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Morocco, cast change, no safety valve

The Moroccan Arc

RHONY at full operational pressure. A Morocco group trip strips away the city's social scaffolding and pushes the cast into close quarters with no escape. Dense, committed, occasionally exhausting — exactly what the format looks like without a safety valve.

Filmed
New York City · Marrakesh, Morocco
Marrakesh — the group's first stop outside the Americas, a year after St. John
Premiered
Apr 7, 2011
Bravo · April 2011
Episodes
22
Format
NYC social reality
Cast change · international group trip
Cast size
6 cast members
Cindy Barshop joins the cast
On this page5 sections
  1. 01The take
  2. 02The shape of the season
  3. 03Where it sits in the canon
  4. 04Adjacent in the canon
  5. 05Also appears in
01The take

Full pressure, no escape.

Not the show at its most precise. The show at its most committed.
02The shape of the season

Twenty-two episodes, four more than before.

RHONY at full operational pressure, with a group trip to Morocco stripping away the city's social scaffolding and pushing the cast into close quarters without escape. New cast member Cindy Barshop brings productive friction by not quite fitting the existing dynamic. The season is dense, occasionally exhausting, and exactly what the format looks like when it operates without a safety valve. The show at full volume.

03Where it sits in the canon

The #06 slot.

Slot #06 of 15 in the Real Housewives of New York City Editor's Canon. Season four is RHONY running at full operational pressure, with a group trip to Morocco adding the kind of travel-pressure dynamic the show had only hinted at before. The international setting stripped away the New York social scaffolding and pushed the cast into close proximity without the city's usual release valves. A new cast member brought friction by not quite fitting the existing dynamic — and that friction proved useful editorially. The season is dense, occasionally exhausting, and exactly what the format looks like when it operates at full volume. Not the show at its most precise, but the show at its most committed.

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05Also appears in

Cross-references.