The Kardashian family is back with the first season of their new Hulu reality show The Kardashians. For a moment during the pandemic, it felt like we had collectively moved on from the family. Their luxurious lives and endless drama were a lot less appealing when we were all in sweats dealing with our own share of troubles. They seemed to feel a need for change too and announced in September 2020 that they were moving on from their E! reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians after 20 seasons. Because they shared every aspect of their personal lives on KUWTK, it started to feel like they, and the audience, had had enough. What more could fans learn about them? But soon after they signed their new deal with Hulu, for a reported nine-figure salary, a new batch of headlines about the clan started popping up. Kim Kardashian filed for divorce from Kanye West and started dating Pete Davidson; Khloe Kardashian dealt with yet another betrayal from Tristan Thompson; Kylie Jenner had a second baby with Travis Scott; and Kourtney Kardashian got engaged to Travis Barker. There was more than enough content to film and share with fans.
The first two episodes of the new show, titled “Burn Them All To The Fucking Ground” and “Did Somebody Tape That?” are just fine. There is not much of a difference or improvement from the final seasons of the E! show. The family falls right back into a rhythm of documenting every part of their lives—or at least the ones they want us to see—and they are even utilizing a new filming style. There are moments when the cast talks directly into the camera, which feels somewhat like a mockumentary. Before it felt like you were a fly on the wall, secretly taking part in their most intimate moments, but now they are acknowledging the viewers’ presence. At one point in the first episode, Kim breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the camera saying she is “a vegan most of the time,” while filling her plate with chicken wings.
Within the first 10 minutes of the premiere, while the family is having a peaceful “Welcome Back” party, Kim finds herself dealing with a new controversy around the same sex tape that helped launch Season 1 of KUWTK. For those unfamiliar with the story, Kim and her ex-boyfriend Ray J made a sex tape in 2002 that was leaked in March 2007. A third party gave the sex tape to Vivid Entertainment, an adult film distribution company. Kim initially filed a lawsuit against the company but later acquired a reported $4.5 million for the tape’s distribution. Fifteen years later the video came back to haunt her when Saint, her 6-year-old son, saw an ad promoting a new, unreleased sex tape while he was playing the popular online children’s game Roblox on his iPad. Kardashian then shares that Ray J’s manager, Wack100, was claiming he had new footage of the makeup mogul in his possession and was threatening to release it without her consent.
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“Didn’t we deal with this in the first season of Keeping Up? This is a good omen, you guys, talking about a sex tape in the first season,” Khloe quips. “I feel like we’re back to day one. It’s a good omen!” While Khloe sees this as a good omen, the viewers might find it boring. Nothing has really changed, there’s nothing exciting, new, or refreshing—just the same drama we’ve already seen play out in the tabloids. The constant coverage of their show might help them grab consistent headlines, but at what cost? It makes it easy to question whether some of the drama is created for the sake of the show. Certain scenes in later seasons also felt forced and staged, like Kris throwing Kylie a party to celebrate her eye surgery, which viewers had already seen in a YouTube video. None of that seemed to pay off as ratings steadily declined for the E! show over the years.
Even in its final season, the sisters struggled to crack more than a million viewers for certain episodes. This is in comparison to the 2010 season premiere, which brought in 4 million viewers, and the 10.5 million viewers who tuned in for Kim and Kris Humphries’ wedding episode in 2011. Fans took to Reddit to complain about how boring the final seasons were, and they might feel the same about the Hulu show. Though people still tuned in. Variety reported that The Kardashians is Hulu’s biggest series premiere in U.S. history but the streamer did not share specific viewing numbers, since the company does not release ratings. But there is still no new ground to break and they aren’t showing anything we don’t already know about them. The real storylines are all over the news and social media. The show lost its appeal when it stopped being a reality show about family. In the first seasons, the family get-togethers or vacations didn’t feel staged. They didn’t go through hours of glam to film a scene. They just existed and the cameras captured the chaos.
There was levity in the early KUWTK seasons that is missing now. It’s hard to forget when Kris said, “You’re doing amazing sweetie!” as Kim posed for Playboy. Or when Kourtney said, “Kim, there are people that are dying,” when she was crying over losing her diamond earring in the ocean during a vacation. That is what kept the show thriving for so long. Those meme-worthy moments made the show a significant part of pop culture and portrayed how funny and relatable they could all be. The magic of the first seasons was seeing how the siblings interacted with each other. They bickered and argued, played pranks on one another, and playfully dragged each other around the house. Khloe also cared very little about what people thought of her back then, and it made her the most down-to-earth, and most relatable to watch in the fam. Now Khloe is more self-conscious about the public’s perception of her so she holds back. Khloe and Kourtney’s entertaining relationship seems to have changed over the years too, Kylie is a lot more reserved since becoming a makeup mogul and a mom, and Scott Disick isn’t the comedic relief he used to be. Without those things, we’re just watching the family rehash and relive the same news stories we saw on TMZ months ago, while withholding what’s perhaps the juiciest aspects of those stories, and there’s no fun in that.
