We may still be mourning the loss of a villain who flew too close to the sun after Kenya’s explosive ousting, but the dust begins to settle in a surprisingly pleasant way. Brit’s obnoxious tears bookend the episode, but the meat in between shows a promising, though reenvisioned, sweet season 16 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. They’re giving us the three sacred S’s of Housewife-land — sisterhood, story line, and shade — thus ticking all the boxes of what’s been lacking in the franchise for years. The show even looks brighter, a change from the gray color grading I pointed out in recaps past (I mostly blame Shereé and her concrete house). Kenya’s stunt hangs over the group like a storm cloud, but I can feel the potential rainbow sparkling on the other side.

Most of this potential is strung together by the newbies (Brit not included), whose personal lives and willingness to build real relationships within the group will take them further than trying to antagonize the veterans, a pill Brit is having trouble swallowing. She flounders in the aftermath of learning about the broadcasting of her intimate pictures, crying to whoever will listen about potentially losing her insurance license. Let’s get Vicki Gunvalson on the line! She knows a thing or two about publicly displayed nude pictures while maintaining her status as the queen of insurance! Granted, Brit’s pictures were a lot more scandalous and distributed without her consent — I feel for her, I really do — but the crying and carrying on without true accountability for activating Kenya is exhausting.

In the same way that Brit says Kenya wanted her at the spa event to get a reaction out of her (well, duh!), Brit wanted to get a reaction out of Kenya by prodding her at the vault dinner. Similar to Kenya’s beef with Marlo, I believe their similarities and the aspect of relationships often being a mirror reflecting back onto ourselves are what triggers Kenya and Brit. They’re both highly antagonistic people with a victim complex, and they both have deep trauma around female relationships while spending their formative years using their attractiveness as social currency, so a conflict was bound to happen (it’s unsurprising seeing Brit’s mom spewing anti-woman rhetoric to her daughter; we see where she gets it from).

The scandal continues to play out online and in interviews as the show airs, with Ming Lee of Basketball Wives entering the chat, debunking rumors that she’s the one who gave Kenya the pictures, and Porsha and Kenya going back and forth on social media. But if I’m being frank, it’s getting to be a little lowbrow for my taste — I’ve spent more time on the Bossip website than I want to for the rest of my life — and I think we’re all above further discussion of this mess, so let’s focus on the future of the season without Kenya Moore as the rest of the women gather at Shamea’s estate to reset after the drama and get back on track with filming as a united group.

The ladies unanimously agree that it was Kenya’s choice to “twirl on down to hell,” as Porsha phrases it, and move on to addressing other things. I’m thoroughly enjoying the new dynamic that Kelli, Angela, and Shamea add to the show; they each have a unique sense of humor and are quick on their feet with the reads and shade throwing, but have a foundation of self-confidence that allows them to not take things too seriously. Angela, in particular, is showing the makings of a Housewife with longevity as she seamlessly vacillates between sneaky pot-stirrer, defensive adversary, and supportive friend. The way she confidently squashed her beef with Shamea and Porsha before gracefully moving on within the same scenes is the kind of maturity neither Brit nor Kenya could dream of displaying.

Kelli is the same way, though if Angela is a hot ember waiting to slowly heat things up just enough, Kelli is a firecracker ready to get things jumping. Her personality is loud and brash, as we see with her forcing Drew and Porsha to fix their issues at Shamea’s gathering, but she’s also game to be vulnerable, like in the scene with her eldest daughter Chloe. Like Angela, Kelli’s raw personal story adds to her value on the cast, and she’s bringing it with conversations about her psycho ex and the difficulties of raising young daughters while dealing with him. Hearing Chloe express her fears of marriage because of her mother’s situation was as heartbreaking as it was heartwarming, as it was a testament to their closeness that she even felt comfortable expressing such things.

It’s the Housewives with the most experience under their belts who leave something to be desired. Drew’s saga with Ralph is insufferable as ever, though watching him crawl out of the basement to soak up a crumb of screen time gave me a good laugh. But crumbs are really all production should be serving Ralph; I find it strange he’s gotten so many confessionals when he’s a proven liar, and, if you ask me, his perspective is redundant. I don’t think any of us care who pays the extermination bill (how can Ralph claim he pays for everything but can’t produce financial records for court?) or what the hell is going on in that basement, although that leaves Drew with only her asinine story line with Dennis. Now, not only is Dennis her guardian angel, but she says during a studio session with Shamea that their collaboration will be so lucrative it’ll send Pilar to college.

