The Real Housewives Of New York City Full Episodes
Violetta Wagganer
Kelly really had no idea who she was messing with during her Season 2 fight with Bethenny. These two didn't get along from the jump, but their enemy status was cemented when Bethenny jokingly said, "Evidently, she's Madonna." Personally, I feel like Kelly overreacted to that whole thing and channeled it into the iconic showdown they had at Brass Monkey. The fact that she had the audacity to tell Bethenny that she is above her is one of the most absurd things I've ever watched. Bethenny is the Queen B for a reason. The lead up and the aftermath of this confrontation made this an unforgettable episode.
Ramona Singer and her tacky jewelry business. Luann de Lesseps and her classy Countess ways. Jill Zarin and her husband's famous fabric store. The nutty lives of the moonstruck women of Manhattan made The Real Housewives of New York City one of the most entertaining and popular entries in Bravo's wildly successful franchise about privileged ladies doing things only privileged ladies do. Premiering in 2008, this second entry in the Real Housewives franchise also introduced audiences to a young entrepreneur named Bethenny Frankel and a social climber from Brooklyn, Alex McCord, whose flamboyant husband was frequently more fun to watch than the series' featured women. This kooky concoction of personalities scored big ratings for Bravo, with the first season bringing in an average of 1.37 million viewers. Over the next 13 years, cast members came and went, like the oversexed Sonja Morgan and a member of the Kennedy clan, Carole Radziwill. In spite of the casting musical chairs, or perhaps because of them, RHONY never failed to deliver the laughs and the drama, continuing to reign as one of the franchise's biggest winners year after year. A large part of what made the show work so well was its organic sensibility. The relationships between the women seemed natural (Ramona and Jill were friends before the show began filming, as were Jill and Bethenny), and the situations the ladies found themselves in, from silly fights over priority seating at fashion shows to serious predicaments like infidelity, flowed casually. Most importantly, the show was quintessentially New York City. Viewers simply couldn't picture all the shenanigans, theatrics, and comedy occurring in a setting other than the bustling Big Apple. The Real Housewives of New York City was as much about the housewives as it was about the city itself.
But things changed in the 13th season when RHONY's first African American cast member, Eboni K. Williams, joined the show and shook up the old guard. The series took an uncomfortable turn, with themes like systemic racism bubbling up, causing tension and turmoil among the lades of the Upper West Side. Suddenly, "Turtle Time" Ramona wasn't nearly as much fun, and Sonja was talking more about discrimination than she was about flirting with the cute waiter she spied the night before. Viewers tuned out, with the season finishing 85th among original cable telecasts. To salvage the franchise, Bravo announced it would re-imagine RHONY, sending all the previous cast members packing and bringing on six new women from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In a 2022 Variety interview, Andy Cohen, the creative mastermind behind the Real Housewives series, made his objective clear: This is the most multicultural, diverse, and energetic and exciting city in America: We are searching for a multicultural group of friends who really best reflect the most exciting city in the country." And with that, The Real Housewives of New York City was reborn.
And on the subject of authenticity, the show is called The Real Housewives of New York City. So where do the second and third episodes of the series take place? In Erin's house in the Hamptons. To be fair, the original RHONY frequently featured the women taking weekend excursions to Long Island's tony East End, but not until viewers had experienced the ladies living their busy Manhattan lives. In this reboot, the cast members are plopped into the wealthy hamlet before audiences even know where most of these women live or what they do in New York City. Once again, like with Jenna's odd dinner party, the sextet finds itself trapped in a confined space, and once again, everyone appears to struggle to find out how to get camera time as a "real housewife." Without the vibrant, enervating backdrop of the Big City, the episode might as well have been set in a home in Soda Springs, Idaho. Audiences do discover that Sai is that dreaded thing called an "influencer," as she packs eight bags for the weekend trip so she can have a multitude of "looks" suitable for upload to social media. And that's yet another problem with the new RHONY - too many of the cast members seem more interested in interacting with Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube than with each other. Bravo may have been looking to bring a younger, more contemporary vibe to the franchise with this reboot, but if the women stare at their smartphones more than the people with whom they share a dinner table, what's the point? The episode's biggest drama occurs when poor socially awkward Jenna hands out sexy lingerie to her cohorts, unwittingly picking out a piece for Jessel that makes her look anything but sexy. That's what happens when you try to shop for people you've just met.
