Grand Cayman: Secrets In Paradise, now streaming on Hulu, is a new reality show set on the luxe tropical island of Grand Cayman. The cast consists of locals who were born on the island and a group of expats who have moved there, including Elizabeth Chambers, the ex-wife of Armie Hammer. After her public divorce, Chambers has laid low and tried to rebuild her life on the island, but she would have been better off staying out of the public eye; this show does her no favors.
Opening Shot: There’s a montage of beauty shots featuring the Cayman Islands and the people who live there, and one of the cast members says, “What makes Cayman Island paradise? Everything on the menu!”
The Gist: The first episode of Grand Cayman: Secrets in Paradise introduces us to a group of characters, mostly women, who tangentially know each other but who have one thing in common. Much like The Real Housewives Of [Insert City Here], on Grand Cayman, the common thread is simply that they all live in the same place. Some are lifelong locals who are fiercely protective of their island and adhere to the core values of “Cayman Kind,” which is shorthand for treating the island and its people with respect, and others are expats who moved to the island as an adult. It’s a familiar formula, this clash of ideals and values, newcomers vs. outsiders. Not to mention the whole “Cayman Kind” thing is this show’s version of throwing around the word “classy,” and anyone who refers to themself as such usually isn’t.
While many of the show’s characters are positioned as young, flirty partiers (whose names all begin with C: Craig, Courtney, Chelsea, Cass, Connor) there are two women who are the actual focal points of the series: former Victoria’s Secret model Selita Ebanks, who grew up splitting her time between New York and Grand Cayman and considers herself a local, and Elizabeth Chambers, the ex-wife of Armie Hammer, who relocated to the island a few years ago and, in the wake of her divorce, is trying to open a new location of her already-established bakery franchise, Bird Bakery.
Ebanks seems likable enough from the start, she’s at an age where she’s struggling to figure out her next career moves and put roots down in a place where she doesn’t have a firm support system yet. Chambers is a different story. You’d hope that she would have been smart enough to hold on to any goodwill she’s earned in the public eye as the scorned wife whose husband’s public downfall earned her tons of sympathy. But any sympathy I had for Chambers is completely gone after watching the way she treats people, including those who purport to be her close friends. Cayman Kind, she is not. Her friend Julian seems to be the one persona everyone else in the cast is friends with, and as much as he tries to bring everyone together into one friend group, Elizabeth manages to alienate herself by being cold and occasionally cruel.
As with all shows like this, the cast has to all meet at some point, so Julian, holds a party at his house so that Ebanks can meet all of his friends and hopefully branch out socially. (Elizabeth is a no-show, explaining, “I am very judicious about with whom I spend my time.”) When one of the locals, Courtney, reveals at the party that she had been harassed by a bunch of trolls accusing her of sleeping with Armie Hammer, she claimed that Elizabeth was behind it. (Courtney denies ever having a relationship with Hammer.) At the end of the episode, news breaks that Hammer has given a tell-all interview and in it, he reveals that Elizabeth has had a pattern of online harassment, thus confirming Courtney’s claims.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The show is a mashup of Real Housewives, Basketball Wives, and Jersey Shore, juxtaposing grown-ass adults creating conflict with one another with an otherwise sunny, beachy setting.
Our Take: I’m not sure the world needed a reality show that’s ever-so-slightly based on what happened to Armie Hammer’s ex-wife, but here we are. The problem is not specifically that it’s about Chambers recovering from a highly public divorce, it’s that she’s proving herself not to be a character you can root for. Early on, we meet a restaurateur named Frank with whom Elizabeth is partnering. Frank has hired a woman named Cass to do his marketing and as soon as Elizabeth meets Cass and learns who Cass’s boyfriend is, she tells Cass that her assistant slept with him. Elizabeth shrugs off her comment, she’s just unfiltered, that’s how she rolls! But Cass is clearly hurt and bewildered that this woman would say this – in a business setting no less. In this one moment, it becomes clear that Chambers is not this show’s hero but its villain, only I’m not sure she knows that.
Ebanks, while much more personable than Chambers, also doesn’t have the strength to hold up this show on her own, but fortunately there are more compelling storylines among the unknown cast. Cass’s conflict with Elizabeth is a good start, and another cast member named Chelsea, who co-parents a toddler with a compulsive cheater named Tyson, is much more compelling. Both Cass and Chelsea’s stories are complicated and messy, but they’re both vulnerable and self-aware at the same time which makes them more sympathetic protagonists.
Sympathetic may not be the right word, because how much sympathy or connection do most of us have for the super-rich, super fit and beautiful, whose lives on a tropical island seem slightly flawed but still pretty great? That’s the cognitive dissonance that shows like this force us to grapple with, and in a reality market that’s already so oversaturated with similar shows, you’d hope that the celebrity connections here would help. They don’t.
Sex and Skin: The majority of the wardrobe is women in bikinis and men in unbuttoned tropical shirts, but so far there’s nothing too sexy to speak of.
Parting Shot: “She’s digging her grave in the Cayman Islands. It’s not going to go well for her,” Courtney says after a scathing interview with Armie Hammer, in which he implicates his wife as an online harasser, comes out. Courtney has already accused Elizabeth of harassment on social media, so this only confirms her feelings about the woman.
Performance Worth Watching: If this show was meant to be a platform for Elizabeth Chambers, to give her an identity outside “Armie Hammer’s ex-wife,” it’s not doing a great job of making her look good. She’s fascinating to watch, mostly because she’s just kind of mean.
Memorable Dialogue: “On this small island, the past will always catch up with you,” Chelsea says.
Our Call: SKIP IT! There are aspects of Grand Cayman that make it watchable in that messy reality TV way, but it would be better served if it was left as an ensemble of unknowns, as Ebanks doesn’t have enough to do, while Chambers is, literally and figuratively, doing too much.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
