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On Wednesday, Kelly Dodd became engaged to Rick Leventhal, who presented a massive diamond ring during his proposal.

She quickly took to social media to share the happy news, which was reported far and wide.

Some of Kelly’s fans feel confused and blindsided, and are wondering what the heck happened with her (very recent) ex, Dr. Brian Reagan.

After all, Dodd’s romance with the doctor has been playing out on The Real Housewives of Orange County THIS FALL.

While compliments and congratulations poured in for Kelly, some fans could not conceal their astonishment on social media.

"Wait…what…what happened to the doc? What did I miss?!" tweeted one fan.

"Wait!!!! What!!!!" exclaimed another on Twitter.

"What is the time frame when they record a show and when they actually show it?"

That is a very astute question, even though after well over a decade of filming, you’d think that people would be less surprised.

"By the time the HW season airs, it’s full of old news," one fan patiently explained on Twitter.

The tweet continued: "Viewers want to see what is happening now."

"Who wants to watch Kelly and Brian when we will already know it’s history? Too much lag time," the fan expressed.

"Needs to be fixed," the thought-provoking tweet concluded. "Social media provides current information."

Obviously, Kelly and Dr. Brian (above) broke up, and reality television is filmed in advance. That’s how TV works.

However, the delay between real-life drama and it airing on screen is extremely dramatic when it comes to The Real Housewives.

For reference, it has only been a few weeks since Tamra Judge and Braunwyn Windham-Burke locked lips at Shannon Beador’s birthday party.

Shannon, like Vicki Gunvalson, was born in March. So those episodes were filmed a full eight months ago.

While we do not yet know every single detail of their split, Kelly Dodd announced her split from Dr. Brian Reagan back in August.

It seemed very clear that this was not an ideally amicable split, and has been reported that he cheated.

In fact, during a somewhat recent Watch What Happens Live appearance, Kelly’s only admitted regrets related to her ex.

The call for reality TV to be aired with less of a time gap after being filmed may be a fair one.

Kelly and Rick Leventhal may have only been dating for a matter of months, but it’s been clear that they’ve been moving quickly.

When shows like The Real Housewives of Orange County were first conceived and set into motion, social media was very different.

At the time, Facebook was very new and still dominated by college students. LiveJournal was still in use and not owned by shady Russians.

Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram literally did not exist.

Reality stars did not keep fans updated in real time on their lives.

These days, social media makes it so convenient for fans to keep tabs on their favorite stars and friends alone.

Even without breaking NDAs, reality stars in particular reveal a massive amount of information in real time.

It’s part of their appeal – sharing real updates on their actual lives with real people who follow them online.

Part of the fun of watching their shows air then becomes seeing what happened – like Tamra repeating rumors about Kelly – in context, or how things played out behind the scenes.

That said, we doubt that Bravo or any other network is going to rush the shows into production.

Not unless they all take a ratings nosedive, but from what we’ve seen, that isn’t happening anytime soon.

Case in point:

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