Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Bravo
The holidays have come early for fans of Bravo’s best Real Housewives franchise. Sorry to my beloved Real Housewives of Atlanta and Season 2 of Real Housewives of New Jersey; you are merely my forgotten stepchildren when it comes to the original Real Housewives of New York. The first 13 seasons (well… let’s be honest here: the first 12 seasons) of RHONY were a constant masterclass in reality television, with each season somehow one-upping the last in terms of petty drama and earth-leveling fights. It’s only fitting that the spinoff series, The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: RHONY Legacy, now on Peacock, dusts off some of that inimitable magic.
Though RHONY as we once knew it has been retooled with an entirely new cast, fans still hold the original franchise near and dear to their hearts. I stand firm in my assertion that no other series on television has so deftly captured the inner lives and untapped profundity of a certain demographic of older white women. But after documenting the highs and lows of their lives for over a decade, there was only one thing that the stars of the original RHONY hadn’t properly revealed: how they’ve dealt with living their lives after the cameras went down.
While Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club tackles a similar predicament by gathering Housewives who had all bid their fame-making franchise adieu under one roof, RHONY Legacy is a bit different. These women don’t just have the same job title on their resumes—they worked together. They have history. They have beef. They have unfinished business. Furthermore, for all but two of the RHONY Legacy cast members, the ax wound from Bravo giving their franchise the chop is still fresh. All of these factors come into play in the season’s first three episodes, and create a delectable mixture of hilarity and tension that will delight RHONY fans old and new.