Real Housewives of Orange County’s bad season 18 taglines

The season 18 Orange County taglines are out, and viewers of the Bravo franchise OG deserve better. Let’s take them in order. There is a lesson on messaging, writing, and editing in here somewhere.

Heather fails the flute

Just because I drink from a flute doesn’t mean you can play me.

The misaligned metaphor kills the otherwise weak wordplay (Heather drinks from and is not the flute). Like its speaker, the line reveals nothing aside from a tacky approach to wealth built on misunderstanding the Hippocratic oath and the meaning of the word healer.

Shannon, oh no

Even in the harshest of times, this Storms will always “whether” it. (I joke, it’s Shannon and so she is weathered by the storm every time.)

I relate to Shannon, but as the New York blog Vulture recently posted, she’s never had a good season. I’ll add, why wouldn’t this tagline match her worst start yet, but it’s not the weather. Shannon’s messes are a result of her obvious character flaws. Example: She needs to reference Storms, her middle name I think, and thinks pairing it with weather is clever, but she fails to notice the antecedent of “it” is “times.” While some pronouns have become more flexible over time, that one has not.

Emily, lawyerly construction

I used to question people for a living. Now, I just do it for fun.

Emily’s tagline reveals more by what it omits: she alludes to her lawyer past, but doesn’t mention law school or firm; that’s not an oversight for a pithy line or even to give a rote line rhythm. In DC, she’d talk a lot about being a lawyer; in California, she talks of working out a lot.

Gina, the dangler

Like the properties I represent, I know my worth.

In technical writing, we avoid anthropomorphism, which is just metaphor by a similar name in more creative contexts. Clearly the real estate Gina sells are not sentient. By mentioning them near the modified subject, many will have to clarify the line’s meaning internally. Rewrite.

Katie, twice deluded

When you live your life on the green, envy is just par for the course.

First, wherever you live, someone else wants to live there and may be envious. If your life is small, you will enjoy this. A golf course is the opposite of nature and offers none of the convenience of city or suburban living. I suspect she stumbled across “par for the course” looking out her window and didn’t workshop other lines. Terrible framing for a first season.

Jennifer, conjugated verbs

People bend over backwards to get me, and their form is terrible.

The people, they bend over backwards, and individually, none have good form. I get it, but it should have been rewritten during selection and editing, including killing the “s” in backwards.

Tamra, an old pro phones in good enough

The only thing stuck up about me is my middle finger.

The line leans into the professional (working) class roots of this franchise and could mean Tamra recognizes her behavior is often out-of-line, told by a [fill in blank], full of sound and fury, signifying very little.

Cf. govcon

I reviewed Lockheed Martin’s landing page on 1 August 2024 for text elements similar to taglines. The page included key messages by page section (”What we do,” “Our promise,” “Capabilities by domain,” “Meet our people,” “Latest news”).

Lockheed’s promise:

Ensuring those we serve always stay ahead of ready. It’s our identity, our culture, and our promise.

Unless your customers are young canines, helping them “stay” is a pretty unremarkable promise. Then, some readers will interpret “ahead of ready” to mean wasted effort; ready, like unique, is a binary. Combining the separate concepts of identity, culture, and promise reads unsophisticated to the point of concern. On the other hand, such empty content is effortlessly skipped on a landing page that leads to actual SEC- and government-customer-required and approved data.

My advice is for writers to spend more time on the last, first, and most important lines of a text, particularly when they’re all the same.