Then there's Jessel. At first glance, she seems custom-made for the Real Housewives. She's exotic, a South Asian woman born and raised in London. She works in the glamorous field of fashion publicity. She's a social climber, willing to pay $60,000 to enroll her twins in an exclusive Manhattan preschool simply because famous people send their kids there, too. The problem is that Jessel isn't a New York City woman at all. Audiences were tipped off to this when Jessel told Erin that Tribeca, one of the city's most well-known, established, happening neighborhoods, was an "up and coming" area. Then The Sun recently revealed that Jessel and her husband moved to Manhattan from Dallas just before RHONY filming began. So Jessel is like that annoying friend who tells everyone they once lived in Europe, but who actually just did a three-week backpacking tour through Germany and France one summer. Part of the fun of watching the original RHONY was knowing the cast members were real New Yorkers, as gritty and tough as the city itself. Jessel is really just a tourist who probably thinks a visit to the Times Square M&Ms store is the ultimate city cultural experience. Even the other cast members seem to lack that quintessential NYC vibe. Ubah sells hot sauce. Brynn wears lots of backless dresses and flirts with men. Erin chooses knobs for kitchen drawers in the homes she remodels. And Jenna wears jackets with nothing on underneath. When viewers tune into The Real Housewives, they're not exactly looking for a Henrik Ibsen production, but they do expect to find a reason to tune in every week. So far, there's a lot of façade, but very little foundation behind it. There's potential with Brynn. In the "Friendsgiving" episode (yet another dinner party in which the women floundered around each other), the otherwise jovial bundle of energy alluded to her painful past of childhood abuse and neglect. It was a heartfelt, heartbreaking moment that helped paint a more complete picture of a young woman who's hiding a life filled with pain under a veneer of wise cracks and high camp. Even during this engrossing scene, though, Brynn's fellow cast members were genuinely shocked to discover what she had been through. Shouldn't her so-called "friends" have already known this about her? And when Jenna, who can best be described as the Mary Katherine Gallagher of the season, revealed she had recently ended a romantic relationship, the other women reacted like, "Oh, you had a girlfriend? Oh, you broke up with her? Golly." This only makes it more obvious that these women are about as familiar with each other as they are with their manicurists, further undercutting what made the original RHONY a must-watch experience.
When I was outside waiting for the Uber, an older man came up to me and offered me a ride by saying that I should get in his car. Although it was daytime and there were a lot of people around, I felt really scared and vulnerable being alone and not really knowing the city very well. I told the man that I didn't need a ride and he just kept saying that he could give me a ride and I started to pick up my things and it looked like he was going to follow me. So, I just started walking. I found a fast food restaurant. I just went in and then got in line and decided to order something to kind of like, buy myself some time.
Molly Brookfield: In New York in 1888, a woman talks about how she endures insult and workers who quote, "expose themselves in a manner I cannot explain." Which, she can't explain, so I can't say for certain what that means, but expose themselves certainly sounds like they're showing her something that she doesn't want to see. That one's a rare one for that time period, but certainly by the 70s when you start to have women who may or may not call themselves feminists, may or may not be involved in like the quote unquote movement, um, talking about this experience and especially in women who live in New York city, um, and because of the subway, because of the number of people and the way that you're packed into spaces that are very small. There was a woman in 72 who wrote an article for Ms magazine about this where she talks about being on a subway and having men press up against her on the train and her not really being sure if it's part of what she calls, the general crush of being on the subway or if it's some guy who has just found an opportunity to get really close to her. And she goes on to talk about, you know, the countless men that have exposed themselves to her in various places and times.
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