The cast of RHONY, approximately. (Bravo)

Despite the finger-biting anxiety of the last two weeks, when negotiations between Bravo and the members of The Real Housewives of New York City broke down, causing the network to threaten cancellation, it looks like all's well in the RHONY world after all.

Reports have seen the women out and about together with a camera crew at various NYC locales, including the studio of celebrity trainer Will Torres.

But the question remains: will all the Real Housewives be making it back for the next season?

According to E!, there are two women who are in danger of being replaced:

"At this point, the returning cast members include Ramona Singer, Sonja Morgan, Carole Radziwill and Heather Thomson," Bravo tells E! News. (E! and Bravo are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)

Meaning, LuAnn de Lesseps and Aviva Drescher—whom a source told us had been "demanding more money"—are not sure things for another seaon.

While Countess LuAnn may still be on the fence, sources have told The Observer that Ms. Drescher has indeed signed her Bravo contract, as several outlets have already noted. Whether or not Bravo would axe a cast member after they've already inked a deal for a new season, however, remains to be seen.

RHONY, Season 5 (Bravo)

Last week it looked like The Real Housewives of New York City could get shut down for good when all six of the cast members refused to sign their contracts. Shooting for the series was supposed to commence last Wednesday (according to several news outlets), but was delayed when negotiations stalled.

Thank goodness it might not be over. According to Deadline, RHONY ladies Carole Radziwill, Ramona Singer, LuAnn de Lesseps, Heather Thomson, Aviva Drescher and Sonja Morgan all received modest pay increases, though how "modest" that money is definitely on a case-by-case basis; Ramona Singer made $500,000 last season and was holding out for a million, while a source close to the negotiations told The New York Observer that The New York Post’s quoted "average" payout for a housewife--$65,000--was "in the ballpark" of what was being offered this time around.

According to an industry insider, however, none of the ladies have officially signed their contracts yet, so don't be jumping for joy just yet.

According to another source, Bravo waited until the last minute even to send around the contracts with the numbers, leaving only two weeks before filming began for the women to try to negotiate for higher wages.

But the industry insider scoffed at that idea, saying that there would never be a planned shooting schedule before the ladies signed the contracts. "Things need to be in place, Bravo needs to know their availability, and the reps need to sign the contracts," said the insider.

"You have to remember, there are no unions for housewives," another source told The Observer, explaining that shooting can last all day on some episodes, with only a short break for lunch. Then there are the costs of the job: hair, makeup, and clothes are not provided, and if someone has a scene inside a house, the cast member also has to pay for all the cleaning costs to make her home presentable.

"A lot of the ladies end up in the red after the money they put toward being on the show," our source told us.

But our insider disagreed, saying that RHONY was about showing women leading their everyday lives, hence it would be ridiculous to pay for the extra perks. (Though for some red carpet events and special occasions, the person noted, the ladies may be afforded their own hair and makeup.)

According to the Deadline article, the new (unsigned) contracts "threw in a few more contractual baubles like covering expenses for additional hair and make-up for the cast."

Several other sources who wished to remain anonymous told The Observer that the problem was that the money simply wasn't there. They complained that Bravo they didn't spend nearly as much on advertising as they had the previous seasons, and the show was put in a more competitive time slot, moving from Thursday nights to Monday. "Of course the show would see lower ratings if you pit it against American Idol or something," one individual close to the negotiations remarked.

But Monday night's lineup is shattering the network's internal ratings, according to Nielsen.

The Real Housewives. (Bravo)

Good ladies of RHONY, we knew thee well. According to several outlets, the stars of Bravo's The Real Housewives of New York City have refused to ink contracts on the sixth season of the stalwart show, with all six main cast members holding out for a better deal.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the issue is, as always, money problems:

Production on the sixth season was set to begin on Wednesday, but none of the six women made herself available for filming. A Bravo representative declined to comment.

The cast members all negotiate separate deals and are paid different amounts, depending on how long they have been with the show. However, each cast member is said to have expressed displeasure with Bravo's financial offer. Negotiations are said to have begun about three weeks ago but little progress has been made. "We're still pretty far apart," the source says.

The issue with raising the salaries of these ostensibly already wealthy (though that grand illusion has been shattered time and time again) women, is, as Page Six tells it, that Bravo would have no qualms about canceling the show all together than belabor a negotation that has already stalled production.

And we know that the network can be heartless when it comes to slicing up the cast--as it showed when it fired three members before last season--though dooming the entire program to cancelation would still seem like a pretty desperate measure, especially since the cast already receives such disperate salaries. (An average member earns $65k per season, though Ramona Singer has been rumored to make $500,000 and has been holding out for a million.)

Which leaves us wondering: What has Bravo been doing with these contract problems since the last season, giving all the money to the guys at Million Dollar Listing: New York?

One of Mr. Eklund's photos, via twitter.

Art shows at on-the-market penthouses are so common that they have arguably supplanted open houses in many of the city's trendier corners, but art made and sold by the penthouse's listing broker is something new.

