Vanderpump Rules

Hey does anyone here watch this? My wife is a Bravo junkie and so I have been exposed to many of their terrible shows over the past few years, mostly The Real Housewives of <insert location here>. For some reason I like this one though, a lot.

Haha, you watch Vanderpump Rules.

Seriously though, Scheana looked straight busted at her wedding. And can you believe what Jax said to Sandoval?

I think you’re messing with me. No one watches this show here but me?

Same thing with my wife. Hate most of the Bravo crap she watches but I do watch this one with her. Don’t know why. Working people trying to get by like I used to in my 20’s…can relate. Some interesting characters to enjoy, watching their lives and their stupid decisions.

Glad someone else started this thread!

Disappointing season finale…though I guess with these Bravo shows the finale isnt really the finale since they have a 2-3 episode ‘reunion’ immediately following.

Kristen is a complete nut. I feel bad for James. I wanted to hate him but he seems like a nice guy and also talented with his musical production. He can do so much better than that whore. He did look like James Dean in the photo shoot.

Jax is a complete dick. Throws his boys under the bus any chance he gets. No excuse for that.

Tom Schwartz is terrible husband material. Katie needs to move on.

Tom Sandoval and Arianna are my favorites on the show. I am pretty sure Tom banged the Miami chick but I think it was something he regrets, and it was early in their relationship, and I don’t think he is a serial cheater, unlike most cheaters. Arianna seems like a great girlfriend. He needs to lock that shit up.

Stassi is a terrible person and her and Jax deserve each other. Her current love interest, who has wisely elected to stay off screen, needs to cut bait and move on. I will say I think she is hot, especially in the interview segments where it looks like she has put on 10-15 pounds. I don’t fancy skinny girls.

Looking forward to the reunion drama!

Ok, so I was just busting your balls earlier, but I am somewhat familiar with this show, as my wife watches most of the Bravo reality programming.

I actually fall on the other side on this show. Most of the Real Housewives are terrible people, but I give them a pass because they’re a) too old and b) too rich to ever know better. They’re locked into their ways, and they’re basically lost causes already. The remove from my lifestyle and status gives me the ability to watch them more dispassionately and without judgement.

On Vanderpump rules, however, I feel like these kids don’t have those excuses. They’re young and stupid, sure, but that means they’re also less ossified in their behavior and more capable (theoretically) of change. They don’t have to be this way, they choose to act this way. Which is feels grosser to me. They haven’t “earned” the right to bad behavior, but instead they’re just emulating it aspirationally. It’s just a worse look on a younger person.

Vanderpump also falls into an almost “uncanny valley” of reality TV. Obviously all the Bravo reality shows are directed, if not scripted, but there’s something about the guile-lessness of the young people where the acting-not-acting just doesn’t work. When the housewives sit around having stupid catty tea parties, that’s fine, because that’s more or less what I imagine them doing anyways. But when Stassi does it, I think “you really don’t have anything better to do than hang around the restaurant you don’t work at anymore and talk about people you claim you don’t like?” Now, I know that it’s just an artifact of production and that she’s a marketable and crowd-pleasing brand, but the artifice of “this is a reality-themed show” rather than “reality show” starts showing at the seams.

It doesn’t help in that regard that Lisa Vanderpump (the actual face of the brand) is, while clearly a very canny businesswoman, also somebody who grooms her media image so meticulously that there’s no trace of real humanity in there.

Anyways, there’s little surprise that the finale was a little disappointing. While I don’t really follow the details, according to my wife, the season story line was building towards a big reveal / fight based on Jax’s word. But, it turns out, Jax is a pathological liar, and can’t keep his story straight even within a single season, so it turns out they didn’t have anything dramatic to build around / to. As a result, they were scrambling for ways to salvage the season’s through-line in editing. As she explained “the producers learned first hand what everybody else learned last season: you can’t trust Jax’s word on anything.”

Well, my wife watches this show and sometimes I am unfortunate enough to be in the same room, so I guess it kind of seeps in through my pores somehow. Probably why I always feel like I need a shower after it’s been on. But yeah, I don’t get the point of these shows, is anyone actually supposed to be likeable? Do you pick someone to root for? Or is it more like a train wreck, we’re just rubbernecking as these people pull out their long knives and slowly circle each other?

Anyway, why anyone would name their daughter after the East German secret police is beyond me.

Season 4 started tonight!