While so many of you were glued to CNN last night awaiting the results of the Ohio and Texas primary elections, I was tuned in to something much more important -- the Bravo premiere of The Real Housewives of New York City. I must admit the original version, The Real Housewives of Orange County, became a guilty pleasure of mine over the winter, mostly because it is hilarious, and because I'm fascinated by the wives' obscene spending habits.

First of all, the five ladies whose lives have been followed on Real Housewives of Orange County are like plastic cartoon characters. They wear tight boob shirts day-in, day-out, and no matter where they go (to a high school graduation? Why not?) they're always tan, with high hair and big make-up, decked out in cheesy, fake nails -- and they're always absolutely obsessed with their looks. They say things like, "I require a lot of attention ... I don't know why." They drink margaritas and white wine constantly, flirt with waiters and talk about each others' relationships. They are spoiled to a disgusting degree (though most of them have their own jobs and own money apart from their husbands), and never question their abundant spending: last season we watched Lori put together a wedding that costs six figures for her third marriage in just ten weeks, and we saw Vicki give her daughter a Mercedes, mostly so she could hold it over her head for future guilt trips. It's fascinating to see how ditsy and naive (yet manipulative) they can be -- I mean, they give each other “boob kisses” as greetings. Come on, that's funny.

It became clear after about 10 minutes that I prefer the original show to the new East Coast spin-off that debuted last night. Is that kind of like saying I prefer Cheetos to Funyuns?

The New York version immediately felt darker and more serious -- literally darker, without the Cali sun that shines brightly in nearly every scene of the Orange County version. The Manhattan wives come across as uptight, pretentious, unfunny, and outright bitchy, actually. Whereas the OC wives are obsessed with looking hot, the NYC divas are totally hell-bent on being the belles of the ball; in other words, they are totally obsessed with "society." Caring so much what other people think about you is just sad. To watch the New Yorkers live their lives to impress others ... well, it's just kind of depressing and there's not much that's entertaining about it.

One of the NY characters, Ramona, tries to look 25, whoops it up at parties, dirty dances, and tries to have fun with her money and privilege, all the while embarrassing her precocious, adolescent daughter with her immature behavior. But Ramona's not fun and bubbly like her OC counterparts. In fact, she seems kinda like a Stepford Wife femme-bot: her eyes bulge out of her head as she talks, and she's demanding with everyone around her. She's horrible.

The cast of The Real Housewives of New York City includes four other "housewives": There's Jill, a demanding woman who owns a fabric company with her older, very wealthy husband, who this week had her $1,000-a-week chauffeur drive her around as she showed us all her invitations to social events and made arrangements for her 13-year-old daughter, Avery, to go to Martha's Vineyard for a "detox center" -- a.k.a., fat camp. LuAnn is a former model and Ms. Connecticut beauty pageant contestant who is now a Countess (since she married an Italian Count while modeling in Milan) and is a full-time mom to two adolescent kids. Alex, who astonishingly lives in Brooklyn and not in Manhattan, has a career in "visual merchandising" and is married to a seemingly controlling hotelier-husband with whom she has two young kids. And then there is Bethenny, a single divorcée who's working on a career to be "a modern healthy Martha Stewart" and who is desperately trying to get married to a guy who can't be bothered to talk about much of anything.

While it's refreshing to see that the New York ladies are less obsessed with their appearances -- after all only two of them are "blondes" -- their interactions with each other are all about competing to be the best. Even in the first episode, Jill and Ramona were each scheming with their tennis coaches on how to beat the other in an upcoming tennis match. Also last night, we saw how Alex is trying to push her toddler into learning French from her $30,000-a-year au pair ... Your kid can barely talk yet lady! Take it easy.

I recently moved to New York and it's these kind of "Keeping Up with Joneses" wealthy types who terrify me the most here. Though, they all seem to live on the Upper East Side (on this show they do) and I certainly don't know or see any of them in my daily routine on the other side of the park.

I can assure you I won't be tuning in to see them on Bravo again any time soon. 'Cause, to use a Cali phrase, those New York Real Housewives kinda harsh my mellow.

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