The things that come out of Drew’s mouth continue to fascinate me almost as much as Porsha and Shamea’s friendship. Porsha’s story lines are about as unbearable as Drew’s — I can’t with the tears about Pilar asking about Simon; what did she expect from a man who changes wives every lunar cycle? He doesn’t care about the children left in his wake. Did Porsha think about how Falynn’s kids would feel when their stepdad suddenly swapped out their mom? Porsha’s return is falling flat so far, and her relationship with the already-established fan favorite of the season could’ve been a saving grace for her, but there’s clearly something in the water between the two besties.

I miss Porsha and Shamea’s friendship pre-Phaedra when the two were the original Frick and Frack, donning matching outfits and bringing the turn-up vibe to group events that the older cast members couldn’t. Now, although Shamea continues to ride hard for her Decatur sister (I’m so glad she shot down Drew’s inappropriate statement about paying for Pilar’s schooling), Porsha acts like she can’t recognize her childhood friend’s singing voice. Shamea expresses her hurt to Angela during her studio session, who leaves her new friend with the sage advice to not give loyalty where it’s not reciprocal. Shamea admits in her confessional that she often prioritizes Porsha’s feelings over her own, but I believe this is an impossible dynamic to maintain now that they’re both full-time … especially if Shamea continues to get the attention she’s been getting from fans.

The foreshadowing of their downfall is more interesting than anything else Porsha is bringing to the show in what was supposed to be her triumphant return. Instead of paying attention to her droning on about Simon and Dennis during her time with Shamea at mini-golf, I was watching for any hints of discord between the friends. Their relationship reminds me a bit of the trio of childhood friends from The White Lotus, with the only strings holding them together being convenience and history. There’s obviously a lot of love between them, but the grown-up versions of themselves are not as compatible as the little girls who came up together in Georgia. Porsha spends the majority of the friend date venting about her circumstances, not asking Shamea a single thing about her personal life until the excursion is winding down. It’s apparent that Porsha is used to Shamea occupying the role of her emotional support plus-one, and it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out now that Shamea is no longer a plus-one but “the only one,” as she proudly asserts in her tagline.

The episode concludes with Kelli planning a Peace Brunch to bring the group back together with Brit in the hopes of moving forward and leaving the Kenya mess behind them. Kelli continues to bring back the old RHOA feel with her over-the-top displays of bougie-ness that playfully border on being obnoxious (her riding around last week in a customized tour bus had me in tears). This week, she introduces us to her flamboyant stylist Paris, who might pale in comparison to Miss Lawrence, Dwight, and Derek J, but let’s take what we can get. He’s giving Stephen from the first seasons of Summer House if he were given a makeover and trained to read by the legends in the previous sentence. The brunch is also an homage to group meals of RHOA’s past with a little bit of fun and a whole lot of shade.

Angela is the only one who truly holds Brit to the fire when she arrives at the brunch with her sob story about her license getting revoked. She pushes back with a simple question asking the exact cause of losing her license, and Brit shows her antagonizing ways with a disproportionately rude response, asking her to “read the room.” Angela summons her inner oak tree and lays it out on the table, encouraging Brit to admit why they got where they are in the first place. Brit keeps poking by telling Angela to “twirl out,” and even Drew pipes in at how reckless Brit is with her mouth, despite maintaining that Kenya did take it too far. Shamea slips into her role as anchor, urging the women to “focus on the good” before leading them in a line dance to shake off the bad energy. All in all, it’s time to put the Kenya vs. Brit saga to bed and move forward with new women and new story lines as we move into the next era of RHOA.

Peach Tea To-Go

• Although I’m slowly losing patience for Pistol-gate, if you’re interested in hearing Kenya’s POV, she’s doing her own “confessionals” via her YouTube channel. If anything explosive comes out of it, we’ll discuss it next week, but based on the egregious AI poster and the magnitude of Kenya’s wrongdoing, I doubt it’ll be more than her kicking a dead horse.

• Angela is growing on me! As Dame Moylan wrote in the latest Housewives Institute, Angela is “not reserved and boring, she’s just so used to mess that it doesn’t faze her. This bodes well for her career as a Housewife. She could be the kind of woman who can be a good voice of reason for the scrappers around her, or a woman who can snap at any moment and start bringing the drama herself. I can’t wait to see who drives her to her breaking point.”

 The wives pick up the pieces after Kenya’s explosive ousting, and the outlook is sunnier than I expected.