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arts / rec.arts.tv / [Vanderpump Rules] The heart of Schwartzness: The roots of the "Vanderpump Rules" Scandoval implosion run deep

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o [Vanderpump Rules] The heart of Schwartzness: The roots of the "Vanderpump RulesUbiquitous

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[Vanderpump Rules] The heart of Schwartzness: The roots of the "Vanderpump Rules" Scandoval implosion run deep

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From: web...@polaris.net (Ubiquitous)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,alt.tv.reality
Subject: [Vanderpump Rules] The heart of Schwartzness: The roots of the "Vanderpump Rules" Scandoval implosion run deep
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2023 04:59:15 -0400
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Summary: https://www.salon.com/2023/05/26/vanderpump-rules-tom-schwartz-sandoval/
Keywords: https://www.salon.com/2023/05/26/vanderpump-rules-tom-schwartz-sandoval/
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 by: Ubiquitous - Thu, 1 Jun 2023 08:59 UTC

I have been thinking deeply about Bravo's "Vanderpump Rules" lately. In my
defense, the show broke its agreement with us � to not ever make its fans
think too deeply � first. Like much of the internet and several of my group
chats, it started with the off-camera reveal in March that veteran cast
member and bartender turned lounge owner Tom Sandoval � he of the midlife
crisis cover band and mustache � had been cheating on his partner of nine
years, castmate and preternaturally chill peacemaker Ariana Madix, with her
much younger "best friend" Raquel (n�e Rachel) Leviss, the pageant princess
slash ex-fianc�e of haunted Victorian doll-turned-DJ James Kennedy.

Far from a simple drunken hookup � the fuel that ran this show in its youth �
Sandoval and Raquel carried on a full-blown secret love affair under the nose
of Bravo's production team (and, as the cast euphemistically refers to
themselves as, "the friend group") in the Valley Village house where his
long-term girlfriend was grieving the deaths of her beloved grandmother and
dog between trying to open her own business and to get Sandoval to stay sober
long enough to fertilize her frozen eggs. Pass the Pumptinis, this is some
bleak adult s**t!

It's led to a riveting couple of months, between media coverage, Instagram
stories and assorted trash-talking podcasts, all leading up to the season
finale, filmed in the aftermath of Ariana discovering the affair, and the
bonkers, weeks-long reunion show cycle currently underway. "He has victim-
blamed me 100 percent of the way, so I don't believe anything that just came
out of his mouth, I think he's f**king full of s**t, and he can f**k off,"
Ariana fired back at Sandoval's attempt to justify himself in part 1 of the
reunion this week. Whew!

Things were much simpler back when disagreements could be hashed out over
shift breaks in the alley behind SUR, weren't they? With cast members in
their mid-to-late-30s and early 40s, they're not exactly middle-aged, but
neither are they the careless young adults of the show's genesis. By turns,
they have been hit hard by life, which we all know only gets harder.
"Vanderpump Rules" has become relevant again because it stumbled into this
realization the way we all eventually do: Slowly, then all at once when a
crisis hits.

This is Wharton with spray tans, kinda. Austen through beer goggles?

A quick recap, for those who aren't Andy Cohen devot�es: "Vanderpump Rules,"
which debuted in 2013, is a byproduct of Bravo's Real Housewives franchise,
featuring the younger, drunker strivers haunting the payroll of Bravo-lebrity
and restaurateur Lisa Vanderpump's SUR (obligatory acronym spell-out: Sexy
Unique Restaurant). They arrived in West Hollywood at various times in the
Aughts and Teens from places like Tampa or St. Louis with trunks full of
teeth whitener and dreams. In the early seasons, they still went through the
motions of their original aspirations between restaurant shifts: Going on
auditions, modeling something somewhere, autotuning themselves to high
heaven. They also drank so much it's almost unbearable to watch in reruns,
jockeyed for position at SUR and Lisa's other properties, hooked up and broke
up, and constantly fell out with one other over who said what to whom.

You might be tempted to dismiss a show built on party-hard gossip as flimsy,
but there are some stakes here. You can be a villain on this kind of show,
but you must be a villain with some social power, which means at least one or
two close allies, or you risk being cast out, with nobody to film with. If
you aren't on the show, do you even exist? If you can control the narrative,
you keep your position. This is Wharton with spray tans, kinda. Austen
through beer goggles?

