Vanderpump Rules has faced an enormous uphill battle over its eleventh season, struggling to prove it should continue on in its mutant form. After a finale that tore down the facade of structured reality, the reunion is finally showing us a hint of what a post-Scandoval VPR really looks like. And it’s surprisingly good.
The reunion doesn’t revolve around Ariana Madix or Tom Sandoval, but Lala Kent finds her way to the center of it all, for better or worse. Away from the veneer of a fourth wall, the reunion finally touches on the most intriguing aspect of the season: How the cast have dealt with the immense online attention the show has received, and moreover, have adjusted their on-camera personalities to deal with it.
If you’re a fan who despises Lala’s performance this season and was hoping she’d eat crow at the reunion, well, this reunion will only have you more pissed. But if you’re a fan of the burn it all down and start from scratch approach, this reunion has that in spades. Alliances have fallen and it’s no longer about Team Ariana or Team Sandoval, harkening back to the glory days when VPR didn’t have such strictly written battle lines.
It starts slow, with the first half of the episode more focused on tying up the loose ends the season left. The funniest of those is the season-long struggle to open a sandwich shop, something Katie excitedly announces will finally happen by the time this episode airs. Unfortunately for Katie, she was just a week too early, as Something About Her has yet to open. But the sandwich sisters are set to open their doors May 22. Finally, we can all rest in just eight short days…hopefully.
There’s another hanging thread to address, and that’s the looming presence of Rachel Leviss. Despite the fact she hasn’t appeared in a single episode of the season, Rachel hasn’t gone silently into the night. Instead, she joined B*th*nny Fr*nk*l’s anti-Bravo tour and soon after launched her own podcast, as well as filing suit against Sandoval and Ariana for allegedly spreading revenge porn.
Although self-designated group spokesperson Lala takes it upon herself to pat Rachel on the back for attending last year’s reunion amid such intense vitriol (much of it propagated by Lala), the rest of the cast aren’t willing to give her kudos. In fact, it’s her former paramour Sandoval who has the harshest words.
“Looking back, I think she’s a fucking coward. Like, I’m sorry to say it,” he says. It’s a fascinating turn, albeit predictable, and one that makes the former couple’s us-against-the-world love story a bit funny in hindsight. They couldn’t even last a day. Sorry to the Sandoval/Rachel shippers, you’ll always have that one scene in the Season 10 finale.
Lala sticks up for Rachel, again, arguing that she’s within her right to say Sandoval groomed her. Sandoval, on the other hand, is disgusted by the term as he’s not a pedophile and she wasn’t a minor. God bless Sandoval’s ability to double down on semantics despite the fact the optics are never in his favor.
Speaking of, we dive next into Sandoval exposing that Ariana had threatened to kill herself while their relationship was cratering. It’s a sticky conversation, further complicated by Sandoval’s own open suicidal idealations, but Lisa (who, yes, somehow is front and center at this reunion despite her seven minutes of screentime this season) makes a strong point.
Sandoval chose to express his own suicidal thoughts, while Ariana’s were exposed without her support. While Sandoval argues that she was manipulating him and it was a textbook way to get him to stay, it’s simply not a hill anyone should die on in this climate. Then again, if people who understood good optics were the stars of this show, we wouldn’t be on our eleventh season.
The conversation turns away from such murkiness to finally discuss Sandoval’s major PR blunder: his New York Times profile. You know the one where he compared the Scandoval to the murder of George Floyd. It’s a topic that fans have been salivating for Andy to address, and one that noticeably didn’t come up during Sandoval’s Watch What Happens Live appearance post-finale.
Sandoval’s excuse should be simple: He’s stupid and has an awful PR team who allow him to speak. The point he meant to make, apparently, is that Scandoval being covered by CNN as though it’s serious news coverage and not a reality TV scandal is ridiculous. He should probably just say that, next time. Bravo stars aren’t the best when it comes to analogies and comparisons.
