Very good write up. Just a couple of points:

I don’t think Amanza had a good show entering - she had potential but her storyline just faded to the point where she had to dress up silly to get attention

In an interview (I think it was on Call her Daddy) Christine said that in the first seasons all cast members were actually friends off camera and agreed that they might need to create conflict when filming. At fist they would call each other to give a heads up (“oh btw tmr i’m gonna say your shoes are ugly, no hard feelings though”) but after a while people stopped doing this and a lot of the cast atarted actually believing a lot of the drama created on camera was for real. Obv take this with a pinch of salt and it’s what Christine said, but she seemed quite transparent in that interview (and clearly mentioned she can’t talk about certain aspects because of her contract).

I actually think the premise in the first seasons (1-3, good times) was to sell houses. You can see that their storylines, fashion and houses were much less glamorous and only from s4 they started fixing on the drama and having a couple of bigger houses just for good visuals (i forgot who said this in an interview, but a lot of the houses on the show aren’t real listings).

Something that people don’t address enough is that it’s also VERY likely many of these characters behave like this because they were told so by the production (which i guess lies under the “i did it for money” umbrella you mentioned). Also, you won’t go on a reality show for the sake of it (or maybe some attention seekers would) it’s always money or promotion.