Imagine, a few seasons on a reality television show reducing grown women into your typical 5th grade girls in the schoolyard. All at the hands of the puppet master, Bravo Senior VP Andy Cohen.
From the beginning of the franchise to the Season 4 reunion, Andy has pulled the strings. Yes, it was their behavior that brought them to this point, but Bravo wants them to “bring the drama.”
Before the taping began, Andy seats his puppets in his “pecking order”. This is every reunion show throughout the franchise. Ever since DeShawn Snow of the Real Housewives of Atlanta was seated at the end of the sofa and then dumped before Season 2, it has been this way. Alex McCord 100% understands this, here’s what she wrote on her blog yesterday:
Update: To the comments about how it seemed @BravoAndy was dismissive when he welcomed @McCordAlex at the beginning then I think the reason was they had just had a flaming row over the seating. His excuse for Alex being at the end of the sofa was that he knew @SonjaTMorgan was going to cry and wanted her surrounded by blondes on either side.
Yeah right.
This was LuAnn de Lesseps season. The producers must have had quite a scramble after Bethenny Frankel left, they couldn’t make Jill Zarin number one because of her unpopularity with the fans, Ramona Singer had a shot at it but she hit a producer and was too unpredictable. Sonja Morgan was going into bankruptcy and there are too many holes in her stories of boyfriends, divorce, etc…..Alex McCord has a huge, hulking liability named Simon van Kempen, who Andy Cohen cannot stand. And Alex can’t fight well, so she couldn’t possibly carry the show. Why they stuck Cindy Barshop into the mix I’ll never know. And Kelly Bensimon? No need to comment.
So we were left with LuAnn.
From the trip to Morocco to the finale party with Natalie Cole, LuAnn led the way. Of course, Ramona didn’t like it, and attacked her through her daughter, perhaps causing her to be kicked out of school.
Fast forward to this clusterfuck of a reunion. What has this franchise dissolved into? Petty fights, one-up-man-ship, attacking each other’s children, using social media to attack each other, creating rumors of alcoholism and infidelity ( It’s amazing how often “Ramona divorcing” and “Ramona alcoholic” comes up on my feeds) not to mention Ramona’s periods and Jill’s continuous lies and delusions.
Part 2 airs Monday, August 1 on Bravo
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That reunion was very mean-spirited and pathetic. I really think the entire cast needs to go.
Now that’s a puzzle! i’m not sure what the actual date will be. my satellite provider states part 1 will be re-run at 9:00 Central on Thursday night
Yesterday, I got my TV Guide magazine. Reading through it last night, I noticed that the RHONY reunion was highlighted and shown to be scheduled on Thursday in their normal time slot. Since I haven’t been able to figure out why they would move these shows to Mondays, I wonder if they changed the original plans to show them as usual, when they saw just how bad the reunion was. They knew they had to do a reunion, but is it possible they wanted to downplay it? Just wondering. It couldn’t have been the original decision to air them on Mondays, or TV Guide would have it correctly.