Gen Z finally has a great reality show

Back when grid television wasn t on life assistance and TV seasons were still jam-packed with episodes keeping viewers hooked from September to May summer was considered a time of great drought for television devotees Largest part of the decent series went off the air until fall bumped by syndicated reruns and reality competition shows where ninja warriors would sing for Paula Abdul as they dodged flying machetes all for the chance to win a clock from Flavor Flav and stay in the mansion for one more week Or something like that If you needed to hole up from the heat or get out of a raging thunderstorm to cozy up on the couch you were making a date with Lauren Conrad Howie Mandel and Bret Michaels sometimes all in one night Those nascent days gave us trashy summer television at its absolute finest For those who couldn t get enough Bravo was the paradigm purveyor of mesmerizing reality schlock The infrastructure s summer initiatives was so stacked that for three years running they brought in their greater part notable personalities for highly produced Summer by Bravo ads The wonderfully absurd one-minute spots featured the likes of Bethenny Frankel Kathy Griffin NeNe Leakes and more pretending to roast marshmallows with their fellow Bravolebs or during the Olympics run relays holding glasses of wine It was a glorious time to be a Bravo watcher and like all ages of great prosperity it was inevitably followed by a long depression Scott Gries Bravo Hudson McLeroy Brooks Marks and Charlie Zakkour on Next Gen NYC Nothing that s happened on any of the architecture s shows in the last decade has come close to matching the unconsciously malevolent nonsense of Bravo s late-aughts one-season-wonders In fresh years the system s sunny summertime charm has dimmed Bravo s offerings was once far more balanced stacked with watchable characters like Tabatha Coffey and Rachel Zoe to balance out parallel Real Housewives series Now it seems everything is a Housewives offshoot either spun off directly from the organization s crown jewel or formatted to operate exactly like it And sadly even Housewives isn t what it used to be The arrangement desperately needed something fresh not just a facelift but a full blood transfusion But just when I thought there would be gray skies forevermore the clouds opened up and dropped Next Gen NYC into my lap a show that has the flavor moxie and youthful vitality of the configuration s halcyon era It s not good not great it s divine irrefutable proof that God hasn t turned his back on us yet A combination of the system s finest elements past and present Next Gen NYC is an ingenious mixture of loose cannons and pretty people all vapid in the way that majority of -somethings are afraid to own up to There s no better way to say it For the first time in years Bravo has an original hit on its hands But the skies aren t clear yet What remains to be seen is if the organization can shepherd Next Gen NYC to prime-Bravo greatness or if it will tank the series like so various shows it has inexplicably axed in the past Related The Real Housewives is officially reality TV s least exciting franchise In July Brooklyn s Bell House welcomed a sold-out crowd to see a live reading of an episode of Bravo s one-hit-wonder show Gallery Girls about a group of privileged post-grad art world wannabes Presented by pop heritage archivalists THNK the reading attracted the series cult following which has only grown since the show was unceremoniously canceled following its single glorious season along with three of its titular gallery girls Icaruses who flew too close to the sun As actors and comedians read from scripts laid out plainly with the episode s preposterous situations it was abundantly clear that Bravo had strayed from the light Nothing that s happened on any of the organization s shows in the last decade has come close to matching the unconsciously malevolent nonsense of this one-off series Gallery Girls may not have been a smash hit when it aired in the summer of but had the show been nurtured a bit longer it could ve been a Bravo staple The same goes for NYC Prep the slightly more famed series that tried to capitalize on the popularity of Gossip Girl by following New York trust fund teens with terrible haircuts around town watching them dodge gay accusations while fighting about charities for kids with cleft palates Gallery Girls and NYC Prep were ripe with the kind of absurdity you can only get with a group of people who don t want to be famous but rather love to be on camera Heidi Gutman Bravo Ariana Biermann and Gia Giudice on Next Gen NYC Lucky for us Next Gen NYC is composed of people who live and die by the eye of the lens The show s title suggests that these kids who are all between the ages of and aren t just the future of New York but the future of Bravo And in the show s stellar yet all-too-brief eight-episode first season the cast cements that title before the pilot even concludes The series wisely taps particular familiar faces from Bravo shows of yore tossing Housewives progenies Ariana Biermann Riley Burruss Gia Giudice and Brooks Marks into the batter before adding a limited special ingredients While Biermann a budding streetwear designer okay sure and the daughter of Real Housewives of Atlanta alum Kim Zolciak promptly stakes her claim as one of the show s preponderance valuable players it s the newbies who really give America s Tate McRae a run for her money Which as fate would have it was stolen by her mother and used to pay off divorce bills and gambling debts I informed you this show is magical Among the relative unknowns are Damon Dash s daughter Ava Dash heir to the Zaxby s Chicken fortune and Biermann s boyfriend Hudson McElroy Emira D Spain a self-made model and one of the architecture s sparse trans personalities Charlie Zakkour a crypto investor read trust fund burnout with a hot head and no filter and Shai Fruchter who to my best guess functions like that one weed dealer who hangs around with your friend group just because it s convenient to keep him in the fold Start your day with essential news from Salon