Last night Douglas Elliman broker Fredrik Eklund hosted an exhibit of his photography in the penthouse of 50 Lispenard Street. Mr. Eklund told us that all 25 photographs at the event sold. The penthouse, listed for $4.55 million, is still on the market. (Mr. Eklund has the entire six-unit building, which is half sold).

"I take photos with my Leica, Canon and iPhone5 and have photographed since I was 6 years old," Mr. Eklund wrote about his work when we asked about the sideline. (Mr. Eklund, who is himself  famously photogenic, is a man of many talents.)

What's more, we hear that Mr. Eklund was also busy filming for Bravo's Million Dollar Listing, the reality TV show in which he stars. Mr. Eklund, of course, isn't permitted to breathe a word about the show or its shooting schedule, but several event attendees confirmed that Bravo's cameras were rolling last night. (The twittersphere was, additionally, very much atweet with the fact.)

Among those in attendance were a number of real estate insiders including Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman (no surprise there), but also Miss New York USA (the feeder pageant to the Miss Universe pageant) Amber Collins and artist Andres Serrano. The Observer, sadly, did not number among the guests. We were a little alarmed, then, when we heard about Mr. Serrano's attendance. Would Mr. Eklund's work bear any resemblance to the controversial photographer's notorious pairings of bodily fluids and religious imagery?

The answer is a firm no (although one print on his website, titled Blood, does feature a large hanging drop of the substance). Mr. Eklund's photos, which range from roughly $50 to $150, have a hazy-around-the-edges Instagram quality and feature cityscapes, the beach, cloud formations, horses and other scenes that would be perfectly suitable for any apartment staging.

kvelsey@observer.com

Ben Huh, CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger, on Bravo's new show LOLWork (Bravo)

Ben Huh struck us as goofily affable when we met him at Bravo's Top Chef Kitchen restaurant three weeks ago. Sitting at a table with a Post reporter and a friend from Mashable, the CEO of the I Can Has Cheezburger network (which includes, among other properties, Know Your Meme, FailBlog and The Daily What) had a self-aware cockiness in his voice when he claimed he invented the phrase "internet culture." And though he was about to be rocketed into the world of Bravolebrities--the term Bravo applies to its various reality stars--he spent more time helping the table parse weird terminology than trying to sell himself.

We don't remember how the conversation got started, but at one point someone asked if you could call Furries (those people who dress in plush animal outfits at conventions, frequently with sex in mind) "anthropomorphic."

"No," Mr. Huh responded firmly. "That's when inanimate or inhuman objects take on human qualities." This, the star of Bravo's first attempt at a reality-sitcom told us, was "the opposite ... humans that want to be animals."

So what do we call them?

"Animorphs?" the guy from Mashable suggested, referring to the teen book series popular in the late ’90s.

"Animorphism," agreed Mr. Huh.

This was not the same character who greeted us last week at Rockefeller Center for lunch, a week after the premiere of  LOLWork. The "characters" on LOLWork are Mr. Huh's actual employees, who have  helped raise $32 million in funding with a knockout combination of cats and poor spelling. The show is a meta-subversion of The Office--an actual reality program self-consciously inspired by the latter's faux-documentary style. The first episode opens with employees sitting around at the company's Seattle headquarters, discussing whether or not it is appropriate to post a picture of a cat that appears to be dead.

"Okay, devil's advocate," begins Paul, a "Sideshow Bob" lookalike, according to Mr. Huh's gloss. "What if it's a dead cat, but we say it's sleeping? Is that okay?"

Will, Cheezburger's bearded content supervisor, fixes him with an icy blue stare. "I don't ever want to hear you say 'devil's advocate' ever again."

The moment is absurdly funny because it encapsulates how seriously these people take their jobs.

Mr. Huh was himself in serious form at Rock Center. Instead of regaling us with cat humor, he told The Observer how he had escaped Hurricane Sandy in order to make it to a conference on the West Coast. "I had only slept three hours in New York the night before, and suddenly all the airports were closing down. So I got a rental car and drove through New York, through New Jersey, through Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh. There is shit flying at the windows: panties, other people's windshields. I get to Pittsburgh, check into my hotel around 8, and find out that that flight has been canceled as well.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" he said, interrupting his own story by way of reliving the frustration. "So I book another rental car, and I drove to Columbus, Ohio. I get to Columbus at 5 a.m. I looked at a map, it turns out I had driven the entirety of the storm." Despite a delayed flight in Ohio because of snowfall, he made it in time to deliver a keynote address at the Seattle Interactive conference.

"Once I start a project, I just need to finish it," he said of his journey. "I refuse to get stuck."

