For 11 seasons, Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules” has followed the triumphs, tragedies and antics of a group of Hollywood 20-somethings who became aspiring 30-somethings when the show became a reality TV juggernaut.
I never heard it? Maybe it's for the better, but you've been missing an unlikely morality play about who triumphs and who doesn't in the eternal angst of Los Angeles.
It began as a series about the waiters at SUR, a loud, expensive West Hollywood restaurant whose signature dish is fried goat cheese balls that aren't as appetizing as they seem. The stars, only one of them an Angeleno native (if you count West Covina), served cocktails and handed out plates as they pursued their entertainment dreams — and each other.
“Vanderpump Rules” stood out above its fellow Los Angeles reality shows because it created its own version of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County: a self-contained world that viewed the rest of the universe through its limited prism. Fans breathlessly followed the millennial cast's marriages, divorces, flings and escapades on the small screen and debated plot twists online. In real life, they flocked to the businesses featured on the show (SUR, PUMP, now closed, TOMTOM, Schwartz & Sandy's, Vanderpump Dogs) with the fervor of Christian pilgrims on the Via Dolorosa.
Among the faithful? Me.
My wife and I have visited most of these sites, repeating dialogues from episodes to ourselves in front of bewildered friends who can't understand why we bother watching trash TV (among the most cryptic lines: “It's not about the pasta.”) . For my birthday, she gave me a t-shirt with a worm with a mustache in brackets with the phrase “You're a worm with a mustache.” That's the memorable insult that James Kennedy (the group's DJ) hurled at Tom Sandoval (the resident oaf) last season after Sandoval, who had a girlfriend, became romantically involved with Kennedy's ex-girlfriend.
That drama, appropriately named “Scandoval,” gave “Vanderpump Rules” a prestige it had never known, including two Emmy nominations and careful coverage in publications around the world. It wasn't the first time an adventure on the show attracted widespread attention. Two years earlier, the end of Lala Kent's relationship with film producer Randall Emmett was followed by a Times investigation that portrayed Emmett as a deceitful man who continued to cast Bruce Willis in his dumb movies despite the man's dementia. actor (Emmett denied both charges).
I first tuned into “Vanderpump Rules” for its addictive schadenfreude: You delighted in watching the mistakes of your youth play out among a new generation, except in more conspicuous places. You stuck around to see if the protagonists got better as they got older (spoiler alert: most didn't). Despite the WeHo vibe and the company's overwhelming whiteness, any Angeleno could relate to them. They were no longer rich, like the people on the show from which Vanderpump emerged, “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” or the pioneering series “The Hills” and “The Kardashians.” They didn't start out living in a rich man's world, like the people in “Shahs of Sunset,” “Flipping Out” or “Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles.”
The “Vanderpump Rules” team was the quintessential Los Angeles archetype: the fighter who came out of nowhere, with something to prove.
This season, however, the show offered a profound lesson in what to do when you're found stranded on the sidewalk, as almost everyone in the big city eventually is.
A scene from the season 11 finale of “Vanderpump Rules.” From left to right, Lala Kent, Scheana Shay, Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz
(Kim White/Bravo)
This year's big storyline involved Sandoval and Ariana Madix, his longtime boyfriend who broke up with him after Scandoval. Cameras captured them at their Valley Village home, communicating only through an enthusiastic personal assistant, Ann Maddox. The other Vanderpumpers kept trying to create scenarios where Madix would have to talk to Sandoval and at least make peace, so the show could go on like old times.
It didn't happen because Madix had moved on, and not just romantically. She appeared on “Dancing with the Stars,” starred in a Broadway revival of “Chicago,” wrote a best-selling book and worked for big brands like Bic, Glad and Chili's in self-referential commercials. Last week, Madix and her co-star Katie Maloney opened a sandwich shop in West Hollywood called Something About Her that's already generating hours-long lines (yes, my wife and I plan to go).
However, as the season progressed, the rest of her jealous enemies realized that Madix's newfound fame and her refusal to reconcile with Sandoval jeopardized the future of “Vanderpump Rules.” They realized that they had not diversified like her and that her livelihood would end if her Bravo gravy train ran out.
These tensions boiled over in the season finale, when Sandoval broke the fourth wall and got angry at Madix to the sympathetic cast members: “Don't just sit on your lazy ass and get paid for doing nothing,” all because she refused. to speak. to him at a whiskey release party in San Francisco. In the final installment of a three-episode reunion special that aired this week, Kent snarled at Madix: “If you're not going to show some face… about your position on the show, I'm going to need you to give in… about mine.”
Madix cried but did not break down. “Vanderpump Rules” is now on hiatus; Meanwhile, she is filming another show, this time as a host. She learned the most important lesson Los Angeles has to offer: when you have lemons, make margaritas. She takes advantage of what brought you down. Get up and move on. Hurry to new ventures, new friends. Do not live in the past.
The rest of the “Vanderpump Rules” haters have yet to learn that lesson. May the rest of Los Angeles tattoo him on our collective hearts.
