Karen Huger should've skipped this season.

On Karen Huger's guilty verdict & RHOP Recap

Oh, Karen Huger!

Last week, on Wednesday night, I was out celebrating a friend’s birthday. The same night that Karen’s body cam footage dropped online following her guilty verdict. And maybe this is a testament to how many Bravo fans I surround myself with, but all of us immediately hopped on our phones to watch video after video as they became available. Every conversation soon turned to whether or not Karen would serve jail time. Or whether or not she should’ve returned to film season 9 of The Real Housewives of Potomac.

The footage swings between shocking, at times hilarious (calling herself “Thomas Jefferson’s concubine” is extremely funny, sorry!), and saddening. We’ve always known that the Grand Dame had a different relationship with the truth. Whether it’s embellishing how well-regarded she is in Potomac or glossing over her marital issues with Ray or downplaying her drunk dialing of cast mates in the middle of the night, you can always expect Karen to toss out a funny one-liner instead of answering a question 100% truthfully.

Gizelle has always called her out on this. Ashley too. Former cast members Robyn and Charisse were on Karen’s neck even more so. They called her a drunk, called out her extra-marital affairs, and told her no one considered her the “Grand Dame” of Potomac outside of Bravo viewers. But we love delusion when it comes to Housewives! It’s why we love Countess Luann! And Lisa Barlow! And Dorit and her 5,000 accents! A little bit of delusion goes a long way in making someone entertaining on reality television and tbh, it also goes a long way in making anyone successful.

But the body cam footage showed an entirely new side of Karen. When I imagined her drunk driving incident, I thought maybe she was a little tipsy. I didn’t imagine she was WASTED. She’s so drunk that she’s still a mess hours later in the interrogation room. Her car is totaled. She could’ve actually killed someone. And that’s not even remotely funny. At first, it seemed like Karen was handling her DUI better than Shannon Beador did on The Real Housewives of Orange County.

Shannon escaped jail time due to a plea deal, then spent the most recent season of RHOC battling her cast mates who accused her of being a drunk and not taking the event seriously. She also had to handle attacks from her ex-boyfriend John Janssen’s new girlfriend — former cast member Alexis Bellino — while John sued her. Shannon had a rough season, but she ended it as the clear fan favorite. Karen, on the other hand, began this season of RHOP by demanding that her cast mates fall in line and support her. She wanted unequivocal allegiance and aside from Mia and Jacqueline, she pretty much got it. Her approach was to sweep it all under the rug and wait till she could be vindicated in court. After seeing the body cam footage, I have no idea why Karen didn’t take a plea deal. I have no idea how she thought the footage would get thrown out of court. And now her performance this season has revealed itself to be a facade.

Karen probably should’ve taken this season off. But she seems to be a woman determined to never be wrong. She never shows her weaknesses. Whatever is going on between her and Ray must be far more serious than we could imagine. And her drinking problem is definitely more serious than we imagined. What does the future look like for Karen on RHOP? Well, she’s definitely doing jail time. How much, who can say, but the maximum is two years. She most likely won’t be on the next season. I don’t think this will completely damage her future on Bravo. She’s still a fan favorite and other Housewives have gone to prison and returned to the show, like Teresa Giudice. However, I don’t see Potomac being put on pause for two years while Karen is in prison like The Real Housewives of New Jersey did while Teresa served 11 months for fraud.

Also, whenever she does return, will Karen finally own up to her shit? Some people think that Bravo won’t bring her back unless she does. I don’t know about that. But I do think that if she returns, we’ll see the return of Robyn and Charisse, the only women who will actually hold Karen’s feet to the fire and force her to get real.