Watch What Happens: Our Favorite Vintage Bravo Moments

Please do not adjust your computer screen. On Monday, Peacock is boosting its library by “opening the Bravo vault,” as the streaming service calls it, and adding a variety of series that haven’t streamed in years to the platform. The glut includes golden age Bravo curiosities like The Rachel Zoe Project and NYC Prep—music to the ears of many VF staffers, who have been obsessing over Bravo minutia for going on 20 years now.

In honor of the Peacock drop, we decided to reminisce about 11 vintage Bravo moments that are still seared into our memories—some of which are now available to stream, and some of which unfortunately aren’t. (But if there’s any justice, the rest of the Bravo vault won’t stay closed for long.)

Don’t Be “Tardy for the Party,” DarlingBefore Countess Luann turned her life into a cabaret, before Erika Jayne bet it all on blonde, there was Kim Zolciak-Biermann warning us not to be tardy for her party. The OG Atlanta Housewife is a pioneer in the niche but now densely populated category of Housewives with inexplicable musical aspirations, blazing the trail with her debut single on season two of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Often holding a wine glass in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, Zolciak would bellow her way through the pop anthem—written, of course, by fellow Housewife Kandi Burress. While Burress is the legitimate Grammy winner responsible for TLC’s “No Scrubs,” she did not bring her A-game to this assignment, delivering Zolciak a song that sounded like it was written by ChatGPT (even though it came out in 2009).

The ensuing drama surrounding “Tardy for the Party,” specifically the legal battle between Burress and Zolciak over royalties from the song, would provide some of Bravo’s most delicious conflict. (A judge sided with Zolciak and dismissed the case.) But ultimately, it all comes back to the track itself. The message was simple—do not arrive at the function late—yet the impact was so much more. Watching a woman of—we’re being generous here—middling vocal ability believe in herself on a national platform was paradigm-shifting in the reality television space at the time, and created a new archetype of Housewife in the process. Say what you will about her now, but you have to respect Kim Zolciak-Biermann, Bravo’s original songstress. —Chris Murphy

The Real Housewife Who Lied About Being an NFL CheerleaderThe Real Housewives of DC only lasted one season, but it will forever be remembered for the delusion of Michaele Salahi, the cast member and White House gate-crasher later lampooned by Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live. Salahi falsely insisted throughout the season that she had been a cheerleader for the team then known as the Washington Redskins. She was given an opportunity to prove it—at an alumni event—but couldn’t learn the routine. The team’s alumni association confirmed that Salahi had never been a cheerleader. During the first reunion episode, Andy Cohen confronted Salahi, pointing out that her own brother said she was lying—and she spun her wheels in one of the most bizarre reunion moments in franchise history. —Julie Miller

NYC Prep’s It BoyThe show was as short-lived as my memory of it is fuzzed by the 15 years since it aired, but NYC Prep…wow. NYC Prep aired amid the original Gossip Girl frenzy. The cast was an attempt at life imitating Serena, Blair, et al.: There was a Taylor Momsen type who went to Stuyvesant (a public school, oh, no!) and an Ed Westwick-Chace Crawford amalgam, P.C. Peterson, who goes by those initials not out of nostalgia for the culture wars of the 1990s, but because his whole name is Peter Cary Peterson—named for his grandfather Pete Peterson, Richard Nixon’s commerce secretary and a cofounder of Blackstone. P.C. also appeared in Twelve, the 2010 film based on Nick McDonell’s fantastic 2002 Manhattan prep-school-druggie opus (and which predates both Gossip Girl and NYC Prep!), playing “Guy Kissing Jessica,” according to IMDb. Tiffany Trump was reportedly the flower girl at his 2018 Vegas wedding to reality-adjacent person Quentin Esme Brown; no word on Trump’s presence when Brown filed for divorce in 2020. I presume by now some of the other NYC Preps are…parents? Time flies when you’re a Bravo star. —Claire Howorth

