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.

If the professional stakes of alienating your friends have always been high
on this show, the stakes seem even higher now as the cast ages. The strivers
of SUR got later starts than your average Housewife and then took their time
growing up. We have now watched them try for 10 seasons. Most left standing
in the core group are approaching or in their 40s; they have marriages,
divorces, pets, children. They own businesses, together and separately, that
can live or die by their reputations. They have bought houses and moved out
into two-bedroom apartments. Their built-up resentments and grudges are
iceberg-deep, as mine currently are against Tom Schwartz.

Over 10 years, the show has painted Katie � herself a flawed person, as we
all are, I am not here to "stan" anyone � as a demanding buzzkill and nag,
primarily when she would insist on being seen as a human being with feelings,
which Tom seemed to relish hurting. He would push on an emotional bruise then
pull back with a who, me? smile, stick his fingers in his mouth and babytalk
his way out of the doghouse. If Katie persisted in her grievance, she was the
unreasonable one, the show suggested, the one who couldn't let things go, the
one with no chill. He spoke to her memorably with undisguised contempt, and
for the most part, the show treated it like "Katie and Tom being the
Bickersons."

Culturally, we have long been trained to forgive bad behavior from a man,
especially if he appears to be trying to be better.

There's a scene in an earlier season that sums up this dynamic tidily: During
a prank war, fake cops are called to a party to handcuff Sandoval as
retribution for toilet-papering Jax's house. Everyone falls for it. When the
prank is revealed, the guys have a huge laugh, but Katie points out that as
practical jokes go, it was in poor taste, insensitive given the climate
around police and violence. "Turn on the news," she said. This is a
reasonable reaction for an adult to have! Schwartz, to whom she was very much
married at the time, began haranguing her in front of everyone for it: "I
have never been so turned off in my life," he sneered. "This is why I don't
have sex with her." In retrospect, it feels like a "throw the whole man in
the trash" moment, but given the dynamic the show established early on, it
barely registers as an event. Of course, there is much more to a marriage
than what plays out for the cameras. Those public moments of contempt,
though. I still struggle with understanding how the show � yes, even a
Bravo-lebrity show � could breeze by it for so long.

It must be said this is not all Bravo's fault: The show reflects what the
cast puts out and what the audience picks up. We're all soaking in the same
sexist hot tub. It says just as much about the culture that shaped him that
he has historically been a favorite of both the audience and Lisa Vanderpump,
who has much invested in the Toms having elevated them to restaurant industry
players. Schwartz's own shaky relationship with fidelity and the truth, let
alone his disregard for his partner's feelings, never seemed to damage his
reputation too much, likely because the victim was Katie, who could never be
as chill about it as women are expected to be, especially when they are
young. Culturally, we have long been trained to forgive bad behavior from a
man, especially if he appears to be trying to be better. (Women can never be
perceived as trying.) As Buzzfeed's Lara Parker points out in this incisive
rundown of Schwartz Sins, "He honestly seems to enjoy disrespecting women."
Again and again, the show gave Schwartz the benefit of the doubt as he did
just that. I'm not saying that set the whole stage for the depths of
Scandoval's emotional depravity. But it certainly didn't set a precedent that
respecting your life partner was a core value, a hard line in the sand not to
be crossed.

Katie finally left him after 12 years together. But even with split custody
of their dogs, a shared workplace, and a pledge to "stay friends" (that keeps
them both on the show), Divorced Tom has continued to antagonize her in some
of the same old ways: Taking everyone else's sides in disagreements, turning
what should have been an amicable dinner into a put-down session, then
shaming her for not forgiving him immediately. His coup de gr�ce this season
was making out with Raquel on camera, in front of a whole preferred pool full
of guests at castmate Scheana's wedding, after being explicitly asked not to,
and then acting injured when Katie stuck to her boundaries and ended their
post-divorce friendship over it. Whether kissing Raquel was a diabolical
cover to distract from his best friend's affair, a nasty psyop against his
ex, or just a routine, drunken lack of impulse control doesn't really matter.
A stand-up guy doesn't make out with his ex's co-worker�and at the office, no
less, that they all share. It is the kind of childish selfishness most people
grow out of when they realize their actions can hurt other people.

His coup de gr�ce this season was making out with Raquel on camera, in front
of a whole preferred pool full of guests at castmate Scheana's second wedding

A decent friend also wouldn't buddy around with a friend's ex accused of
being � to use one of Schwartz's favorite insults � a bootleg Harvey
Weinstein. And yet Schwartz did just that with Lala Kent's allegedly
horrendous movie producer ex-partner Randall Emmett, after she told her
colleagues they needed to pick a side as she went into a custody battle in
the wake of the allegations against him, which is documented in the new Hulu
documentary, "The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing & Vanderpump." Lala, it
must be acknowledged, is a controversial character, as is James; good
friends, they both play a sort of court jester role at times, tossing off
their barbs and gossip together through the remnants of their own well-
documented sexual chemistry, and their acid tongues and public outbursts are
legendary. Which is also not a compelling reason to pal around with an ex
whose exploits crossed him out of the recap section of the LA Times to the
investigative unit. After Lala confronted Schwartz earlier in this season of
"Pump Rules," he complained about Lala's ultimatum, mewling, "I just wanted
to f**king play some pickleball, man." Some contemplation and self-
examination could have come from that moment, from a castmember with the
depth to pull it off.

At the reunion, Lala pointed out that "Sandoval is Randall. Give it 10 years,
he is Randall Emmett." Water, or a Schwartz & Sandy's cocktail, seeks its own
level over time. Maybe it's time for the TomTom Era to end. The show's next
chapter could be Something About Her instead. A recalibration for this show
has been long overdue. Public opinion has rallied behind Ariana with
impressive strength. (Though it remains a disturbing choice for Bravo to have
brought Kristen back for the finale to soothe her, given the circumstances
under which she left � the show's overwhelming whiteness at work.) Perhaps
future seasons could put more focus on the women figuring out how to thrive
as they get older, wiser, and for some, more single before they settle back
down, if they ever decide to do so. That story � women learning how to
redefine themselves on their own terms � has been underexplored, and I
suspect the appetite for it now is strong.

Because ultimately, they're all too old for this s**t now. This season the
women snapped into compelling focus, working to put their boundaries and
priorities in order, even as they all struggle through the curveballs adult
life throws at everyone, to record ratings and fan approval. Except Raquel,
who couldn't seem to grasp the concept that the histories Sandoval and
Schwartz share with Ariana and Katie have deeper roots than little crushes
that ran their course. If only she had met them all 10 years ago. Give her 10
more years and maybe she'll understand. In the meantime, there's always room
in exile for yet another podcast.

--
Let's go Brandon!