Bravo, Stop Forcing Olivia & Taylor As The Stars Of Southern Charm Season 9

Almost two decades Shep Rose’s junior, Taylor Ann Green’s involvement in Season 8 was complementary at best, acting as a near-silent buoyancy aid to Rose’s entertaining roguish behavior. As for Olivia Flowers, she was introduced as a punchier personality who tumbled onto the scene to steal the heart of lovesick Austen Kroll.

Now reintroduced as single girls about to shake up the city, Green and Flowers have taken center stage, but there’s a problem. Both women lack the chutzpah of the best-loved Charleston gals about town. Gone are the days when fans could enjoy Cameron Eubanks’ razor-sharp wit or Kathryn Dennis’ bountiful shouting matches. Instead, Season 9’s premiere offers us a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it summer montage of how Green and Flowers suddenly became diehard best friends. Just like that, we’re expected to be invested in a friendship that we’re not really sure existed in the first place, aside from the occasional Instagram photo from last year. 

Of course, this makes perfect sense when one takes into consideration that the season teaser hints at an illicit hookup between Kroll and Green, followed by an explosive fallout between Flowers and her new BFF. This is the bait we’re supposed to take, spurred on by thoughts of a sisterhood gone sour. On paper, it has all the elements to get viewers madder than wet hens. “Southern Charm” stars have opened up to the strain that reality TV puts on relationships, after all, and those strained relationships often make for good TV, but there’s just one problem. Storylines like this only have the desired effect when viewers are attached to the people in question — and we aren’t.