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Regardless of how anyone feels about them, there’s a reason why E! kept them around for so long—they are entertaining as hell when they want to be. Fans connected to the family because they felt real, but as they’ve gotten more famous and more visible, the allure of the show isn’t the same. It became an addendum to their fame, instead of it being the main reason for it. The content also started changing in the later seasons. It went from silly spats between sisters to full-out brawls between Kim and Kourtney over who had the most “work ethic.” And as entertaining as it was at the time, it was also concerning. The Poosh founder made it clear she was done filming at the time and wanted to live a more private life, much to her sisters’ dismay. Kourtney may be a bit more open now in her new relationship, but all of the sisters seem to be skirting around what’s really going on in their lives. They’re entitled to their privacy, but privacy and a reality show don’t really go hand in hand.
Their love lives were always a big draw for the show, and it looks like they will continue to be. Kim’s divorce will play out in the upcoming episodes, while Khloe and Thompson will deal with yet another cheating scandal, but all of that feels stale at this point. The family usually shows any major moment in their lives as storylines on the show, but by the time the episodes air, those situations have already been discussed and covered at length in the media as well as by fans on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. So much of their lives are dissected on fan pages and by pop culture sleuths who dedicate their time to exposing Photoshop mishaps, exploring rumors, or even revealing secrets like Kylie’s second pregnancy, so what purpose does a new show serve? By the time the episodes air, the public has moved on. This means viewers aren’t really seeing much growth from them or learning anything new about them. There was a lot more vulnerability in certain incidents that made the original show worth watching. The show tackled serious moments like Kim’s Paris robbery in 2016 or Caitlyn Jenner’s transition in 2015 in a way that kept fans informed and engaged. Kris is usually depicted as the business-minded matriarch who keeps everything together but seeing her cry over her ex-husband’s transition felt authentic.
But with the new Hulu series, everything feels contrived. Kim talks about divorcing Kanye but doesn’t give much insight into why their marriage failed. She shared some aspects of the separation on the final season of KUWTK but viewers didn’t actually get to see the breakdown of their marriage. She was also criticized by fans for asking West to not post their private issues on social media, but in turn, she is using their divorce as a storyline on the show. So does that mean they only expose their most private moments when they are getting paid for it and can control the narrative? At what point does it stop being a reality show and feel more like a scripted series? The sisters also serve as executive producers on their shows, which means they have control over what makes the final cut, making it a lot less authentic than other unscripted reality shows. Ryan Seacrest and Kris Jenner served as executive producers on the original show, along with Jeff Jenkins who was behind shows like Road Rules, The Simple Life, and Living Lohan. The sisters were added as EPs later on in the series, as the episodes began to feel more manufactured and less organic.
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The Kardashian-Jenners have been some of the most captivating and exciting pop culture figures of the past 15 years. Aside from Ye, the sisters are far more compelling than any of the men they date—and that should also be reflected in their new Hulu series. At the start of KUWTK, Kim was dating Reggie Bush but he didn’t appear on the show much, if at all. Her relationship with Kris Humphries became a focal point in Season 6, and then her relationship with Kanye became a major storyline. The show also followed the dissolution of Khloe’s marriage to Odom, Kourtney and Scott finally parting ways, Khloe’s drama with Thompson, and in the last season of KUWTK, Kim vaguely covered the start of her and Kanye’s separation. In The Kardashians, Khloe talks about being “best friends” with Thompson. After multiple cheating scandals, fans are questioning the true nature of their relationship and are confused about the basketball star’s presence on the show. There’s a stark contrast between how her relationship with Lamar Odom was portrayed on KUWTK—before his overdose at a Las Vegas brothel, their marriage appeared to be fun, playful, and loving—and the awkward and hard to watch interactions with Thompson now. In one cringe-worthy scene in the first episode, Khloe says she didn’t beat him up when he cheated on her when she was nine months pregnant with daughter True because she didn’t want to break a nail before the delivery. Earlier this year, Thompson apologized to Khloe for fathering a child with another woman and now viewers have to watch their interactions which were filmed before the scandal. While it makes sense for him to be on the show as True’s father, positioning him as Khloe’s “best friend” seems odd knowing all the public humiliation she has endured because of him.
While all of those relationships are part of their lives, all of the sisters have more to offer viewers than their proximity to men. And if they want their love lives to be private, they have got to give viewers more outside of that. This new show promises to show more about their businesses while maintaining a focus on their personal lives, which have become their go-to way to bring in viewers. People will likely tune in after seeing recent photos of Davidson hanging out with Kim’s daughter, North, and after headlines that Kourtney and her fiancé had a fake wedding ceremony in Vegas earlier this month. Those moments may be part of the new show to bring in viewers but it is honestly not necessary. The first season of KUWTK showed the sisters running their store Dash together, planning family parties, and emotional moments like in the episode “Remembering Dad” where they paid tribute to their late father Robert Kardashian. That’s when they were at their best. The episodes were heartfelt, authentic, and funny—and that’s what fans need more of this time around.
