Aftershocks

It's official: Only Houston could save Real Housewives from itsfranchise-killing Miami mess

Adrianna's strip tease wasn't exactly a high note for the "Real Housewives"franchise.
When you miss Danielle Staub's drama, you know it's been a rough season.
Andy Cohen might want to rethink his stance on Houston. Especially if he wantsto keep this cash-cow franchise alive.

Don’t look for flipped tables or yanked extensions in Miami.

You know you’re in Real Housewives trouble if your franchise is replaced by a show called Pregnant in Heels. That’s right. After a surprisingly short season, the five saucy spitfires of Florida find themselves displaced by a nanny concierge.

We can’t really tell you what a nanny concierge is, but here are six reasons why it’s twilight of The Real Housewives, at least in Miami.

Your most exciting character is a woman who describes herself as “nearly 99 ½ .” Marysol’s mystifying mom did it again for us. As she looks over Marysol’s gorgeous wedding photos, she can’t get enough of her daughter, who looks like “royalty” while her new son-in-law looks like “a bodyguard protecting your mink.” We suspect she’ll warm to Philippe and she certainly held court at Marysol’s misguided cooking lesson party. This brings us to our next reason.

Your brand new French husband, the one with a sexy Rugby player’s build, is hawking frozen fish at your “elegant” dinner party. When it’s her turn to impress the gals at yet another cooking ‘n’ cocktails soirée, the best Marysol can do is invite Philippe to introduce his new line of healthy pre-packaged foods. At least Marysol has gone to the trouble of providing each guest with a monogrammed chef jacket.

“You can dress like a chef and it will taste like a chef [sic]” chimes Philippe as he cuts through a plastic bag he’s just pulled from a pot of boiling water.

The other women watch as if it were some kind of failed joke. “I feel like I’m on an infomercial,” Alexia exclaims, and we know just what she means.

When Philippe finishes his presentation of flaked, pre-cooked salmon with a few diced tomatoes, we wondered if he would place the plate on the floor for his over-privileged and hungry house cat.

Your show keeps staging the same failed dinner party (with psychic) as if it’s Groundhog Day and even Bill Murray couldn’t save you. We knew from the first terrible party at Lea Black’s house that no good could come from these “cooking lessons.”

No one learned to cook, but the girls were great with knives. Elsa shows up in stylish sunglasses and what looks a like a Roberto Cavalli frock, and there wasn’t enough wine in Philippe’s well-stocked refrigerator to dull the shrill voice of Larsa Pippen.

When Adriana asks for one of Elsa’s famous readings, Elsa plays coy, saying, “I’m very expensive, darling!” Larsa shrieks that she doesn’t believe in psychics, but then goads Elsa into reading her vibes.

“I like you very much,” Elsa says, “but you’re emotionally immature.” Worse still, “you’re worried about a man, your man.” She doles out kinder words for Lea, Adrianna, and Alexia before telling Cristy that her split from NBA star Glenn Rice was her own fault.

In a video diary Larsa shrieks, “I’m the most stable person here” before attacking the other wives for their many divorces and children. Elsa must be the problem, she concludes: “My mom always gave me a pat on the back and told me I was fabulous, so I grew up thinking everything I did was great.”

Well, a girl can dream. Elsa says it best later. “Stupid and redundant,” she calls them, and, “a bunch of people who probably didn’t even go to high school. I don’t remember anything intelligent or even funny they said. They are Miss Nobodies.”

We couldn’t have said it any better. Come on, Bravo, give Elsa her own show. We’re sure she can reverse the Miami ratings slide.

You need a Canyon Ranch vacation and newly-learned stripper moves to get a man to marry you. Adrianna and Frederic spirit themselves away for an erotic mud bath to discuss future plans. Within seconds Frederic agrees to marry her, adopt her son and tell-off her ex-husband. All of this happens before she performs the strip tease she’s been practicing with a coach.

We’d hoped to be spared an unseemly display. But when she whips off a gold lame dress to reveal a chintzy red negligee and stutters “I work in a strip club” in some pale imitation of longing, we found ourselves missing Danielle “Garbage” Staub of New Jersey Housewives fame.

Your son aspires to a modeling career, which excites you more than it excites him. Alexia is full of girlish anticipation when she brings her 17-year-old son Peter to meet Ron, a high-powered Miami modeling agent.

“He came out in Ocean Drive Magazine!” she says of his one and only gig. Surely, it’s just a small step up to the cover of GQ!

Alexia is practically drooling when Peter has to take off his shirt for the photographer, and her voice-over reminds us that he’s beautiful and he has a beautiful body. Perhaps, but he doesn’t look like high-fashion material to us, and once the photographer leaves, he’s quick to yell at Mom for not preventing him from stuffing himself before the shoot.

“Of course I’m gonna show a little belly after that,” he retorts. “You’re ready to model for Calvin Klein!” she insists. Haven’t we seen this unfortunate dialogue played out before, in New Jersey and Orange County?

