Real Housewives of New Jersey’ Is Dead After That Scandalous Finale

The Real Housewives of New Jersey is dead. Just like the rental home the ladies tried to visit for their canceled cast trip, the show is just rubble, the remains of what was once a signature Bravo franchise. At least it went out in spectacular fashion.

The Season 14 finale is the most intense and salacious episode RHONJ has aired in years. It’s a beautiful disaster that almost justifies the wildly uneven, narratively inconsequential season that preceded it. Almost. It’s nearly impossible to imagine anything beyond this. Then again, Pixar made Toy Story 4 (soon to be five!) and, somehow, Avengers: Endgame wasn’t the end of the Marvel experiment, so who knows?

The structure of the episode is classic, building up to a final group sit-down at the perfect setting: a rustic Italian steakhouse in the heart of Jersey. Although Dolores hopes the relaxing energy of the rustling train and exposed brick will bring good energy to balance out the toxicity emitting from the group, that’s nowhere near the case. In fact, the most beautiful thing about the finale is that just about every cast member is buried alive by the end of it, too deep into their own despair to even attempt saving face, leaving the show in such immense devastation that it actually feels Shakesperian.

If you think the finale vindicated Teresa, you surely have been hugging that tree as hard as you can for 14 seasons now, and I wish you well following her to whatever endeavors await (next up: House of Villains, then The Traitors). And if you think Margaret left the finale in good shape, well, that’s an artistic interpretation.

The veil has been pulled all the way back and it actually has been made clear why Bravo canceled the traditional reunion. Put Andy at the end of the table and you’d have functionally the same thing, albeit with some interruptions and a detour to discuss the lady pond. To be fair to Andy, though, he wouldn’t ditch the reunion when the drama heats up as Jenn Fessler did, although her approach is admittedly funnier.

The sit-down is preceded by a bizarre meeting between Dolores and Margaret, the former coming straight from Teresa’s failed legal event. While Teresa was unable to provide anything shocking or salacious to us viewers, her lukewarm tea did reverberate enough to shake up Dolores, who questions how long Margaret has been in contact with Luis’ exes.