Still, I’ll give Sandoval this: The elevated temperature that has followed VPR in the year since the scandal has been unsustainable, and it’d be great for everyone to remember this show is supposed to be fun. There are no heroes in the world of reality TV, where mess is the currency that keeps the wheels turning. Blundering idiots like Tom Sandoval weren’t meant to live their lives behind a cubicle. We can embrace their drama without endorsing them as human beings or people we’d want to befriend.
Next, Andy takes Sandoval off the griddle to discuss Lala’s pregnancy and Scheana’s journey with postpartum OCD. Scheana’s very authentic struggle is made all the more interesting by her openly admitting she can’t look away from negative social media comments. Scheana Shay has never heard the term unplug, nor will she. Sending her light and love in this time, as the fanbase have spent the last three months throwing rocks at her each and every day.
We turn to Brock, who’s semi-redemption arc was the slowburn of the season. In so many ways, Brock’s a sequined red flag walking, yet we started on such a low note with him that he really had nowhere to go but up. And, while I wouldn’t call him the voice of reason as Mr. Cohen did, he has delivered a solid performance this season and shown himself to have more layers than previously thought. As far as the men of this show go, he’s certainly not the worst of the bunch, which says more about them than him given he’s admittedly estranged from most of his children. The bar isn’t high.
As the reunion comes to a close, Lala finds herself in the hot seat, and it’s clearly a role she’s been dying to be placed in all night. Although the Katie and Lala feud was a subtle undercurrent of the season, Lala’s ready to hit her directly. It’s an exciting change of pace, as Lala finally addresses what set her off with Katie. Allegedly, Katie said in a DM that Lala needs to get rid of her lawyer and get a therapist “because she’s a fucking clown.” I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that I laughed.
Katie doesn’t fully deny it, either. If Katie did actually say that, that’s the kind of brazen comment she needs to bring on camera. Passivity doesn’t get you anywhere on this show. Rather than dissect that moment, though, Katie turns to explain that she has just wanted Lala to give Ariana more grace. And that’s when things really blow up.
Scheana reveals that Katie and Lala have had conversations behind the scenes that don’t match Katie’s words once the cameras go up. Then, Lala goes a step further to reveal that Katie had felt abandoned by Ariana with the sandwich shop, especially when Ariana left to go do Broadway “without a heads up.”
The tag-team from Scheana and Lala finally puts Katie in the action after a season skirting on the peripheral, and it’s clear she’s blindsided by the exposure.
“You and I are truth-tellers. We say shit how it is. So why when the camera goes up am I suddenly the enemy when I’m talking about the same shit we’ve spoken about on the phone?” Lala says, before accusing Katie of “living in the comment section,” as well as Scheana and even James. This blunt admittance that Ariana’s newly found fan favorite status complicated everyone’s approaches this season is a necessary one, and something that has been clear all season, despite no one verbalizing it.
It’s hard to blame Katie for keeping any of her frustrations off-camera when Lala and Scheana have been dragged through the mud on social media all season. But it’s also necessary when you’re on a reality show to act in accordance with your own views and the show’s best interest, rather than giving into the vocal fans. The pendulum always swings, and today’s fan favorites are tomorrow’s villains. Blowing up the facade is necessary to keep this show moving, and it’s great that Lala realizes that, despite the fact it will only put more of a target on her back.
People may want all the VPR ladies to blindly agree with each other in the name of feminism, but that’s not really feminism. We have to allow reality stars to exhibit nuance, make mistakes, and show their less desirable characteristics, lest we’re left with dozens of cookie cutter episodes with no real depth. Expecting the utmost morality from the women while letting the men slide because you have no expectations of decency is just repackaged misogyny, and antithetical to what has made this show stand the test of time. Had this season been a Sandoval-less endeavor that merely focused on the nonexistent sandwich shop, we wouldn’t even be discussing whether VPR can survive, as it would already be long dead.
If this reunion is showing anything, it’s that Vanderpump Rules does have life left in it, as long as we’re willing to embrace the unsavory sides of reality. Maybe the Scandoval was more of an anchor than a narrative heavyweight. Maybe we had to stumble through the unknown to find a show worth saving. The best days may be in the rearview, but Vanderpump Rules isn’t ready to say goodbye.
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