The Real Housewives Of Atlanta: New Season, Let The Fighting Begin

Those are some big veins popping out of Sheree Whitfield's neck in the biggest fight in the opening episode of the latest season of The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

The opening episode got the highest ratings of the first episode of any of the Bravo Real Housewife franchises, with 2.7 million viewers.

Last season's biggest nutcase, Kim Zolciak, seems to have managed to alienate all the other housewives, with Sheree now back in NeNe's camp. All the girls went to a party where there was a red carpet. Kim did some amusing shunning of the other girls, which caused them to engage in some group bitching about Kim. NeNe was hurt by the supposed lies Kim has spread, while Lisa wants nothing to do with Kim. Should make for some entertaining catfighting.

NeNe Leakey going bankrupt and losing her house was widely talked about in blogs and forums during last season with the Atlanta girls. Complete with documentation. On the opening episode we see NeNe complaining about Kim spreading the gossip all over town that NeNe and her husband had gone bankrupt.

Well, you can read NeNe's bankruptcy papers on this very blog. Last season people were speculating that NeNe's house did not look like anyone lived there. This season NeNe is in yet another new house. And it looks even less as if she actually lives there. She did bring in her gay boyfriend for decorating ideas for the house that seemed bare of anything except for a big fake plant and a pool table.

When last we saw Kim she was certain she was about to be a big country music singer, with her first hit single to be released by last February. I've not heard her hit single. Kim seems to have moved on from being a country music star to starting a new business selling wigs. To learn the wig business Kim went to a beautician school, where she quickly got bored and decided she could just hire people to figure out how to make wigs.

Kim claims to be off the Big Poppa gravy train and in need of getting an income. We saw nothing to explain where Kim is currently getting money. The previews seemed to indicate that Kim is still seeing Big Poppa at times. I'm sure it is a lucrative assignation.

We got rid of one housewife, that being the sort of dense, sort of boring wife of a basketball player. I can't even remember her name. She's been replaced by an apparently successful musician named Kandi Burress, single mother of one really precocious little girl and soon to be step-mom to 6 other kids.

So, currently only 2 out the 5 housewives are actually wives. In addition to Kandi, the unmarried are Kim and the freshly divorced Sheree.

Speaking of the freshly divorced Sheree, who is almost as big a piece of work as Kim, well, to celebrate her divorce Sheree wants to throw an "Independence Party." In her new house. What happened to her old house, you can't help but wonder? Well, it went into foreclosure. Somehow, totally without Sheree knowing a thing about the impending foreclosure. Her ex-husband had ceased making the house payments on the enormous mansion.

We saw Sheree schlepping boxes, herself, into her new, shrunk down living quarters. She can schlep boxes herself, but she is incapable of planning a party.

So, Sheree contracted the services of a professional party planner, a career I did not know existed. We saw nothing this episode that explained where Sheree gets the money to pay for her new house or a big party.

Sheree wanted a grand entrance to her party, via helicopter. The party planners planned to have Sheree brought from the copter to her guests via a Cleopatra type lounging chair carried by a bunch of hunky guys. With others throwing rose petals in her path.

Sheree made a call to her party planner, Anthony Shorter, who proceeded to get short with her, to Sheree's ire, which she verbalized to her hairdresser, who insisted she confront her party planner to let him know who's boss. Sheree proceeded to follow her hairdresser's advice and soon we got so see one of the weirdest, fastest escalating shouting matches in the history of reality television. Anthony Shorter was obviously an incompetent idiot. Did he not see the cameras pointing at him?

We were left with no clue as to what Sheree is going to do now to hold her very important Independence Party, which she insists be very very "grand."

That was about it for the first episode. Oh, I forgot, Lisa Wu Hartwell, 38, may have another baby with her younger husband. Lisa referred to herself as a cougar who's clock was ticking.