Today in TV History: The Only Thing Fake About Aviva Drescher Was [Throws Leg On Table]

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 22, 2014

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Real Housewives of New York City, “The Last Leg” (Season 6, Episode 20)

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Can it really have only been a year since Aviva Drescher infamously slapped her prosthetic leg down on a table at a charity … branding event Team Sonja celebration? It feels like that cultural moment has always been with us.

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We’re almost all the way through another Real Housewives of New York City season, wherein we got all new interpersonal tempests to deal with. A whole season of Dorinda — wonderful, sometimes sloppy Dorinda — has kind of made us forget all about Aviva. But watching that scene brings it all back.

A quick inventory of everything about this moment that was excellent:

• Heather’s note-perfect line reading of “I find that … laughable”
• Aviva buying time while she unhooks her leg under the table
• Sonja warning Aviva to “Keep it together,” keeping alive her streak of being the inexplicable voice of reason in all of the best RHONYC fights.
• Carole (I’m pretty sure; could’ve been Kristen) saying “I knew it” at the exact moment Aviva slams her leg down on the table
• The blonde with the chunky green necklace who managed to make sure she had the reaction shot all to herself when she exclaimed “Shit!” If only she’d had the foresight to raise her glass to Aviva’s prodigious crazy, she’d have become an honest-to-God meme.
• Kristen trying very, very hard to make this into a Kristen Moment, with her histrionic arm movements in the moment and her over-the-top screaming interview.
• The multiple cutaways to the leg on the floor. Abandoned. Impotent. Infamous.
• LuAnn utterly winning the moment, episode, and indeed the entire season, by laughing so hard that she started crying — both in the moment and again in her interview — all while wearing a chunky turquoise necklace that was extreme even for her. I think it was just broken pieces from an Aztec temple.

Aviva Drescher was never heard from again. Her legend lives on.

[You can watch The Real Housewives of New York City 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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