Princesses: Long Island’s Lost PrincessMy Roman Empire is this exceedingly short-lived 2013 Bravo series, which sought to do for Jews what Jersey Shore had done for Italian Americans. (That is, upset them, while keeping them glued to the screen.) Its stars were a bunch of 20- and 30-something women who spent their time making labored “challah” puns, sponging off their incredibly wealthy Long Island parents, and, of course, screaming at each other. The show’s best fight came in episode nine, when a girls’ trip to the “wine vineyard” devolved into screeching and condemnations so dramatic that Princess Ashlee White felt she had no choice but to flee and call her mother on the phone. “They, they were so mean to me,” she sobbed. “Mom, they were yelling at me so much…Mom…help…me.” It was a display so juvenile and bizarre that I’m still thinking about it 11 years later, even though there appears to be no video evidence online to prove it actually happened. —Hillary Busis

What Even Was Top Design?In 2007, high off the success of Top Chef and Project Runway, Bravo premiered Top Design, which aimed to apply the general formula of those hit shows to the field of interior decorating. Hosted by beloved maximalist Todd Oldham and judged by designer’s designer Kelly Wearstler, then Architectural Digest editor in chief Margaret Russell, and furniture phenom Jonathan Adler, the show’s professional bona fides were in order. As with your average competition show, Top Design gave its contestants free rein over a set—in this case Los Angeles’ Pacific Design Center—and asked them to compete in two challenges an episode. Though it worked wonderfully as wish fulfillment for my teenage obsession with throw pillows and 2000s-appropriate jewel-toned walls, there are only so many times you can be entertained by an adult struggling with an area rug in an elevator; turns out that you can’t decorate a showroom and expect the same drama as a high-energy kitchen or bustling atelier. Still, Wearstler remains my idol, and I have never seen her wares on display at ABC Carpet & Home without thinking of the show and its impeccable presentation of her devotion to her hair crimper. —Erin Vanderhoof

Rachel Zoe Opens the FloodgatesToday, Brad Goreski is a bona fide celebrity stylist with clients like Demi Moore, Rashida Jones, Kaley Cuoco, and Jenna Dewan. But back in 2008, when he was appearing on The Rachel Zoe Project, he was still learning that dressing some of the biggest names in Hollywood is hard work. In the very second episode of the series, a flood hits Rachel Zoe’s studio, drenching and damaging designer gowns worth thousands of dollars. Upon discovering the sopping wet dresses, Taylor Jacobson unleashes a six-second long “aahhhhh” before she and Goreski are both left so stunned that all they can manage to say is “Oh, my God”—broken up by a couple of expletives—over and over again. It’s a keening for fashion and the early aughts. —Maggie Coughlan

The Ultimate Bethenny-Ramona ShowdownBethenny Frankel and Ramona Singer walking over the Brooklyn Bridge would be notable even if nothing happened other than Singer deigning to travel below Canal Street. The two are ostensibly there to clear the air about Singer allegedly “talking to the press,” which is like one Housewife accusing another of “wanting to be on TV.” Instead of making nice, though, Singer tells Frankel, “You have nobody in your life. Right now you have Jason [Hoppy]—you’ll probably mess that up too.” Singer honestly seems to think she’s being helpful by letting her know. Frankel stares at her agape before saying, sarcastically but fairly accurately, “I’m not a normal person. I don’t have any friends.”

The moment is chilling in its prescience. Frankel, a divisive but all-time best Housewife, was secretly pregnant at the time. She would marry Hoppy and star in a spin-off series with him before going through a torturous eight-year-long divorce. Her friends—at least that we saw on TV—were almost exclusively employees and on-air affiliates. Frankel was, as Singer put it, “self-serving”—and that quality allowed her to sell part of her Skinnygirl company for (say it with me!) a reported $100 million.

Meanwhile, imagine the lack of self-awareness or restraint that would allow Singer to say that to her colleague, on camera, on the Brooklyn Bridge. It would be like getting captured on the jumbotron at a Nets game and extemporaneously writing a sign with an arrow pointing to the person you came with that says, “CARLA, YOU WILL DIE ALONE, YOU’RE WELCOME.”

