The Real Housewives of New York City Review: Bravo's Reboot Has a Long Shadow to Escape

Watching a rebooted Real Housewives franchise 17 years after the Bravo fixture redefined the norms of reality TV is like studying a diorama in a museum. It sort of looks authentic. The colors and textures seem legitimate. But if you stare long enough, the artificiality becomes unavoidable. The human reconstruction reveals itself: a simulacrum trying its damnedest to conjure an earlier, more impressionable time. 

The new, not-entirely-improved edition of the show's New York City leg — billed as its 14th season but more accurately described as RHONY 2.0 — introduces six rookies typifying a format their predecessors helped to crystallize. Orange County was ground zero for The Real Housewives, but New York turned it into a lasting phenomenon. Mimicking socialite politics and soap-opera hysterics, the original cast figured out in real time what it meant to be a capital-letters Real Housewife. The neophytes already know. Delivering soundbites to cameras is in their DNA. One of them, Sai De Silva, is a "content creator," a phrase that didn't exist when RHONY 1.0 premiered in 2008. Everywhere De Silva goes, there's a second show in production: the one she's curating for her Instagram feed. 

None of this is a surprise. Watch a fresh Real Housewives iteration, like Salt Lake City, and you'll see similar dynamics: telegenic women versed in how to encourage or embellish interpersonal melodrama for screen time. But the pleasure of Salt Lake lies in its surroundings. Instead of New York's skyscrapers or Beverly Hills' flora, those prima donnas are surrounded by mountains and Mormonism. Reconciling their high-end theatrics with that unlikely backdrop is what gives it juice. 

In the three episodes made available to press, RHONY 2.0 lacks some of the franchise's signature crackle. Then again, Bravo did the show a disservice when distributing pre-season screeners. Any trained viewer knows that a Real Housewives cast is constructed less around earnest friendships than it is around TV credentials. Developing relationships (read: plot lines) takes time, which might explain why a disproportionate amount of the first two episodes is devoted to such ephemera as a controversial cheese platter that Jenna Lyons serves while hosting a get-together. Everyone's biding time until something juicy happens. 

5.2

The Real Housewives of New York City

at Bravo

Like

• Jenna Lyons' enigmatic appeal
• A few spicy scenes point to better things to come

Dislike

• The season gets off to a slow start
• Content creators more concerned with their Instagram feeds don't make for great TV
• It's hard not to miss the original RHONY cast

The Lyons of it all is the most compelling aspect of the show thus far. Easily the most famous person in a cast without starry last names like Morgan, de Lesseps, and Radziwill, she is RHONY's center of gravity. She's also its sticking point. The women call her, not inaccurately, an "enigma." They think she's icy and full of quirks that aren't really quirks, like hating dill but loving parsley. At every turn, the former J.Crew CEO seems to be straining to adapt to the Real Housewives milieu — and it's fascinating to watch, if somewhat fatal in terms of her commitment to the part. She's almost willfully non-Housewifian. She constantly talks about how introverted she is, how uncomfortable she feels. The other women lash out when she leaves their rowdy Hamptons getaway so she can get to sleep early. But because Lyons is so much more well-known, a lot revolves around her. The edit treats her like what Bethenny Frankel became as RHONY 1.0 went on, minus the loud mouth. 

By the end of the third episode, things do start to cohere. A couple of meals shared around large tables — the most reliable spot for bonding and acrimony — bring a little more life to the proceedings. At lunch, the women chide fashion publicist Jessel Taank for her hyper-critical reaction to a piece of lingerie that Lyons had gifted her. During a catered dinner, they play a sexualized game of Two Truths and a Lie in which Taank reveals she once put a Popsicle up her vagina. These are classic Housewife scenarios, and even if you find yourself longing for a Morgan or a Radziwill instead, glimmers of a hopeful future emerge.

Something else this RHONY has going for it: diversity. Lyons is the first openly gay Housewife, and four of the six principals — De Silva, Taank, half-Black brand consultant Brynn Whitfield, and Somali-Canadian model Ubah Hassan — break the mold of blindingly white New York casts. Their presence on the show is presented matter-of-factly, whereas Eboni K. Williams' addition to Season 13 came across like a middling apology for Bravo's past slights. 

In fact, all of Season 13 left RHONY in a tricky spot, hence the reboot. When Frankel, Dorinda Medley, and Tinsley Mortimer departed after Season 12, the show lost its raison d'être. Cast turnover is common in Bravoland, but the remaining players couldn't come up with anything interesting to do. Ratings dipped. The season was dull and aimless, not to mention marred by allegations of Ramona Singer's racist comments about Williams. Something needed to change, but a complete overhaul also meant that change would forever exist in its forebear's once-thrilling shadow. 

What doesn't help RHONY 2.0's case is Luann & Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake, which premiered earlier this month and demonstrates the best of what the Housewives can do. Its eponymous stars, the former a de Lesseps and the latter a Morgan, descend upon small-town Illinois for an extended rejuvenation project that resembles Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie's The Simple Life. The spin-off is funny and frivolous but oddly sweet — an absolute delight right out of the gate, whereas RHONY 2.0 is stuck in a wait-and-see holding pattern that may or may not evolve by the season's close. 

The first few episodes pose, as far as reality TV goes, an existential contradiction. What once was butts up against what's no longer meant to be. There's pleasure in seeing RHONY attempt to remodel itself in 2023's image, but this facsimile can't yet muster the intrigue of the original. In a world overrun with content, it's hard to be influential. 

Premieres: Sunday, July 16 at 9/8c on Bravo
Who's in it: Ubah Hassan, Erin Lichy, Jenna Lyons, Jessel Taank, Sai De Silva, Brynn Whitfield 
Who's behind it: Shed Media
For fans of: The Real Housewives, of course
How many episodes we watched: 3