Has the ‘Real Housewives’ Franchise Finally Reached Its Breaking Point?

As Heather Dubrow once told Alexis Bellino, “If everyone says you’re dead, it’s time to lie down.” The same could now be said about the Real Housewives of New York—a show that’s been struggling to find its footing.

On May 7, just days ahead of NBCUniversal’s upfront presentation to advertisers, Bravo revealed which of its shows were being renewed for another season. But the network didn’t include Real Housewives of New York, leading Page Six to report that they had effectively pulled the plug on the Real Housewives franchise’s flagship series. Though Andy Cohen quickly shut down the rumors of the troubled show’s death, the reports had fans rejoicing anyway—which can’t be a good sign for the future of New York, or the Real Housewives more broadly.

These conflicting reports come two seasons after New York was totally rebooted, bringing in a completely novel crop of women—but failing to connect to an audience that had grown accustomed to its senior cast and pacing. As New York flounders, the Real Housewives of New Jersey as we know it has been shuttered, taking a similarly extensive “pause” after a 14th season that hit a brick wall story-wise. Meanwhile, the franchise’s most recent buzzy entry, Real Housewives of Dubai, couldn’t even make it to a third season before it was put on pause. All of which prompts a question: Has the Housewives bubble burst?

The answer may lie not in pauses or cancellations, but rather in Bravo’s novel series orders. As OG Housewives shows have been fading, Bravo has been greenlighting a flood of Housewives spin-offs like Ultimate Girls Trip, Welcome to Crappie Lake, Love Hotel, Next Gen NYC, and the newly announced Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition—which signals that the franchise may have already jumped the shark. And that’s according to Cohen himself, who once said that an All Stars–style crossover could happen “when the show is just about out of gas.”

While these kinds of shows are a great way to utilize the network’s deep bench of talent, past and present, releasing so many spin-offs also feels a little like Disney acquiring ownership of Star Wars and then devaluing the brand by throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Soon enough, we’ll be getting a Luann de Lesseps prequel series. (Fine; that, I’d watch.)

But perhaps the Real Housewives franchise isn’t really out of gas just yet. These series have always had ebbs and flows, and when one city is down, another one tends to be up. Right now, Salt Lake City, Miami, and even OC recently aired some of their best seasons ever. Still, there seems to be a pattern that’s emerged of these shows faltering right around their 15-year mark—and we’re watching in real time as different Housewives series try to overcome that slump in different ways.

While RHONY experimented with wiping the slate neat, its predecessor RHOC bounced back from its own darkest days by doing the opposite. OC turned to its stacked bench of former Housewives, bringing back faces like the aforementioned Dubrow and Bellino. But even though they’d been gone for years, watching them again never felt like rehashing the past or chasing the show’s glory days. We were seeing these classic Housewives in a novel stage of their lives, interacting with newer cast members to create a animated that was simultaneously fresh and nostalgic.

It’s a balance that other Housewives shows have tried to strike, including Potomac and Atlanta, with mixed results. Currently, Atlanta is trying to find its footing again with a season that’s alternating between rocky (the unexpected mid-season exit of Kenya Moore) and promising (centering senior favorite Shamea Morton and introducing newbie Angela Oakley and her portable fan). It’s shake-ups like these, ones that carefully walk the line between senior and novel, that tend to work best. They’re a jolt to the show, without discarding what’s been built over the years—and what the audience has already invested in.