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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: July 30, 2009
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Real Housewives of Atlanta, “New Attitude, Same ATL” (Season 2, Episode 1) [Watch on Hulu]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The best thing about Sheree Whitfield’s boardroom blow-up with her party-planner is that you never saw it coming. Sheree was never as volatile a presence as her cast-mate Nene Leakes. With Nene, the viewer quickly learned to be prepared for anything at any time. At this point early on in the series, Sheree seemed like more of a calm presence, designing her She by Sheree fashions and going through her endless divorce proceedings. Moreover, the Housewives franchise had gotten very good at telegraphing its major fights, with entire episodes pointing to the final-moments dust-ups with big neon signs. We didn’t get any of those when Sheree went to take a meeting with her party-planner.
As has been the case with all epic fights in television history, this fight all started because the party planner had commissioned a poet to write something about Sheree despite said poet never having met Sheree. This is exactly why I never have poets at my parties. Some other points of contention as the meeting went from pointed to contentious to heated to “your mama is a bitch”: whether Sheree had made herself sufficiently available to go to a prop shop, whether Anthony the party-planner’s time was being respected, and whether Sheree needed to call up Pookie from Cleveland to come help her whoop some ass.
But the crown jewel of the scene really is the line that made it famous. Confronted with an increasingly angry man hollering that she needs to get checked, Sheree leans in, slows down, and asks, “Who’s gonna check me, boo?” The degree to which that line stops Anthony the Party Planner in his tracks—watch the man sputter!—is a sight to behold. Who’s gonna check her, indeed!
[You can watch “New Attitude, Same ATL” on Hulu]
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
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