Chris Weedon has never watched “The Real Housewives of Potomac,” but he knows he has a lot in common with Karen Huger.

For one, they both have deep roots in the tony Montgomery County suburb at the center of the series.

And, much like the show’s self-proclaimed Grande Dame, he has also been sentenced to serve time in that county’s correctional system for reckless and potentially dangerous acts committed while intoxicated.

Huger, sentenced Wednesday to two years' jail time with one year suspended in relation to a 2024 DUI incident, is a wealthy, well-dressed reality television star with a lot of fans. But her fame should not, and did not, save her from facing the consequences of her actions.

I have no conflict about a perpetual drunk driver being taken off the street. But I do watch “RHOP” and I liked Karen — or the Karen of the show, at any rate — because she’s such a specific kind of Black Maryland bougie. She knows things. She makes observations. You don’t necessarily want to be the person she’s observing, but there’s a certain Dominque Deveraux from “Dynasty” thing about her that I find compelling. Still, she did what she did, and that’s not grand. It’s dangerous.

“She’s not a criminal, just a rich lady who’s bored,” said Weedon, 66, a Rockville native who served more than a year in prison for robbing a Potomac bank in 2001 while in the throes of a heroin addiction. “But let’s say she’d swung over into the wrong lane and she hits a family with two kids in the car, and all four of them are killed. It didn’t happen that way, but I hope she takes it to heart how serious it was.”

Fan reaction to Huger’s punishment has been mixed. “4 DUIs in 17 years--yes on jail time & take her licenses away. She can afford Uber!” wrote Baltimore Banner reader Fred McGuire in response to an online query by my colleague Tennyson Donyea Coleman, who writes The Scan newsletter.

On the other hand, Ellicott City’s Donna Robinson wrote me that she felt bad for the TV star. “I think the one year sentence is a bit much,” she said. “There are certainly others out here doing far worse without consequences.”

Huger is not the first cast member of Bravo’s glitzy, gossipy “Housewives” franchise to run afoul of the law. Teresa Guidice, star of the New Jersey iteration, served 11 months in prison for fraud. Salt Lake City‘s Jen Shah is in the middle of a 6½-year sentence for defrauding hundreds of people in telemarketing schemes. So there’s precedent here. It’s just never clear how sorry these women are until they have to be.

At last week’s sentencing, Huger admitted to Judge Terrence J. McGann that it was her responsibility “to make sure that my community members make it where they need to be safely.“ But she previously denied being an alcoholic in a pre-recorded video played during the “Potomac” reunion. That video was filmed over a week after she was found guilty, but before checking herself into rehab.

As McGann pointed out, this was Huger’s fourth DUI offense in 17 years, casting doubt that those were the only times she’s ever driven drunk. If she’d killed someone, her fame would not have brought those people back.

“I was never a big fan of Karen, but after seeing the [body camera] footage of her DUI, I couldn’t watch the show anymore,” Lisa Stewart, a Cincinnati resident who has family in Towson, wrote in a message to me on Bluesky. “The way she was playing it down, when she could have killed someone, was nauseating. It was shocking to discover this was her FOURTH DUI. I know someone who lost his license after ONE. It DEFINITELY seems she has received special treatment in the past.”

Weedon, a former University of Maryland, College Park tennis player, relates to being a repeat offender who finally faced consequences he could not shirk. He became addicted to prescription pain killers after breaking his ankle and eventually turned to heroin, plunging into a 17-year addiction. He bounced in and out of jail and rehab until that fateful day when he barged into Potomac Valley Bank with an empty BB gun, hoping “for a suicide by cop.”

Instead, he wound up sentenced to 18 months with 23 years suspended. He served 14 months behind bars and another 2½ years in a Texas drug program that he would eventually be hired to work for. What started him on that path to real recovery, he said, “was admitting that I’d done something wrong” — something he hopes Huger really understands.

“She’s got the influence — if she really does take it to heart — to help a lot of people,” he said. “She will still be in the spotlight on the show, so she should not make it about her. She should say, ‘I am a conduit.’ ”oung lady that will need her guidance,” Hill wrote me on Facebook. “Martha Stewart did her time and came out smelling like a rose. This too shall pass.”

Weedon also thinks some good could come of Huger’s conviction.

“She’s got the influence — if she really does take it to heart — to help a lot of people,” he said. “She will still be in the spotlight on the show, so she should not make it about her. She should say, ‘I am a conduit.’”

In her reunion video, the star pledged to return to “RHOP” as just Karen, “not as the Grande Dame.” I assume this means she’ll try to be real, without the artifice. Do I think that’s possible on a show that makes artifice, wealth and privilege the central plot line? I’m not sure. But I hope so.