Vacuous wives have been all over television for a while, with a fresh batch arriving over the weekend in Bravo’s awful “Game of Crowns.” On Tuesday, they invade made-for-the-Internet fare as well: Hulu introduces “The Hotwives of Orlando.” The Hulu series is a parody of the others but, unfortunately for it, the genre is already well beyond parodying.
The show features six moderately well-known comic actresses — Casey Wilson, Angela Kinsey, Kristen Schaal, Tymberlee Hill, Danielle Schneider and Andrea Savage — playing six spectacularly irritating wives in “Central Florida’s sexiest city,” as the show’s publicity calls it. (Poor Orlando takes quite a beating in this show.) They’re airheaded. They’re self-absorbed. They’re clueless about how clueless they are.
Which, of course, also describes the women on any of the “Wives” reality shows. It’s astonishing that anyone still watches these shows (though apparently someone does; “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” just began its sixth season on Sunday), but presumably the main reason to do so is not for intellectual stimulation. It’s to play a drinking game based on how often the phrases “I don’t want any drama” and “You need to calm down” are used.
So seeing actresses toss those same phrases around is only a little funny, not groundbreakingly funny. A satire of something that is a self-parody is the laziest form of humor. The plotlines here — a fund-raiser for a charity that provides high-heel shoes for dogs occupies the first episode — are kind of amusing, but in general the show looks as if it were far more fun to make than it is to watch.