Will Georgia peaches still be top Housewives?

The women here have some real problems to address - and they don't revolve around whom they should bring along on a girls-only trip to the Caribbean.

The most pressing involves Kandi, the singer-songwriter whose former fiance, A.J., died from injuries he suffered in a fight outside a strip club. Now she's dating an NFL player - Willis McGahee, the Baltimore Ravens running back - but she does so carefully, afraid to get too intimate too fast.

Luckily, it's all good material for some new songs. But just as she's starting to feel like herself again, she gets more bad news, at least according to press materials for the upcoming season - her long-lost dad is diagnosed with cancer. Any grown-up little girl who loves her father knows how getting that news feels.

And there's other real-life drama - someone's son gets arrested, a marriage is falling apart, and one husband might actually turn out to be a convict.

But all is not a rainy night in Georgia: Kim declares herself a bisexual in the tabloids! And, thank heavens, she's decided to bury the hatchet with NeNe - at least as long as NeNe's "not choking me," she says. Now that's Southern hospitality.

Speaking of which: It's probably rude to speak ill of women who are preggers, but the self-declared "Southern belle" Phaedra, one of the two new castmates (Lisa Wu-Hartwell is gone but will appear in some episodes), may win the title of most irritating Housewife in Bravo history.

MY SAY

Even die-hard fans may not know that "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" has its own definition in the snarky Urban Dictionary: "An effective nonpharmacological soporific; sleep aid; comatosa." This Housewives fan has always tended to agree, at least with the Atlanta cast. The outrageous antics pulled off by the New Jersey cast are definitely more of a reality TV pick-me-up. The Atlanta ladies are just not as outrageous as they think they are.

BOTTOM LINE

Gotta watch it anyway, right?

GRADE

B