Often the gossip was about infidelity, suspected or witnessed, involving
Miami Girl, That Girl in Vegas, Motorboating Some Guy's Junk, the Golden
Nugget swimming pool, or literally any storyline flowing through or around
the volatile Kristen � she was later fired after a racist targeted campaign
against a former castmate, and has a podcast now � and/or incorrigible
scoundrel Jax, also exiled, also with a podcast. (It's a lot of podcasts.
What, are they going to get CPA licenses?) Occasionally, someone would get
blackout drunk and start crying or screaming or getting even more
belligerent. Some people were generally forgiven for chronic bad behavior and
others weren't.

And so it would be fair to ask why this particular infidelity has captured so
much attention. This season has been the show's most-watched, with the finale
returning a series high in ratings, and I don't think it's all due to the
mechanics of L'Affaire Scandoval itself. To sum it up, Sandoval and his
mustache are gross, Ariana was done dirty, Raquel is way out of her depth,
and these people throw around the words "best friend" a lot for not being in
sixth grade. But there's more to it than that.

A lot has happened on this show over its decade-long run, and also a whole
lot of nothing. I began watching "Vanderpump Rules" during a particularly
difficult summer. I needed a break from constant news, I was a little
depressed, and I enjoyed observing a workplace more dysfunctional than mine
at the time. One season could be carried by two, maybe three pieces of
gossip, rehashed tirelessly over many episodes, gaining just a tiny bit of
forward momentum with each fight over who said what to whom. There was
something of an operatic aria structure to it, a few words sustained across a
whole lot of notes. The pace was as languid as a hangover Sunday. There was
no way to fall behind or feel like you'd missed anything of substance.

There was something of an operatic aria structure to it, a few words
sustained across a whole lot of notes.

I admit I have not been a faithful fan for the last few years, especially as
the cast expanded. Scandoval lured me back, where I found the show had
tightened around a small core, concentrating its gaze intently on longtime
colleagues who are, for the most part, no longer so young, which has only
made them more interesting, especially the women. And in revisiting some of
those decade-long patterns as I watched every episode this season and all of
Andy Cohen's debriefings, I've come to a new realization: The show's darkness
has long been manifested in its framing of the other Tom � Sandoval's bestie,
former roomie and fellow SUR bartending alum, now current business partner
Tom Schwartz � all along.

Enabled by the show, Schwartz spent years emotionally terrorizing Katie
Maloney, his girlfriend and later wife, and even now that she is divorcing
him, he can't seem to stop. Portrayed by the show as the mostly harmless,
even sensitive beta to Sandoval's roguish hardass, the other Tom � Sandoval's
wasted wingman, his vault of toxic secrets � is at last aging out of the
threadbare boyish charm years and emerging, finally, as the stealth villain
of the show's entire run.

Yes, this is reality TV, which we all understand to be manipulated and staged
to some extent. As a fan, of course, all I can know is the show that's on
screen and playing out in the margins around it. But these are real people
with real relationships, and, if I may be sentimental for a moment, I have to
believe real love for each other � only people who love each other can hurt
each other as they do. The Scandoval affair became public after filming ended
and the season was pretty much set, but the show whiplashed back into
production to capture a new finale and the emotional fallout of the discovery
� I'm trying to make a Sandoval/coda portmanteau here, but it's not working �
and while the cast clearly prepped their rationales, alibis and zingers for
maximum effect, after 10 years together, I think we all have a pretty good
handle on the collective acting range. The reactions ring true. Ariana's
emotional finale confrontation was particularly, well, operatic, as she
reduced Sandoval to a pile of rubble:

"We were friends when you were literally wearing combat boots and skinny
jeans and didn't have a dime to your name, driving a 1997 Honda Civic," she
said with alarming specificity. "I loved you then when you had nothing. You
got a little bit of money, a little bar, a little band, and then this girl is
gonna act enamored of you?"

Then she went in for the precision shot: "Cause that's what you want � you
want someone to just gas you up."

Sandoval's wasted wingman, his vault of toxic secrets, is at last aging out
of the threadbare boyish charm years and emerging, finally, as the stealth
villain of the show's entire run.

A tale as old as time! Somehow amid Tom Sandoval's clich�-fest midlife
crisis, Schwartz has managed to make himself look pretty awful as well.
Sandoval is rightfully catching the bulk of the ire for his shameless web of
lies, but Schwartz's feckless little rebellions are grotesque in their own
way. How much he knew about Scandoval and when continues to be an issue as
Schwartz's story has shifted over time. And in the finale, he seemed more
concerned with the reputation of the new bar they struggled to open, Schwartz
& Sandy's, than with the implosion of his friends' lives. Call it an
accomplishment: A man who got surprisingly far by pretending to be a soft
puppy dog while viciously undermining his own wife is experiencing
consequences as his weakness and misogyny finally come into focus for
everyone else? As they say, this is 40.


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