“VPR” is dead, long live “The Valley”, the new Mecca of chaotic reality drama

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million times: Reality TV should be fun and silly. What used to be a genre of shameless, voyeuristic glee has become, in recent years, a vehicle for hero worship, with little to no line between fact and fiction. People used to say to me, “You know these shows aren’t really ‘real,’ right?” when I expressed my love for The Real Housewives of New York City or The bachelor. “Yes!” I replied and then: “Who cares? You know, Lost wasn’t real either, was it? That’s called entertainment!”

I couldn’t care less if reality shows are secretly staged, scripted or manipulated, because the formula of shoving cameras in the faces of a bunch of ridiculous, mostly rich people has always made me laugh. But lately, it’s not as funny or silly as it used to be.

Take Vanderpump Rulesthat you probably don’t want to hear about anymore. Before this current season, the show was on the decline. The worst characters, Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Duote, were canceled in real life and therefore fired from the show. This was a shock to me because as far as I knew the show was about documenting all the crap they did so that it could be canceled. Nobody watched the first few seasons of VPR and thought, “That Stassi might be on to something!” These were stupid people in their twenties doing stupid things to make us laugh out of embarrassment and say, “At least I’m not her!” With no villains to hate, the show was a flop.

Until the worst thing that ever happened to Bravo happened: Scandoval. I won’t rehash the whole thing for you, but suffice it to say, it saved the show. Did you read that right? A stupid, hateful thing done by a stupid, hateful man made the show better. This isn’t rocket science, folks!

Well, it saved the show… briefly. Scandoval was canceled by VPR at the end of Season 10, but we saw the aftermath in Season 11. I was hoping my show about bad people behaving badly would come back — and, believe me, Tom Sandoval lived up to my expectations of badness — but alas, Season 11 sucked. It was like the rest of the cast got so sick of the whole thing and suddenly so unwilling to share their lives or their true feelings about anything, so it got boring. This used to be a show about cursing each other out in the back alleys of West Hollywood restaurants, and now they’re all grown up and crying about babysitters. LaLa Kent, one of the most hateful people on the show, was the only one who seemed willing to be honest about her feelings, which essentially were, “Why are you still living in the same house as your psychotic ex?” and she was blasted online for it, as fans fell at the feet of Ariana Madix, the victim of the “Scandoval” cheating scandal.

You can’t blame Madix for shutting herself down and becoming boring considering she lost a decade of her life to a terrible narcissist (I know we shouldn’t throw around diagnoses, but if there was ever a case for clinical narcissism, it’s Sandoval). She made it clear that she didn’t want to portray anything on the show that didn’t reflect her life outside of it, so she wouldn’t talk to her ex on camera if she didn’t in real life. Good for her and totally understandable, but it’s not exactly good TV. So the majority of the season consisted of a lot of scenes of her telling her friends that she wouldn’t be friends with them if they continued to be friends with her ex, and then scenes of her friends trying to stay friends with her ex. She basically said “I had a contract” as to why she didn’t just quit, and I respect that, but I think she took the brand down with her.

While VPR imploded, The valley was cooking just a few miles away. Remember my favorite worst, Kristen Duote? She’s back with her terrible sidekick, fellow VPR alumnus Jax Taylor, and her gaggle of “friends.” canyon didn’t require much marketing or explanation – most of these people were already known to fans, and those who weren’t fit right into the group because of their whining and marital problems.

Marital problems are the main plot of Valley. The cast is mostly couples, and those couples are mostly getting divorced, most notably Taylor and his now estranged wife Brittany Cartwright. The show is really just a documentary of Taylor acting like a huge asshole to his wife (which she could probably use in divorce court, not that I know of any of that), and it ended in separation in Tuesday night’s finale, with Cartwright moving into an AirBnB with their son. Jesse and Michelle Lally have also split up, and the rest of them are having babies and yelling at each other.

Honestly, there’s no one to root for on this show. While there are good guys and bad guys in certain scenes between spouses, for the most part it’s the bad guys who behave badly. That’s why it works. There won’t be a reunion (probably too many lawyers to deal with), but the show has already been renewed for season 2 and reports say everyone will be back, despite how much they really despise each other. So as far as I can tell, there’s no real friend in there. Just a handful of greedy enemies. My favorite.

Meanwhile, VPR is “on pause,” to use Bravo language, and Madix is ​​appearing on Broadway and hosting Love Island and does every other brand deal that capitalism throws at her, I would be shocked if she came back, which I think would be the nail in the coffin. The only solution I see is to send the last of the villains, Sandoval and Kent (and sometimes Scheana Shay) The valley to join in the chaos. Kent and Shay already live there anyway!

The valley is better than Vanderpump Rules because people are worse and have no shame. That’s how it should be.