There are certain things—images, moments, experiences—that signify healing, that things are the way they are supposed to be.
When a dried-up river runs mightily once again, for example, or the most qualified candidate actually wins a political race. To put it in terms of my world, it’s like when Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are photographed together again looking affectionate. (C’mon. Those kids have at least one more marriage in them.)
Such a monumental moment happens about two minutes into the premiere of The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th: Nene Leakes has returned.
The queen is back where she is meant to be, on Bravo.
It’s the first example of what is the flagrant fan service of the new series. That’s not a criticism. Far from it.
Roaring 20th, timed to the landmark 20th anniversary of the first-ever episode of The Real Housewives, is a glorious, delirious trip down memory lane. It’s actually more like a tipsy round of bumper cars through a hall of funhouse mirrors, each reflection beaming back one of the iconic moments from the last two decades that made you laugh, cry, cringe, meme, and be glad you never thought to bring Teresa Giudice a hostess gift of Sprinkle cookies.
The premise puts six veteran Housewives from different cities in the franchise on a road trip together, across the country and through pop-culture history, making pit stops in the show’s most indelible cities and reuniting with dozens of familiar faces from the series along the way.
The temptation would be to compare the series to The Avengers of Reality TV, but that would require me having enough comic-book knowledge to properly execute that analogy, and I simply do not. I am a person who, in this premiere episode, excitedly clapped to himself at the sight of a cake with a bow that referenced a major moment in The Real Housewives of Orange County. Some of us contain multitudes. I have a singular tude, and it is energized by beloved Housewives.
Roaring 20th, then, is everything I hoped.
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