There is so much going on in pop culture this week that I feel like I haven't heard a lot of people just talking about real housewives episodes that we got this week.

And it was a very good week on Bravo for Housewives. We got the premiere of the Real Housewives of Atlanta season 17.

And we got our second ever episode of the Real Housewives of Rhode Island.

Very excited to talk about both of these shows this week.

Welcome back to characters. My name is Laura.

Let's talk first about Real Housewives of Atlanta.

I was really excited for this season premiere because I feel like it's been so long that Atlanta has not been on air.

We have two new housewives this season,

Kay Michelle and Pinky Cole. Pinky Cole, I was very familiar with and I was really excited when I saw

that she was announced as part of the cast. I did a little like maybe six or seven minute

biography video of her on TikTok. I'll give you the highlights. Pinky Cole is a major plant-based

entrepreneur. We hear

that when she joins the cast when she's introducing herself. She owns a chain of restaurants

called slutty vegan. They make these insane like vegan comfort foods. And I feel like she has

really deep ties to the city of Atlanta. She went to Clark Atlanta University and she was the keynote

speaker in 2022, I want to say.

And as part of the keynote, she gave all of the graduates their own LLC, or I guess like

funding to establish their own LLC.

A big part of her personal brand beyond veganism is around entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

And I always say this is the kind of woman that I want to see on a housewives. A woman who has to have found success in this particular community. If we're seeing wealth, I want that to be wealth that is tied to the city. Pinky Cole is introduced by Shemia, and Shemia tells us that she interviewed Pinky for radio a few times, and they've always just admired one another. Kay Michelle is a very successful singer-songwriter. She also has a background on reality television, which I think will be really interesting to see her on Housewives, like how she navigates this format of reality television. Now, anytime a woman joins a Housewives cast, she's always like introduced by proxy of another cast member. So when Pinky Cole is introduced to us, we meet her through Shameia. Shemia says that she met Pinky through radio interviews. When we're introduced to Kay Michelle, she is introduced by Portia. And I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised with how, like, emotional it seemed, the introduction of Kay Michelle by Portia was to the show. Kay Michelle tells us that she has a hard time with the city of Atlanta, that's a city that hasn't treated her particularly well, that it's a city with mean girl energy. And it seems on camera from this first scene that we see them together, that Kay Michelle and Portia are genuinely friends. There's like little clips of them FaceTiming one another. And Porsche is someone that I always have a soft spot for. So I feel like if I see Portia being like emotional and friendly with someone, I'm very inclined to believe that it's a genuine friendship. I also, I couldn't put my finger on exactly why, but as I was watching the introduction of Kay Michelle and seeing that first conversation between her and Portia, I was almost a little emotional on their behalf. Like not to get too parisocial about it, but hearing Kay Michelle say that this is a city

that hasn't been particularly kind to her and this kind of like soft friendship that we're

seeing between her and Portia in this initial meeting, there was something about it that made

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