The Culpo Sisters Are the First Influencers to Make Good TV

I have a list of famous people I inexplicably keep tabs on. There’s Kaia Gerber, a very boring model/nepo baby who has somehow dated two cinematic Elvises. There’s her father Rande Gerber, who, in addition to making my favorite tequila, will occasionally write weird Instagram posts about his daughter (like this one). For some reason, I watch Hailey Bieber’s “Who’s In My Bathroom?” series on YouTube like she’s Marc Maron conducting compelling interviews in his garage. And now, thanks to their new reality show and a sudden onslaught of tabloid updates, I’m officially following our newest influencer family, the Culpo sisters.

You’d be forgiven for having no idea who these beautiful, high-cheek-boned women are. But that’s what makes their unceremonious arrival into the zeitgeist so fascinating and, dare I say, inspirational. You might have at least heard of the middle sister, Olivia, whose main claim to fame is winning both Miss USA and Miss Universe in 2012. She also dated Nick Jonas during his solo comeback era almost a decade ago. According to IMDB, she has a cameo in the 2014 Cameron Diaz joint The Other Woman. Currently, she’s committed to promoting anything from Ragu to Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue on her Instagram, where she has 5.2 million followers.

The other two sisters are also verified Instagram influencers, thanks, I’m guessing, to Olivia’s hard work throughout the 2010s. There’s 26-year-old Sophia, the youngest in the trio, who's currently dating a New York Jet and identifies as a “gut health enthusiast” on Instagram. The eldest, 33-year-old Aurora, is a mommy influencer with two kids and a pending divorce from Survivor alum Mikey Bortone. I know all of this obscure information because I spent the past month obsessively watching their extremely unremarkable lives play out on TLC’s The Culpo Sisters.

I was bummed to discover that the first season of The Culpo Sisters ended on Monday after just six episodes. TLC even aired the last two episodes in one night as if to say, “let’s wrap this baby up!” It’s hard to tell whether the network is regretting their decision to spotlight this largely unknown trio. The series is already a risk for TLC, given that none of the siblings weigh 600 lbs, are planning lavish weddings, or applying for K-1 visas. Additionally, TLC fans on Twitter have been adamant in the show’s hashtag about their hatred of the program. One user wrote off the show as “another privileged white family showing off their wealth,” while another called the sisters “Kardashian wannabes.”

This criticism has plagued the Culpos and their Kardashians-esque aspirations since they arrived on our television screens and all over People Magazine. On the one hand, the general public is unnecessarily mad when they discover people (usually women) who are famous for reasons they don’t understand. This is what the Kardashians dealt with for the first decade of their fame. On the other hand, The Culpo Sisters is admittedly not what the average reality television viewer, especially those attuned to the exploitative melodrama of a typical TLC show, would exactly call riveting.

A good bulk of Season 1 consists of the sisters hanging out with their brutally honest, technologically challenged parents and explaining to them what they do for a living—a multigenerational comedy, if you will. Aurora’s allegedly unexpected divorce could’ve been a sensational storyline. However, we never actually see her interact with her ex, who’s M.I.A. the entire season. There’s a running thread about Sophia borrowing Olivia’s clothes without her permission, which hilariously becomes the impetus for Sophia to move to an entirely different state across the country. Olivia, 30, is mostly worried about the prospects of having children with her 26-year-old footballer boyfriend Christian McCaffrey. In the finale, she announces that she’s going to freeze her eggs.

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All these plotlines are extremely mundane. And yet I found myself glued to my laptop, psychoanalyzing the most ordinary situations impacting these women’s lives. I was surprised to discover that the sisters are all delightfully outspoken, feisty, and smart, which is why they can lead such an uneventful show. And their sororal dynamic is deeply relatable as someone with two sisters. (I’m the Olivia!) There’s also an awareness amongst the women that, while they live pretty comfortable lives, none of them have really made it. Part of their charm is that they don't try to convince us that they’re more famous or successful than they actually are. Ironically, this seems to be the key to successful influencing. So maybe they should!

Recently I’ve tried watching a handful of newer reality shows about social-media stars, including Hulu’s The D’Amelio Show, Netflix’s Hype House and, of course, The Kardashians. However, I’ve found myself bored and even turned off by how accustomed those subjects are to their gross and fastly accumulated wealth. By contrast, on The Culpo Sisters, we see mainly Olivia hustling around Los Angeles without the level of luxury or immediate gratification one would expect from her job.

For instance, I was endeared by her beautiful but humble minimansion that she shares with three other people, including Sophia, her assistant, and her younger brother. I would compare it to those identical homes the cast of Vanderpump Rules all purchased in the Valley during Season 8. Similarly, I was charmed by her moderately sized closet, despite the fact that she promotes clothing brands for a living. I also appreciated watching the sisters express more excitement over the random free junk they’re sent everyday by brands than the money they receive to buy actual luxurious items.

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This is the mix of aspirational content and normie representation that I crave as a reality viewer. And yet these women’s innocuous efforts to entertain us are being cruelly labeled by the Internet as Kardashian mimicry and thirst.

To that I say, let the Culpo sisters be thirsty. Let their publicists hustle to place snoozy coverage of the show with nearly every entertainment tabloid known to man. We need to see more D-list influencers slowly climbing up the social ladder, as opposed to discovering a new TikToker who makes a billion dollars every few weeks and then disappears. While TLC hasn’t announced a second season yet—maybe this was all a short-lived experiment to increase publicity—I’m excited for what these women have to offer our celebrity ecosystem.

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