😂

Literally that is what we are here for!

In any case it all feels terrible and gross and is not actually the drama that folks want from their escapist popcorn reality. Fix it Andy!

And on the other side you have a woman who has said terrible stuff who never stops to actually express empathy for what her friend has gone through, but instead jumps to horror for herself that she has been publicly accused of knowing about the trauma and making a callous “joke” anyway.

This makes the whole thing on both sides feel terrible. Now the “villain” is a woman who is obviously coping with multiple traumas while also potentially overplaying her hand through lies to maintain star status on a show that demands drama in order to keep your job.

When the big accusation about Ubah is shared, one of the very first things Ubah asks is whether or not it was on camera. That shifts central tension from a very normal “how could anyone think I would do that?” to“is Brynn maliciously trying to undermine Ubah’s reputation, brand, and livelihood?”

All season the question has been framed as whether Brynn is lying to stir the pot and fracture relationships. But really the question is as much about what they discuss and agree to on screen vs off and the betrayal breaking that code and damaging the brands they are all there to build and bolster

We see the same explicit and frequent pulling back of the curtain happening throughout the entire season of RHONY culminating in a really strange finale that no one quite knows what to do with.

Lala’s growing panic about Ariana refusing to be near Tom and the constant discussion of the agreements and tradeoffs made to be in the cast and keep the storylines going made the central drama about the business of the show as much as the supposed relationships within it.

Scandoval was so epic because the whole framework exploded. The discovery didn’t happen on camera but social media replayed it in nearly real time, and the timeline was viewable. The personal and professional fallout were so deeply intertwined which was great tv until it wasn’t

That’s meaningful only because the premise of these shows rely on our ability to believe,at least minimally, that these folks have some level of unscripted relationship and we are bearing witness to at least a sliver of authenticity related to those relationships, especially around drama

The questions all season about Brynn lying or not weren’t just questions about whether a liar was in their midst, it was about if and how on screen vs off screen interactions were being used and fudged to manipulate and inflame on screen storylines and to what end

Scandoval and the fallout from that shattered the third wall and they cannot seem to put the genie back in the bottle, especially with newer casts. The RHONY finale is further proof of that amid pretty sad and disturbing storyline.

🙏🏾 getting a lot of responses that this is a tough question to fully answer in the moment.

And what does wildfire smoke mean for Los Angeles' air quality, which is already the worst in the country?

"Technically," notes @emilypont.bsky.social. "Wildfire smoke is completely unregulated."