What makes a great Housewife often makes a shitty person. And the line right before self-destruction or irredeemability can often make for incredible TV. —Anna Peele

The Real-ish World of Kelly CutroneIndustry insiders knew that Kelly Cutrone, the no-nonsense New Yorker and legendary dark empress of public relations, had been pulling strings long before she landed her own reality show on Bravo in 2010. Audiences previously met her on MTV’s The Hills and The City, where she cast a dark shadow on Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port’s bright-eyed fashion dreams. When her role as the wicked witch of the East Coast became too big to ignore, she landed Kell on Earth, which focused on her PR firm, People’s Revolution, from the breakroom to the runway, where she famously had one rule: “If you have to cry, go outside.” Real Kell-heads also remember her iconic, never-stressed goth assistant Andrew Mukamal, who couldn’t be bothered to get anyone a cup of coffee but would go on to become Margot Robbie’s stylist—and close collaborator on the Barbie movie press tour. —Daniela Tijerina

When Rosie Pope Fought a GhostThere are certain sounds that never leave your brain, no matter how long it’s been since you’ve heard them. For me, it’s “pregnancy concierge” Rosie Pope classifying things as “crazytown” in her truly singular accent. Pope was the star of Bravo’s Pregnant in Heels for two seasons from 2011 to 2012, gamely helping very rich people prepare for birth, including assembling a think tank of branding experts to help choose their baby’s name and craft the perfect first impression (the group recommended Asher to a couple; the parents went rogue and chose Bowen—scandal). She even installed ghost-hunting equipment in one couple’s nursery, declaring that “just because I’m fighting a ghost is no reason not to be bedazzled and wear heels.” It’s also worth noting that Pope was heavily pregnant herself when she said this. I wasn’t pregnant when I obsessively watched this show, nor did I wear heels, but I was fully invested in the oddball dilemmas that Pope’s über-rich clients faced while gestating. The vibe can only be summed up with one word: Crazytown. —Kase Wickman

The Original Miserable Vanderpump Rules BirthdayThere comes a moment when each Bravo show makes the case for its chaotic existence in your weekly schedule. We get it early in the first season of Vanderpump Rules, during Stassi Schroeder’s birthday party in Las Vegas. All hell breaks loose when her erratic ex Jax Taylor crashes the bash to pick a fight with Schroeder’s new beau, Frank Herlihy. After trading insults and tossing drinks, Taylor, Herlihy, and, for some reason, Tom Sandoval take the brawl to a strip mall parking lot outside of the bar. What begins as a run-of-the-mill pissing match becomes reality TV gold when Taylor strips off his cream-colored chunky knit sweater to fight his rival shirtless. The other two men follow suit, resulting in a hilarious shot of Herlihy escaping to a cab sans shirt, as the rest of the cast retreats to a nearby hummer limo. And there would be more mayhem to come—after all, Taylor was still a whole season away from tattooing Schroeder’s name on his bicep. But it was the first of many spontaneous, utterly comedic outbursts that VPR would become known for in the ensuing decade. —Savannah Walsh

When Vanderpump Got DarkLong before Scandoval turned Vanderpump Rules into Bravo’s favorite problem child, it was just another drama documenting the lives of some clout-chasing friends. (Or perhaps more aptly, “friends.”) Still, there’s a moment in the first-ever reunion where it flashed its underbelly and teased just how grim things might get one day. Schroeder, having spent the season being gaslighted by Taylor, admits to having punched him before—“busting” his nose. “And did you deserve that, though?” she asks, to which Taylor says that he did. Lisa Vanderpump affectionately rolls her eyes while perennial host Andy Cohen looks genuinely concerned. It’s this moment that sticks out to me all these years later: Would anything elicit that sort of reaction from Cohen now? It was a moment of true humanity before Bravo, for better or worse, found its calling in chaos. —Tyler Breitfeller

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