That sort of insane gumption would make for a good Dwight Schrute-esque character on LOLWork, but Mr. Huh hangs back in the early episodes. He comes off as brusque and all business, while the rest of the cast slowly develop their roles. (The cute hipster art director Sarah has a crush on Forest, one of the site's editors, at least two of the characters are in the process of coming out of the closet, the site's editor in chief, Emily, happens to be Mr. Huh's wife, and Will stands in as the "I know this is all ridiculous" Jim-like persona, clocking the highest number of  eye-rolls to the camera.)

"The show is not about me, it's about the company," Mr. Huh said. "Our goal is to make people laugh at least five minutes of every day." But that's what the website does. Why gamble with that comedic reputation by showing how the LOLCat sausage gets made? Mr. Huh, who plays many roles, answered, not as a Bravolebrity or a meme-maker, but as an idealistic tech CEO.

"The answer is obvious," he said. "We wanted to be a transparent company."

LOLWork airs Wednesday nights on Bravo at 11 p.m. EST

We'll finally find out just why ancient grudge broke to new mutiny in the Reagan decade as Bravo plans to develop a series about the dueling soda giants, from a script by the executive producer of the reality show Flipping Out. Not exactly Matthew Weiner's pre-Mad Men resume, though the ad-world setting is similar for the network currently pushing hard on scripted series (the cola war series joins a Heathers adaptation in development.) We just hope they save the New Coke invention for a season finale.

This man makes more money than Charlie Rose.

– Ashton Kutcher made $24 million last year. Sure, it's not entirely from Two and a Half Men. (After all, he only gets $700,000 per episode). The rest is savvy tech investments, but still. That like seven Lena Dunham books!

– Remember how ex-Housewife Jill Zarin was like "I didn't even want to be on that toxic program," and we were like, "Sure, Jill." Well, it turns out Bravo maybe wants her back and she's gonna make them sweat. (For approximately three seconds before accepting, obviously.)

– Lena Dunham went on Twitter to apologize about a string of tweets she exchanged with B.J. Novak and Mindy Kaling about which (alleged) serial killers they should go as for Halloween. Memphis killers were fine, but Ms. Dunham's suggestion was Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. "I'll be the sister they murdered," she wrote. Now she is sorry she wrote that, but Mindy and B.J. are not sorry for what they wrote, because they do not have to spend all their time apologizing to angry mobs the way the Girls star does.

– Annie Leibovitz dressed Stephen Colbert up like Eugène Delacroix for Vanity Fair. Here's an adorable little film they made behind the scenes, where literally the only interaction they could use was Ms. Leibovitz introducing herself to the anchorman and then saying "Nice to meet you" afterward.

Teresa Giudice, who has not won an Emmy--yet!

One was a big Emmy winner; the other one less so. But the cable dramas toplined by Claire Danes and Caroline Manzo both had fantastic Sundays. Homeland, the somewhat surprising Emmy champ for Best Drama, scored its best night ever with 1.7 million viewers, as part of pay-cable network Showtime's best Sunday night ever. Meanwhile, basic-cabler Bravo announced that its Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion (only part one--there's a second part forthcoming in a week's time!) was the top-rated unscripted cable show of the week and most popular episode of the season with 3.5 million total viewers (2.1 million between 18 and 49). Both series, too, are showing season-over-season growth--between Carrie Mathison's meltdowns and Teresa's dissembling, could Sunday at 10pm become the go-to spot for ever-more-popular women in peril for years to come?

Our reaction to finding out Heathers is getting remade.

Because it was inevitable that The Real Housewives franchise would start getting younger, The Hollywood Reporter announced today that it is entirely possible that Heathers will be adapted for TV on Bravo.

Okay, here's the rundown:

In the updated take, Heathers picks up 20 years later, with Veronica (Ryder's character) returning home to Sherwood with her teenage daughter, who must contend with the next generation of mean girls: the Ashleys: the daughters of the surviving Heathers.

So really this show should be called Ashleys, not Heathers. This brilliant idea was sold by Sony Pictures to Fox three years ago, after The Big C’s Jenny Bicks came up with the concept. And whatever Fox chose to pass over in terms of original programming will eventually be picked up by a subsidiary of NBC. That's just the way the television universe works. Fuck us gently with a chainsaw, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ-3rikUQ34

At one point in the interview with Matt Lauer, Anna Gristina explains her innocence as such:

Gristina maintains that her matchmaking service was legal. She saw the show "The Millionaire Matchmaker" on Bravo and said a friend suggested she create something similar. Gristina's idea was to create a high-end "sugar daddy" matchmaking service for wealthy men who are married — like a married version of Match.com, she said.

The D.A. is accusing her of having run a prostitution ring for fifteen years.

The D.A.'s investigation of Gristina's ring has been going on for five years.

And for what it's worth, on an internet profile, she cited her job as an "internet marketer" (how wonderfully vague!) from 2005 to 2009.

The Millionare Matchmaker's first airing on Bravo was January 29, 2008.

• That's two to three years after the LinkedIn profile has her starting in the "marketing" business.
• That's at least eleven years after the D.A. has accused her of first running her business.
• And it's an entire year after the D.A. began its investigation of her.