Bravo Called Out for Missing Episodes of ‘Southern Charm’
Southern Charm is available to stream on just about any platform you can think of. From the Bravo app to Peacock, to Hulu and YouTube TV. It’s even available at BravoTV.com and their VOD service. But just because the reality show is so easily accessible, that doesn’t mean fans can revisit every scene from every episode. Here’s why Southern Charm had multiple episodes missing.
A ‘Southern Charm’ fan noticed episodes were missing
Southern Charm premiered in 2014, and it follows the lives of a group of socialites in Charleston, South Carolina. The earlier seasons included former state treasurer Thomas Ravenel in the cast, a controversial figure who ended up getting the ax from Bravo due to sexual assault allegations against him.
Fast forward to the racially-charged summer of 2020 — which included BLM riots across the country — and TikTok user @thetalkofshame posted videos about missing episodes of Southern Charm when she attempted to re-watch the show.
In a three-part video series, the TikToker pointed out that Season 1, Episode 2 was missing from Bravo’s on-demand services. She noted that it was an episode that featured a scene with Ravenel and his father, ex-Congressman Arthur Ravenel Jr.
Bravo pulled four episodes in the summer of 2020
In part two of her video series, @thetalkofshame shared the scene from the missing episode where Arthur tells Thomas — while smirking at the camera — that he likes to get rid of $5 bills because Abraham Lincoln is pictured on them.
“This was aired! Primetime! Bravo!,” the TikToker says in the post..
The next day, she discovered that three more Southern Charm episodes were missing from Bravo’s VOD services: Season 3, Episode 1, Season 4, Episode 1, and Season 4, Episode 8.
A Bravo spokesperson later confirmed that those four episodes of Southern Charm were temporarily taken down from their VOD service because they allegedly featured racially charged moments.
Per Variety, the spokesperson explained that removing those episodes was part of a network review to flag potentially offensive content in the wake of the “cultural reckoning” prompted by BLM.
The network later put back three of the episodes that were “deemed OK’ on the Bravo app, BravoTV.com, and VOD. Followed by the cable and satellite-on-demand services. When the fourth episode returned, it was missing a scene that featured Kathryn Dennis giving a tour of her family’s plantation.
What happened in the ‘Southern Charm’ missing scene?
The missing plantation scene was also featured in the TikTok video series from @thetalkofshame. In the clip Kathryn and guest star K. Cooper Ray were casually discussing the slave cemetery on the property.
“Is it the casual reference to you living on a plantation on top of a slave cemetery, before you sit down to drink mint juleps with your friend? Is it that every plantation really is just a giant slave cemetery?” the TikToker asked.
Bravo agreed that this scene was inappropriate and removed it before the episode returned to streaming on VOD services.
Southern Charm Season 8 premieres June 23 on Bravo.
