Netflix’s new reality series Selling The City arrives courtesy of the same production company that brought us Selling The OC and Selling Sunset, but this version features more sky-high penthouses and sky-high stilettos navigating Soho’s cobblestone streets. The new show follows a group of brokers at Douglas Elliman, one of the city’s most recognizable names in real estate, who have been assembled and are led by a woman named Eleonora, one of the agency’s top individual sellers. Her team is exclusively comprised of women and, though there are male agents floating around, the majority of this show’s drama is rooted in the friendships and rivalries that ebb and flow between them all.
SELLING THE CITY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Glossy beauty shots of New York City give way to an interview with Eleonora Srugo, a blonde broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. She declares, “New York City is home to some of the wealthiest people in the world,” adding that she’s one of the top brokers at Elliman and closed a $75 million property last year. This year, she’s going for a new personal best.
The Gist: Eleonora has been a successful individual broker at Douglas Elliman in New York, but with lofty goals to increase her sales, she has assembled a team of brokers who work under her. They include Abi, the youngest and newest, who can be a loose cannon; Jordyn, a cool broker to creative rich types like Trevor Noah, whom she also dated; and Taylor, a southern belle who is successful and clearly one of the more mature brokers of the bunch. There’s also Gisselle, a glamorous single mom from New Jersey, and Justin, who’s not on Eleonora’s team but provides the male energy by sitting with all the women in their open plan office. (He and Eleonora also dated once, and she credits the fact that they had sex with her obsession to lose weight and change her entire image. Her glow-up is something of a running theme throughout the show.) And then there’s Jade, another individual broker not on Eleonora’s team, but who is a close friend to Eleonora and offers her opinion on everyone as if she’s a tour guide to the personalities of the office. (In the same way that Selling the OC has like half a dozen agents named Alex, Selling the City makes my brain hurt with all the people whose first names start with J. Jordyn, Justin, Jade, Gisselle – phonetically speaking, in that case. Lord, help me keep them all straight.)
The formula here is comparable to its sister series: this attractive, competitive group of agents sit around an open office while their boss, who has high expectations of them all, oversees their work and defuses their interpersonal drama. Oh, and of course there are the luxury Manhattan apartment listings throughout that are fascinating to look at but incidental to the plot, in most cases.
Eleonora is not the owner of Douglas Elliman, so she’s more of an Alex Hall or Chrishell Stause than a Brett-or-Jason Oppenheim. She is technically the boss to most of these people, but she’s also peers and friends with people like Jade and Justin, a ploy that allows her to also get caught up in some of the drama rather than remain on the periphery of drama at all times. Case in point: when Jade invites her to a lunch also attended by Taylor, Justin, and fellow agent Steve Gold, who works for the rival Corcoran Group, things become uncomfortable when Jade starts talking about commissions and Eleonora brusquely tells Jade she doesn’t care about high commissions, she cares about matching her buyers with the right home. Jade’s behavior irritates Eleonora, who thinks she’s unprofessional, and when Eleonora leaves the lunch to avoid an argument, Jade goes off on her. From episode one, it’s clear that the friction between these two longtime friends is going to simmer for the whole season.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Selling The City arrives to Netflix courtesy of the same production company that gave is Selling Sunset and Selling The OC. While there are no Oppenheims on this show (that we know of), there is a gaggle of primped agents all hustling and competing within the same agency to make big sales and curry favor with the boss. Of course, other antecedents include Million Dollar Listing: New York and Netflix’s Owning Manhattan.
Our Take: Early on, Eleonora seems occasionally clumsy in front of the camera, averting her eyes like she forgot that she’s supposed to ignore the lens in her face. Some of her dialogue feels like forced exposition that she hasn’t gotten comfortable delivering. But it also feels as though she has drastically changed her image almost on a quest to perfectly fit the mold of one of these reality realtors we’re familiar with from other shows. The show is filled with “before” photos of her, as if to say, “Just ten years ago, this woman was average, but look at her now!” and she’s proud of shedding that normie chrysalis.
But while it does seem like Eleanora primed herself for TV, she also takes her job seriously and holds herself to certain professional standards, so she isn’t the one who is necessarily cultivating the drama, that’s left to the team she put together and friends like Jade. (By contrast, Jade is a reality TV natural, she will openly offer unsolicited opinions about anyone with ease and polished, petty delivery.) The women on her team all seem smart and good at one they do, with some of their conflicts arising from the methods they use to do their jobs, their varying levels of experience, and who they align themselves with. It’s hard to say who (besides Jade, clearly set up to be the show’s primary antagonist) will cause the most drama, because every cast member has their own “thing” that might create chaos: Jordyn works with celebs and can be a little too casual with clients, Abi is the least experienced and everyone knows it, Taylor is the most successful but that puts her at risk of being poached (maybe even by Jade). As much as the format of the show feels exactly the same as the other shows in the Selling series, the personalities and the NYC backdrop give this version a slightly harder edge.
Sex and Skin: The wardrobes are as you’d expect from the agents in the world of ultra-luxe real estate (is there one store they all shop at?), with cleavage-baring tops and the like, and there’s a slightly gratuitous scene of real estate agent Steve Gold and his burly, hairy chest getting dressed, but these agents are otherwise keeping it profesh.
Parting Shot: After an excruciatingly awkward and very tense lunch, Jade asks Eleonora is she’s mad at her. Eleonora coolly brushes off that implication but gets up to leave the lunch, which makes Jade even more frustrated with her. Jade continues to trash talk her friend to Justin and Taylor (who looks incredibly uncomfortable, being that Eleonora is her boss), and says, “Don’t come at me. Like, I will f—king have this bitch’s head on a plate.”
Performance Worth Watching: Jade, the woman who is quick to label everyone and has a “if you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me” vibe, is clearly the show’s biggest pot-stirrer.
Memorable Dialogue: “I was raised by a single mother. Her co-parent was the city of New York,” Eleonora says, and damn if that’s not my favorite new variation on “New York is the fifth character.”
Our Call: Selling The City offers some new, refreshing office dynamics and drama, set against the backdrop of luxe Manhattan penthouses. The show’s success lies with its cast, who provide plenty of semi-manufactured drama, yet somehow they still feel authentic. STREAM IT!
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Selling The City’ on Netflix, A New Series Full Of Drama In The World of Luxe NYC Real Estate appeared first on Decider.
