Gen Z finally has a great reality show

Back when network television wasn’t on life support, and TV seasons were still jam-packed with 22 episodes keeping viewers hooked from September to May, summer was considered a time of great drought for television devotees. Most 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 wanted 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 network’s summer programming was so stacked that, for three years running, they brought in their most 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 2012 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.

In recent years, the network’s sunny summertime charm has dimmed. Bravo’s programming 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 network’s crown jewel or formatted to operate exactly like it. And, sadly, even “Housewives” isn’t what it used to be. The network 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 network’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 network’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 most 20-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 network can shepherd “Next Gen NYC” to prime-Bravo greatness, or if it will tank the series like so many shows it has inexplicably axed in the past.

In July, Brooklyn’s Bell House welcomed a sold-out crowd to see a live reading of an episode of Bravo’s 2012 one-hit-wonder show, “Gallery Girls,” about a group of privileged, post-grad art world wannabes. Presented by pop culture archivalists THNK1994, 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 network’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 2012, 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 2009 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 allegations 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 22 and 30, 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 some 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 few special ingredients. While Biermann — a budding streetwear designer (okay, sure!) and the daughter of “Real Housewives of Atlanta” alum Kim Zolciak — quickly stakes her claim as one of the show’s most 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 told 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 network’s few 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 Course.

Finally, 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 1. 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 1 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 many 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”

“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 interesting all the time. For too long, producers and editors have falsely believed that non-stop arguing is what makes a reality show work. In actuality, the audience needs space to breathe. Casting a few 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 told me you’d spare me if I could tell you a few minute details about what happened on any recent 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 ways reminiscent of anyone’s early 20s. 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 immediately dial it up to 100 at an outdoor cafe, before longboarding away into the Manhattan dusk. Or, in Biermann’s case, 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!”

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. Most 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 20s 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 said 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, most memorable shows Bravo has developed are the weird ones, where the concepts are simple, but the cast is not. How easily the network has forgotten that the original “Housewives” series, “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” became a hit because it peered into a microcosm of life most 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.