Did Ubah’s Meltdown Ruin ‘RHONY’ for Good?

That’s it?

The Real Housewives of New York City is in freefall. Erin’s “really over vacations with these girls,” and I concur. This Puerto Rico trip didn’t need four episodes, nor did it save this bizarre season. And somehow, next week’s season finale takes place on the cast trip, still, making this the first-ever Housewives season with a five-episode cast trip. Everyone wants their The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Bermuda moment, I guess.

On paper, this trip has been a decent success, as Ubah unravels at every turn while Brynn continues spinning a web of lies, and everyone else is caught in the crossfire. Really, despite the fact it’s cementing this season as an all-time worst for the franchise, it’s pretty interesting to dissect.

There’s a misery emanating from the cast that deflates every moment. It’s the reason why, no matter how salient the drama seems, it lacks that necessary charm. The RHONY women always act like they’re on a company retreat, forced to clock in for the sake of their jobs. That might be because that’s exactly what’s happening.

Some weeks, that means nothing happens. And some weeks, the most uncharismatic fights known to man take over. Ubah’s specialty is creating convoluted drama so confusing that the entire cast’s only reaction is to ignore it, and this diva gave an all-time disastrous performance tonight.

Ubah is determined to make this trip as unpleasant for the women as it is for the viewers, delivering a crash out so severe it makes Jen Shah’s volatility seem mild. Look, if our options are Ubah getting too hot or the ladies putting pretend pubes in their bikinis to prank Jenna, I’ll always take the former.

Unfortunately, we get the latter too, but that’s the last I’ll say of that. I’m leading with love, and I have nothing positive to say about this show’s proclivity for pranks.

The Ubah meltdown is kind of a less interesting Kelly Bensimon on Scary Island moment. Gummy worms-induced psychosis is simply more fun to watch than a debate over if Puerto Rico’s water is “disgusting.” Don’t get me wrong, a tone-deaf insult of an entire country is a classic Housewives act—one the original New York Housewives did all too well—but Racquel’s too genuine a messenger to make this moment a real fight. And Sai’s fully on the image rehab train after becoming America’s most hated Housewife last year, so she lets the slight slide in order to keep up her nothing role.

Next, the ladies dare Erin to make a sexy call to Abe while they’re all there, which pisses Ubah off to the highest degree. She, too, is fed up with the stupid pranks that inundate this franchise.

It’s random that Ubah is so hurt by this harmless call, but she’s just in a bad mood. She hates everyone and everything right now, and there’s nothing that can turn that tide.

“Have some respect! Some of us are praying for a f—ing husband every single day,” Ubah protests. If Erin truly supported women, she’d delete her husband’s number and never call him again. She is not a girl’s girl.

It’s no surprise that Erin’s too deflated to even deal with Ubah—although it makes their appearance on the Bravo FanFest besties panel even more confusing. That’s kind of how the whole cast feels.

They don’t care about each other, so they don’t have the energy to carry out real fights. Ubah vs. Brynn has become the default feud of the season simply because they’re the two cast members who actually enjoy arguing and want attention. Everyone else just wants to hide behind the Housewives brand so they can shill Sonobello or something.

As Ubah continues touting herself as friend of the year for shutting down Erin’s call to Abe, Brynn shoves herself into the conversation to tell Ubah not to come for people’s marriages. This leads to the biggest fight of the season, as Ubah and Brynn trade low-blows.

It’s a genuinely fun moment in an otherwise drab episode, where both come out as losers. Ubah’s right that Brynn is supremely fake, and Brynn’s right that Ubah isn’t anywhere near the household name she claims to be. Picking a side is futile, as is often the case in the Housewives world.

That’s where Erin makes a mistake: She falls for Brynn’s pleas and takes a side. This causes an all-out eruption—well, relative to what we’re used to—that sets us up for a finale fallout.

It’s odd that the season is set to end with the trip, given that’s a major rarity in the franchise. Before RHOSLC Season 4, the only season to have done so was New Jersey Season 12, not exactly a banner season.

To give such a middling trip a third of the season’s episode count and the finale is such a misfire that it’s clear, for as tepid as the cast is, production is just as much to blame, if not more.

From the excessive pranks to the focus on forced topics like the pigeon motif while real plots fall to the wayside (what happened to Erin’s marital strife? How is Racquel’s wedding planning going? How did Racquel and Mel get together, actually? Is Jessel going to have another baby or not?), production put its eggs in all the wrong baskets.

We’re staring down the barrel of the finale now with little fanfare. It’s far from unwatchable and might be better received with time, but it’s hard to see the season as the success Bravo would want to justify rebooting RHONY. With only one episode until the reunion, it’s too late to reverse course now. The real question is where we go from here, and that’s something the reunion will likely touch on. Until then, see you all next week.