrapped up with convincing the viewers they were one thing or another. They were so outlandishly themselves, with a campy conviction built into their bones that permeated their relationships. 

To use Brit again as an example, she put plenty of effort into selling viewers (and Instagram) that she was an insurance mogul baddie. But name one real Bravoholic who doesn't know the name of Vicki Gunvalson's insurance company (25 years strong, thank you very much). Vicki didn't talk about girlbossing; she ate, breathed, and slept Coto Insurance, radiating her Corporate Karen aura during family van phone calls and awkward dinners with Don. In the same way, Michaela's top-shelf self-help brand extended beyond when Vanity Fair came to her seaside mansion. The scripted SAHMistress made the whole staff learn her mantras: "hey, hey" and my personal favorite, "If it doesn't serve you, let it go." (Something Dorinda might wistfully whisper between martinis.) Today's Bravo stars are too concerned with shopping the right looks than serving up their souls. It's part of the reason Mary Cosby is impossible to look away from. She's not counting cards to become a fan favorite; she simply doesn't have time when it's a full-time job stunting as Pastor Mary.

Something Mary and Michaela also possess is the lack of care for their brand being likable. I wish we'd reenter a Housewife era where the women would drop a doozy like "Can you ping Jose for me?" about their butler without worrying about being canceled. Sure, acting just like Ramona Singer won't work in 2025, but at the same time, entertainment factor always supersedes likability in Housewivesland. 

Michaela is so delectable to digest because she doesn't get normal people things, like how to sext your husband to keep him interested. Michaela didn't care that practical strangers (like Meghann Fahy's Devon) felt compelled to call her a "Meglomanical slut whore and a murderer," a dig that should be framed in Andy's Clubhouse. In the same way, some of our best Housewives aren't women we'd want to be stuck in line behind at TSA. In fact, as Lisa Barlow would agree, they should be flying first class so that scenario isn't possible. Michael Scott accidentally defined the perfect Housewife: we should be afraid of how much we love someone so foreign to our own world. 

Sirens' weirdness was so pervasive, it's the type of project that makes you feel like you know something new about its stars. If Julianne Moore isn't really Michaela Kell, she's at least a woman who deeply understands Michaela's motivations. She also must have a high level of vision, trust, and patience to make a show like this at a stage in her career when it would be much easier to coast. Doesn't that resume sound like the makings for the perfect Cool Carole character RHOBH desperately needs? Hollywood newbie Milly Alcock's ability to chameleon into refined psychopath, Simone, is stunning. Simone's type-A-moral behavior is the missing ingredient Summer House will need next season, with Lindsay stepping into motherhood.

But whether Julianne or Milly have secrets stacked up like Kiki Kell seems unlikely, another excellent Housewife tenet. The fact that Michaela privately harbored the truth about her husband's ex-wife's botched plastic surgery is the type of old money mystery that you might think was fake if you hadn't witnessed Taylor Armstrong's ill-fated romance with Russell or Vicki's non-con with Brooks play out on screen. Michaela's ice-cold burn to Devon, "Is there anything else you'd like to air before Jose sees you out?" feels like a line fitting of Bravo's most underappreciated yet most effervescent franchise, The Real Housewives of Miami. It doesn't take much to imagine Alexia saying it, with lines like "I live in your fake rented apartment, I drive your fake rented car, I do all this stuff, nothing is yours, nothing is mine" rolling off her tongue. 

The only fighting more tense than Michaela's final showdown with Peter is Shannon Storms Beador's chilling battles with her ex, David. "You gave me a prenup that only values my ovaries!" is haunting, but "your mother told Tamra that I pushed you to an affair? Are you fucking kidding me!" is ghoulish material. A Real Housewife family dynamic doesn't have to be messy, but it does have to be raw. That's why Mary Cosby opening up about Robert Jr.'s addiction and Alexia taking us through the divorce trenches with Todd is electric compared to the self-produced passion of petty House Husbands like Pavit. Michaela Kell never had children, but she is a mother: "No one knows how to take care of those birds except for me."

You don't have to be in tune with celestial spirits to understand that Michaela Kell is what the Bravoverse needs right now. Her fictional iconic presence hopefully has a chance to be replicated in the reality TV world with the highly anticipated arrival of The Real Housewives of Rhode Island. RHORI, with its coastal elite location, could be the serene backdrop for chaos that the franchise will need to anchor viewership lest it find the fate of D.C.  

"This bitch is the devil," Devon says of Kiki before Sirens is over. If God is a woman, then maybe the devil should be too. "Don't you look beautiful in that dress I had made for you?" is the type of elegant evil Bravo certainly needs right now.