It only takes a few minutes of watching “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” to understand why it’s so popular.
The show follows a group of Mormon mom TikTok influencers and friends whose social circle and worlds implode after one of them, Taylor Frankie Paul, reveals she and her husband had been “soft-swinging” with other Mormon couples. That sends their group, #MomTok, into a swinging sex scandal, generating international headlines. The first season chronicles the fallout. It is messy and captivating.
Season 2 of the Hulu reality series debuted earlier this month and amassed 5 million views in the first five days of streaming globally on Hulu and Disney+. The signs that “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” has infiltrated the zeitgeist are visible everywhere. The show has been trending across social media platforms since the new season started. I realized it was reaching all kinds of viewers when the same person who told me to watch Zeus Network’s “Baddies” is presently singing the praises of the TikTok Mormon mamas in texts across the land.
It’s been well established now that Mormons and their culture make for captivating television. This was true with HBO’s bigamy-based “Big Love” and later in reality with Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” which, through some of its stars like Heather Gay, highlights how the religion has brought harm to their lives.
