‘Real Housewives of New York City’ Doesn’t Know How to Handle Sexual Assault Bombshell

The Real Housewives are supposed to be fun. The Real Housewives of New York City reboot? Not fun!

These ladies spend every week oscillating between tiring pranks and tears, and at some point, you have to wonder if that’s the recipe for a successful show. Here we are at the show’s second reunion, and the trend of everyone crying their eyes out has sadly carried over. The trend of Jenna wearing an outfit that mocks the franchise she’s willingly part of has carried over, too. Yawn. A robe and sunglasses does not an iconic Housewife make.

After a finale that was shocking, disturbing, and quite frankly, uncomfortable to watch, the Real Housewives of New York sit down with a major elephant in the room: How do we go forward with Brynn Whitfield, whose pathological lies blew up a previously uneventful season?

It’s a topic that looms over every moment of the reunion, even though it’s never outright addressed. Instead, many of the season’s major plots are brushed all the way aside in favor of covering safer topics. The pranks? Not even mentioned. The cataclysmically negative fan reaction? Blissfully ignored.

Almost everything we get into isn’t entirely about the contents of the show, itself. The first big discussion hones in on Jenna Lyons and her dodginess with showing her real life on screen. It’s a major issue with the Jenna experience, one that makes her continued presence on the show hard to justify.

She didn’t show her relationship on screen. We barely see her family or home life. We know nothing of Jenna Lyons aside from the curated collection she shares. This isn’t the J. Crew catalog, though. It’s a show where you have to show the good, bad, and ugly. Otherwise, go be a guest judge on Project Runway.

It’s a good step to grill her at the reunion. It would be an even better step to send her a friend contract, if she’s unwilling to be a real Housewife. Step it up, Jenna. I know you’re more interesting than you want us to think.

Really, this whole show could be more interesting if the right threads were pulled on. The entire Brynn fiasco is so bizarrely convoluted that it seems no one’s quite sure how to go about it, yet alone production, leaving half the reunion as yet another “very special episode” of RHONY.

It’s clear the cast are fed up with Brynn. That’s why the prolonged discussion of Brynn’s sexual assault feels so uncomfortable and incomplete, as it was a major plot-point in the finale, one used to sully Ubah.

The discussion just has a major cloud over it, now. It does not feel like something the show can properly handle. No one wants to be the cast member shutting down this segment to reprimand Brynn, especially when the simple truth is people are nuanced. Brynn can be a victim in one situation, and still have wronged Ubah in another. She can be a pathological liar, and it still won’t ever be OK to discredit her assault.

Her cast members are smart enough to realize this, allowing the segment to end without addressing that major component of the story. That means we have to wait until Part 2 to discuss the true fallout of the finale, something that would be a lot less upsetting had the season not ended on its climax.

It simply would have been better from a storytelling perspective to film more of the aftermath of Puerto Rico. It’s hard to even pretend I care about Jessel and Pavit’s marriage when the major finale drama still looms large.

And the jump from Brynn’s sexual assault story to playing “What Work Did Jessel Have Done?” is a bit jarring, to say the least. It is, arguably, the first fun moment of the reunion, though! It’s the kind of levity that is exciting on Real Housewives, and it’s a decent escape from the misery that encapsulates much of this group.

All she does is take care of her skin, and yes she lost a little weight. Oh, and maybe some botox. Does filler count as work done? If so, that too. And yeah, those chiclet teeth are veneers. But otherwise, that’s Jessel’s God given face. Believe women.

Alas, it’s simply an aperitif before the Brynn smackdown that will commence in Part 2. The episode ends on Jessel, and even Jenna, scolding Brynn hard for her constant lying, having damaged Jessel’s already fragile marriage in Puerto Rico.

It’s pretty exciting to see Jenna finally speak up and willingly engage in drama. It’s something we haven’t seen once in her two years, and hopefully means she’s willing to swim in murkier waters going forward. God knows Bravo’s not firing her, so we might as well root for an improved Jenna.

Now that the dam has broken, maybe the rest of the women will finally go in on Brynn. Maybe, with the tears wiped from their eyes and the knives freshly sharpened, these ladies can stick the landing. We’ve had our vegetables. It’s time for a truly decadent dessert.