Why Selling Sunset is an indispensable sinful pleasure in the world of real estate

If you haven't watched "Selling Sunset" yet, the time will soon come when you at least watch one episode, or maybe just one scene, and you will be forever captivated by this show. The seventh season of this real estate show has landed on Netflix, and it's another opportunity to join what has already become a major passion for millions of viewers around the world. The format is pretty simple: it's a documentary series of sorts that follows the Oppenheim Group, a real estate agency in Los Angeles that buys, sells, and renovates homes. Nothing new, but everything changes because of scale: millionaire clients, stunning homes, extravagant personal and private stories, and women's clothing approaching fiction.

Imagine the curious and luxurious combination of Fratelli In Love/Property Brothers with the Kardashians: the best of L.A. real estate arguing at a frenetic pace with budgets of $40 million or more, last-minute deals and miscellaneous drama. The world of real estate is described with some realism, where the characters are real real estate agents, and some sales remain fruitless for several episodes, demonstrating that it's not an easy market. In fact, the competition between agents is another major driver of the program, which enthralls viewers with their professional challenges. Added to this are the internal dynamics of the group, where friendships between agents are sometimes jeopardized by a proposal that pits them all against everyone else (the first season in 2019 began with the introduction of a new colleague, Krishell, and the distrust with which the other agents watched her from a distance). Of course, being a reality show, and one of the most entertaining ones at that, personal dramas will be on the agenda and, as usual, will be a big deal: a particularly interesting story here is the life of Krishell, the main character who has gone through a high-profile divorce (after splitting from husband Justin Hartley from This is Us, who left her via text message) and is forced to start a new life.

The other pole of this world is Christine Quinn (unfortunately, "eliminated" at the end of the fifth season), who for many viewers will always remain the real star of this program thanks to her bright appearance, extravagant character, excessive outfits and witty jokes. For example, to explain why she paid for her Louis Vuitton bags with her husband's credit card, she said: "Some people called it fraud, but I call it love." But there's something here for everyone: while some follow Selling Sunset to watch Kristin's bizarre and excessive events, there are those who also enjoy a more reserved heroine, like Amanza Smith, a single mom trying to reconcile work with a personal life that needs to be protected, and that's a theme that many people can relate to while watching the other side of the screen. Or the lovely Emma Hernan, who started out as a sparkly entrepreneurial Barbie, turned out to be a girl with good feelings and very supportive of her colleagues at the agency. And then there's Mary Fitzgerald, a veteran of the agency, a tireless worker and a very serious woman who faces a number of doubts and difficulties in her relationship with a guy much younger than her.

"Selling Sunset" works in many ways for this very reason: even though it's steeped in a world of luxury and glitz that few can afford, it appeals to the universal codes of realty shows to bring that distant and unattainable reality close at hand. There are parties, lavish dinners, very expensive cocktails and, of course, beautiful homes - those unreal, out-of-this-world houses that seem built to be shown on TV rather than actually lived in, each room with its own elevator or Jacuzzi. But there's also conflict, jealousy, laughter, satisfaction, the jitters of a sale that might fail at the last minute: the sheer size of these houses sometimes reveals the minutiae (and grandeur) of the human soul. The starting point is already great in itself because real estate TV shows are a veritable gold mine as we are hypnotized into watching and, more often than not, criticizing other people's homes. "Selling Sunset" adds to this alchemical formula the ingredient of a vivid but slightly disturbing dream that we can't take our eyes off of.