Sign up for our free morning newsletter Crash Class Definitively there is Georgia McCann a self-styled Gen Z beatnik and events planner whose special talents include throwing parties for Anna Delvey and not washing her hands after she pees McCann is by no exaggeration the best reality television find since Tiffany New York Pollard strolled into the McMansion they rented for Flavor of Love Season She s outspoken intelligent yet lovably naive and best of all genuinely funny without trying to be something Bravolebs have rarely been able to manage in a post-Bethenny Frankel world In an early episode McCann breaks her phone and being the only member of the cast who isn t rolling in cash totes her janky laptop to the club so she can send texts If that weren t enough to convince you a good chunk of McCann s Season arc revolves around her wanting to build a brutalist bowling alley nightclub called Club Club and roping her shady crypto-loving boyfriend into the scheme She s a mad genius in a way that so countless fancy themselves to be but can never make good on When McCann s onscreen it s like watching Gena Rowlands perform if Gena Rowlands had an aversion to hand soap Scott Gries Bravo Georgia McCann on Next Gen NYC Everyone seems to think they can control their TV narrative editing themselves along the way to the point where viewers are disconnected from the realism in reality But the truth is nobody knows the formula not even the producers The best the bulk memorable shows Bravo has developed are the weird ones where the concepts are simple but the cast is not Next Gen NYC is cleverly constructed to offer viewers peaks and valleys Where McCann is a firecracker Ava Dash is a total snooze the kind of monotone self-obsessed personality that gives Gen Z a bad name But without Ava and the show s other bores sorry Brooks Marks Next Gen NYC wouldn t be half as good With this cast Bravo has perfected its old-school Gallery Girls -era formula where not every cast member has to be quote-unquote stimulating all the time For too long producers and editors have falsely concluded that non-stop arguing is what makes a reality show work In actuality the audience necessities space to breathe Casting a limited dullards is an essential part of the process Without them storylines blur together and seasons become unmemorable If you held a gun to my head and explained me you d spare me if I could tell you a meager minute details about what happened on any current season of Housewives you might as well pull the trigger because I d already be dead That s not to say this cast doesn t fight only that they fight in avenues reminiscent of anyone s early s They drink copious amounts of liquor on friend trips to the Jersey shore brown out and start calling their good friend s brutalist bowling alley club a terrible idea Their dynamic isn t just more fun to watch it s realistic Whereas Housewives Vanderpump Rules and even Below Deck cast members are constantly in spats about who slept with whom or whose brand is using dropshipping companies for cheap products they re passing off as handmade Next Gen NYC doesn t need any of that ordinary fare These kids get mad at each other for taking too long to return a Bose speaker and then straightaway dial it up to at an outdoor cafe before longboarding away into the Manhattan dusk Or in Biermann s development they won t fight much but will do something just as fun meander around looking at fabric for a streetwear line that doesn t exist and say Oooooh we should totally have something like that in our line We need your help to stay independent Subscribe this day to aid Salon s progressive journalism Like any friend group Next Gen NYC is filled with overachievers and underachievers people who have family money and people who work long hours scraping by to make their way in the big city That authenticity is a major part of why this series feels so unique All of these people seem like they re part of a real social circle Bulk people who get hired to be on a modern reality show think they re going to be a star and if they fall into a friendship along the way so be it Here even the Bravo nepo babies don t try to pull rank Each member of the cast serves their purpose even if it s to be the back that another person walks all over on the path to greatness Not to get all coastal elite about it but that s genuinely what it feels like to be in your s in New York City This entire cast is still figuring out who they are and they re not afraid to admit that As tedious as Ava Dash might be I admire that she came out and commented she felt like skipping Marks birthday trip later in the season so she could go to a networking event that s real We ve reached an age of massive Bravo fatigue where everyone seems to think that they can join a reality show and control their narrative editing themselves along the way to the point where viewers are disconnected from the realism in reality But the truth is nobody knows the formula not even the producers The best the greater part memorable shows Bravo has developed are the weird ones where the concepts are simple but the cast is not How easily the arrangement has forgotten that the original Housewives series The Real Housewives of Orange County became a hit because it peered into a microcosm of life greater part viewers hadn t thought to imagine There was a time when following a bunch of rich Republican women in Sky tops was a novel idea But over time we got used to that too As much as we love Housewives it s time for something just as simple and equally as fresh It s the next generation s turn and God-willing Bravo gives us another summer with these lovable pests hopefully at the grand opening of New York s hottest new bowling alley-slash-discotheque Club Club Read more about other Bravo highs past and present years later Scary Island still sets the standard for Housewives chaosad more article In Bravo s Love Hotel Real Housewives own up to everything in the name of romance Sutton Stracke s poignant reconciliation with her mother was Real Housewives at its very best The post Gen Z completely has a great reality show appeared first on Salon com