She Is Risen: Mary Cosby’s Redemption Was the Best Reality TV of 2024

If you told me five years ago that The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City would be the best reality show on television in 2024, I would have laughed in your face. Season one was just so ridiculous, with characters like Jen Shah and Lisa Barlow, who felt like shallow, made-for-tv inventions of a Mormon no-man’s-land. Their co-star Mary M. Cosby, the first lady of a church dodging cult accusations who was in an arranged marriage with her step-grandfather, only drank Dom Perignon and dressed in designer outfits worth more than most people’s homes, was too unreal to be believed.

“She smells like hospital,” was practically the first phrase out of Mary’s mouth, thus pitting her against Jen Shah for the remainder of Shah’s unincarcerated life. She went on to give us more hilarious one-liners and just as many problematic insults, resulting in her skipping the season two reunion under a cloud of shame and bowing out of season three entirely, but that timing just so happened to coincide with Shah’s indictment, arrest and imprisonment for running a telemarketing scheme to defraud the elderly. Suffice it to say, season three, sans Jen and Mary, didn’t measure up to the show’s early reign. Mary was brought back on as a “Friend of” for season four, but such a demotion didn’t give her enough space to stretch out and really get comfortable again. For the most part, she never got out of the sprinter van. But then the season four finale changed the show—and I would argue, the genre—forever.

To reprise: the breakout star of season four was newbie Monica Garcia, a single mom who viewers admired for her down-to-earth personality; refreshing when compared with people like Lisa Barlow, who regularly lose their $60,000 diamond rings. But everyone knows you can’t just show up to a Housewives hang one day and be welcomed; there’s an initiation process, and with Jen Shah gone, the responsibility of vetting Garcia fell to Heather Gay.

Heather is, if not the main character of RHOSLC (because that’s always changing), at least the narrator. It’s as if she stands in for the audience—she’s never at the very center of drama, but she’s usually involved in bringing it to light for our consumption. Her confessionals often give necessary context and background to the events and characters of the show. A self-professed “Bad Mormon” and “Good Time Girl,” her dry wit and self-awareness ground the show.

It was Heather who uncovered the truth about Garcia: that she was the person behind a troll account, Reality Von Tease, that had been harassing the cast since season one. The revelation of this information gave us what has become one of the most iconic scenes of reality television history, taking the medium from a highly edited romp with the rich and famous to a sophisticated, self-produced melodrama. Simply documenting dinner party arguments and petty feuds wasn’t gonna cut it anymore: reality television just got real.

This was the perfect moment for Mary Cosby to reintroduce herself. Some thought her storylines in those first two seasons were too dark; she was too much of a loose cannon and, oh yeah, maybe a cult leader. In summation, too real for reality TV, which was supposed to be fun and stupid. But not anymore.

I was expecting Mary to say something insulting two episodes into season five and get herself canceled again, but she didn’t. If anything, she seemed more laid back and clear-eyed than ever. Her newfound friendship with fan favorite Angie Katsanevas brought out her tender side, and she clicked immediately with newbie Bronwyn Newport, who’s become popular with viewers for her honesty and willingness to be vulnerable. For the first time, it felt like Mary fit in, and you know what? I liked her.

It didn’t take long for Mary’s storyline to get dark. We saw her withholding statements when she would usually word-vomit, alluding to going through a hard time, and just in general holding back. After a few scenes of her finding her 19-year-old son clearly under the influence of something, laying in bed in the middle of the day, it became clear what that “hard time” was.

Sure enough, Robert Jr. has a drug problem, and the scene in which he confesses this to his mother is both tragic and moving. The compassion with which Mary handled the situation has changed my feelings about her for good this time.

What incites so much hatred about reality TV is the belief that it isn’t real. When people find out I write about it for a living, I still get statements like, “You know that shit is fake, right?” or “Those shows are scripted.”

But we have seen these shows literally ruin lives. Taylor Armstrong’s husband died by suicide when his abuse of her was exposed on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Teresa and Joe Giudice of The Real Housewives of New Jersey both went to prison for fraud and Joe was deported. Leah McSweeney is still reckoning with how her time on The Real Housewives of New York exacerbated her alcohol addiction. Add to that the innumerable divorces and breakups, and one could argue that reality TV has always been dark.

The line between exposure and exploitation in this genre is paper thin, but comebacks like Mary’s prove that heavy storylines can be told and their subjects protected with the right intentions and a gentle hand, and the positive response to it suggests that viewers are ready for more reality in reality TV.