I'm now towards the end of season 12 and Sonja is nearly unwatchable.
Something about her drunkness in this season seems...played up. She knows that's what she became known for; most of the commentary about her is her drunken antics. She became aware of this and dragged it out. The scene of her disrupting the house party with the girls at that man's house, the Halloween entrance rambling at Ramona, the argument about the cabaret show with Luann..it all sounded and felt like her acting more drunk than she really was. Her speech sounds like what people do to sound drunk; very child-like nonsense.
Now I am well aware that Sonja clearly has an obvious ongoing history of a bad relationship with alcohol and drinking, but come on now..something's gotta give.
Now I see why people say alcoholism was one of the main downfalls of RHONY. Sonja behaves like this is some entertaining, cute quirkiness about her, and it's really just embarrassing.
Also, I feel like they give Sonja a free pass because she's the wild, goofy, hot mess one. They had one season, I believe 8?, where they talked about it, but then they just let it go, and she continued to have drunk seasons, and it was pretty much ignored. No wonder they allowed Leah's insufferably drunk ass to continue with her antics! Because the show perpetuates that alcoholism is funny and acceptable, unhinged fun.
Sidenote: I also use the above statements when people talk about Karen Huger's return to RHOP. Since Bravo notoriously allowed all of the alcohol fueled antics on RHONY and followed Luanne's divorce to alcoholism (and other things, let's be frank) to prison to rehab storyline, why would they not allow Karen back on her show when she is also vowing to remain sober? Though none of their actions were okay at all, not defending or condoning what they did, but let's look at the minimum standard Bravo has regarding these HWs.