Even a celebrity chef and fresh organic produce can’t save your disastrous luncheon.The crass Lea Black, in a white ruffled collar that reminds us of a paint-by-number clown portrait, decides to surprise the other housewives with a two-hour SUV limousine drive out of Miami. When they arrive at Paradise Farms to enjoy a meal cooked by none other than Michelle Bernstein, all the women can do is complain about the heat and the bugs.

And on top of it, they have to harvest their own vegetables! Even a sampling of some fresh clitoria flowers (“it tastes just like honeysuckle!” farm owner Gabriele Marewski exults) doesn’t lift the mood.

Marysol looks like a goth chicken in her black-feathered hat. When Larsa pipes up with, “My mom is even a bigger bitch than your Mom,” Marysol just goes silent. That remark would have flipped a table in New Jersey. Here it just dampens the already humid crowd. Cristy pines for a cheeseburger, and Larsa wonders if the multiple stray dogs have been pissing on the produce.

The wise Chef Bernstein busies herself softening some rhubarb and mostly ignores them. “To make Michelle Bernstein and us drive all the way there to pick some weeds and put them in a bowl was a waste of time,” complains Alexia, and we couldn’t agree more.

It seems there’s no better place to jump the shark than in Miami. The beaches are great, but we hate to see this flop of a franchise stealing all the best bits from the other Housewives only to ruin them.

Bravo, get your act together. Find us more terrifyingly frivolous hausfraus with rude psychic sidekicks, slick stripper poles, indifferent children, weekly charity events and drunken cat fights.

Are you sure you won’t try Houston?

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Music feature

Texas country star Cody Johnson's new album goes to 'Banks of Trinity'

Photo by Cameron Powell

Cody Johnson.

There's a moment at every Cody Johnson show where the Texas-born-and-bred country star asks the crowd, “How many of you tonight are watching me and this band live for the very first time?” he told The Associated Press. “And every night, I would say at least 80% of the crowd raises their hands.”

It's not the kind of reaction most veteran artists receive. “And I’m thinking, you know, 20 years is a long time to work for something. But when you see that … What’s the next 20 years look like?” he asks.

The rancher, rodeo competitor, and onetime prison guard started his two-decade career playing honky tonks and dive bars. That led to slow and steady growth for the country traditionalist, but in the last few years, something has shifted. He landed his fifth career No. 1 song with “The Fall.” He was named Entertainer of the Year at the 2026 Academy of Country Music Awards, the show's highest honor. That was a month after he headlined Stagecoach Music Festival. For an artist with legions of fans, it looked like he was accessing new heights.

“I feel like I’m closing a book and I’m opening another one and it’s all blank pages,” he says of this period. “Let's get to the next chapter." On June 26, that new era began with the release of his latest album, Banks of the Trinity.

Traveling to the Banks of the Trinity
It hasn't been an easy road. Last fall, Johnson had to cancel a bunch of tour dates after upper respiratory and sinus infections caused a burst eardrum that required surgery — an intimidating medical procedure for anyone, but especially nerve-wracking for a musician. “I was scared,” he said simply. But “in a roundabout way, it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.”

It forced him to take three months off, which allowed him to be home during the birth of his son. It also rejuvenated his approach in the studio. Before the incident, he thought the album was complete. It was not. The additional time resulted in the inclusion of a few songs that now feel inextricable from the record: “Thank Somebody Country,” “Take Me Back (Leave Me There),” “Cricket on a Hook,” and the resilient “I Have” among them.

“What a blessing to have that kind of song fall in your lap when you’re kind of up against the ropes,” he says of the latter. “I mean, we thought we had the record done. It wasn’t done.”

A title track with real resonance
At the heart of Banks of the Trinity is its title track, which recalls Eagles' cover of “Seven Bridges Road” meets bluegrass and Southern gospel.

Lyrically, it's an ode to Johnson's childhood. “I grew up on the banks of the Trinity [River.] Fishing for catfish, not so much out of pleasure or sport but for necessity to put food in the freezer. Deer season for me was not a trophy thing,” he said.

And while that track inspires a feeling of nostalgia within the listener, he doesn't consider this album a throwback collection. He says it's about showcasing his evolving sonic diversity.

"The rest of the album for me is a musical journey from track one to track 16,” he said. “There’s a little bit of a flavor for everybody. It does kind of hit Motown. It does kind of hit bluegrass. It does hit progressive country. It does it old country. It does a little rock here and there.”

It's the result of a new kind of freedom, one that is at least partially due to his recent accomplishments, including taking home the top prize at the ACM Awards.

“I just did the thing that I’ve aspired to do in my career my entire life,” he says. “A really good place is a really good way to describe where I am.”

And now that the album is out, he's ready to take a breather.

“I will be shirtless with no shoes on a beach at an undisclosed location,” he jokes about the days after record release. “'Cause I have already done all the prep work. I've been working on this album for two years. I’ve done all of the interviews. I’ve shook all the hands. Me and my wife and kids are gonna disappear for 10 days and I’m gonna become, I guess, every Kenny Chesney song ever.”

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