The Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 17 has been a messy ride, and now, Andy Cohen has the privilege of sitting down with all nine cast members to sort through it all. It’s reunion time!
When we last left off at the finale, the peaches were giving their own rendition of K. Michelle’s V.S.O.P. to varying degrees of success. Shortly after, Drew wound up on the ground trying to expose some extremely unnecessary receipts about Blakk.
This week, it was time to talk about all of that, and then some. In The Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 17 Episode 18, “Reunion Part One,” Andy ushered the ladies onto their couches, and they wasted absolutely no time getting into it.
What happened on RHOA Season 17 Episode 18?
During the Season 17 finale, K. Michelle finally found her footing in this friend circle, and that upward trajectory continued at the reunion.
Seated directly to Andy’s left, the former Love & Hip Hop star was activated in the best way possible, taking accountability for the misguided conspiracy theories and messy online behavior that nearly tainted her debut season.
In between K. Michelle’s various moments of self-awareness, we got some troubling updates about Drew’s “friend” Blakk, and Pinky dropped a major family announcement.
The reunion kicked off with two big revelations
Bravo has us locked in with a three-parter for the Season 17 reunion, but they aren’t wasting a single second of airtime. Part One kicked off with the women getting ready backstage, and in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, Kelli’s mysterious boyfriend Jarvis finally made his on-screen debut. For real this time!
Kelli has been ranting and raving about this wonderful man Shamea introduced her to while refusing to show his face on camera. Now, we’re finally seeing the man behind her new $70,000 smile. Whether we’ll ever learn his actual name remains to be seen. Still, this small moment felt like a step in the right direction for Kelli.
The second big update came from Pinky. About five seconds into her reunion debut, she announced that she and Derrick are expecting their fourth child. Another one!
Her mom, apparently, is less than thrilled about adding another baby to their house. We, on the other hand, are thrilled. Fingers crossed she returns for Season 18 with a new baby and a fully resolved bankruptcy.
Drew’s “friend” Blakk got put on blast
This season, Bravo tried something different by letting each Housewife submit one question in advance for Andy to ask throughout the sit-down. Naturally, the results were extremely messy.
The first Housewife-submitted question came from Phaedra, who asked whether or not Drew was still pursuing a relationship with Blakk, given the headlines surrounding him.
In case you missed it: Blakk got caught up in a messy lawsuit involving three Black women who claim he borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars and never paid them back. The story went viral on The Shade Room earlier this year, and it’s the type of thing that would make any self-respecting woman run in the opposite direction.
Drew, however, remains unbothered by this news. She said she’s still interested in fostering her “friendship” with Blakk.
She’s still not claiming him as a romantic partner, which, at this point, is probably for the best. The last thing Drew needs is another man dragging her down.
Of course, Blakk was at the center of Drew and K. Michelle’s ongoing drama this season, and as the conversation turned to his legal troubles, K jumped in with a new piece of context. Supposedly, she had already heard about his reputation for taking women’s money, and that was part of why she didn’t want to be implicated in knowing him.
That sparked yet another back-and-forth between Drew and K. It was going absolutely nowhere until Drew pulled out the first prop of the Season 17 reunion. She whipped out a clapperboard and yelled, “Cut!”
It came out of nowhere, and the prop earned a chuckle out of Andy. Congratulations to Drew for finally nailing her comedic timing. The horse didn’t go over so well this season, but the clapperboard was a win.
K. Michelle took accountability for her rocky start to Season 17
When K. Michelle started this season, we were all collectively holding our breath and cringing every second she appeared on screen. She spent the first several episodes hypersensitive to every comment, convinced the women were conspiring to embarrass her, and making things much harder than they needed to be. At the reunion, K clarified why she started so guarded.
Of course, there was a touch of PTSD from Love & Hip Hop, but she revealed there were also whispers from Nosh, her former Queens Court beau who may or may not have also had a connection to Porsha. He was in her ear. And so was a steady stream of gossip from bloggers, hairdressers, and seemingly everyone else in Atlanta trying to prep her for this group. With all of the outside noise, she arrived in the Bravoverse feeling paranoid and guarded.
As much as K struggled this season, she owned it at the reunion. She told Andy she would do “everything” differently if she had the chance and took full accountability for her emotional chaos.
Based on this reunion performance, it’s clear K is ready to approach a potential sophomore season with a lot less armor and a lot more humor. She knows she has to let the storylines happen instead of trying to get ahead of them. And she can’t run to Twitter every time she wants to call Porsha a bimbo.
The Mean Girls of Atlanta
K. Michelle and Porsha seemed to have reached some sort of understanding about where their friendship went sideways. K. Michelle and Shamea? That’s an entirely different dynamic, and we started wading into it during the final moments of Reunion Part 1.
The conversation got kicked off by Drew’s pre-submitted question. She asked Shamea, “What exactly was your intention in telling K. Michelle that the women didn’t want to be friends with her?”
Drew was referring, of course, to K’s infamous night out with Shamea and her mom, where Shamea allegedly told K that certain people in Atlanta weren’t thrilled about them becoming friends.
Shamea clarified exactly what most of us had theorized: she was talking about Kandi Burruss and her crew of former Love & Hip Hop cast members that K. Michelle has beef with. As soon as they started talking about this Kandi Coated Clique, K jumped in and branded them as “The Mean Girls of Atlanta,” which honestly sounds like a spin-off worth watching.
Either way, it’s clear that moment was where things started unraveling between Shamea and K. Michelle, and it’s a lot to unpack. Andy could tell this thread was going to open a can of worms and decided to kick it over to Reunion Part 2. We’ll pick up here next week, and judging by the trailer, there’s going to be plenty of tea we’ll need to sort through. See you then.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta reunion continues next Sunday at 8/7c on Bravo. You can stream the extended, uncensored version the next day on Peacock.
TELL US — WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA SEASON 17 REUNION PART 1?
