The following article contains minor spoilers for Next Gen: NYC.
Charlie and Georgia are having a fight at a Sichuan restaurant on the Upper East Side over a cheap pair of speakers. Charlie is 29 years old and allegedly receiving a $10K-a-month allowance from his private investor father whom he describes as Logan Roy incarnate. Georgia is 22 years old and uses a laptop instead of a phone and once threw a party for Anna Delvey when she was on house arrest. Charlie calls Georgia “dirt poor.” Georgia calls Charlie a “piece of shit.” No, this is not a Bret Easton Ellis novel. This is Next Gen: NYC, Bravo’s newest series and my latest reality-TV obsession.
The cast has been meticulously selected. Elsewhere on the roster is pansexual OnlyFans model Dylan, who wears a “God is Trans” top and thinks men bond when they punch each other. Model Ava is the daughter of Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder Dame Dash and fashion designer Rachel Roy, while Emira is an influencer-slash-model-slash-TikToker. And then there are all the children of various Real Housewives: Ariana and Riley, both of whom have been on camera since they were seven; Gia Giudice, whose mom famously flipped a table on The Real Housewives of New Jersey and once went to prison on fraud charges; and Brooks and Chloe Marks, whose parents are on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Everyone is in their 20s and living off trust funds and burning through thousands of dollars a night at the Box in SoHo.
Watching rich kids do insane things might sound diabolical in this economy, but their lives are unfortunately very captivating. Charlie claims he dated Lindsay Lohan in high school, and was also recently pictured at the scene of the arrest of John Woeltz, the cryptocurrency investor suspected of kidnapping and torturing Italian crypto millionaire Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan. In one episode, his art collector mother, who once dated Jean-Michel Basquiat, shows him pictures that he drew as a child of his father getting shot, burned, and stabbed in the head. “Is this him I’m drawing, getting killed?” he laughs. “That’s funny as fuck.”
In another episode, Georgia gets upset because Riley says her idea for the nightclub she’s opening (a bowling alley-slash-industrial space with an ice cream conveyor belt, financed by her crypto-bro boyfriend of two months) is a “terrible idea.” In another, Ariana’s boyfriend, Hudson—whose billionaire dad co-founded a chicken shop dynasty—is filmed in an open shirt and various diamond cross necklaces, taking a fat stack of cash to the club. You couldn’t make some of this stuff up—Next Gen: NYC is like Gossip Girl or The Hills if The Hills cast knew what TikTok was and all wanted to be entrepreneurs slash content creators, but also club rats.
It helps that the Housewives’ kids—of which there are five—grew up on the megawatt reality franchise and have clearly absorbed a few tips and tricks along the way. Ariana, daughter of Kim Zolciak, famous for wearing a rotating cast of blonde wigs and singing “Tardy for the Party” in 2010, is a particular natural at the reality-TV game: likeable and outspoken, with a knack for lighting proverbial matches and throwing them into the gasoline, the 22-year-old will probably be responsible for helping to get a second season greenlit. At one point, Charlie flounders in the face of her confrontation skills. “You guys are very well-groomed,” he drawls outside a club. “I’ll fake beef with you. I’ll do the whole thing.”
Real Housewives fans will also enjoy endless cameos from the parents themselves. RHOA’s Kandi Burruss—who co-wrote TLC’s “No Scrubs”—shows up and admonishes her daughter Riley for dropping thousands on bottles of wine from 1942. Members of the Marks family are essentially main characters in the show (at one point, Seth Marks, father of Brooks, tells Charlie that he’s aiming to be pansexual; meanwhile, Georgia helps Meredith with the launch party of her caviar company). The parent cameos are a clever play from Bravo to entice loyal viewers, but the show is strong enough without them. Essentially, you’ll come for the Housewives but stay for… everything else.
It can be difficult for newer reality shows to take off now, especially when networks tend to cast influencers and content creators who so often lack the authenticity and unpolished flare for drama inherent to aughts and 2010s reality-show pilots. But Next Gen: NYC shows that reality TV can still be fun, and even shocking. Does the show make me feel spiritually empty? Yes. Will I be watching every single future season? Absolutely.