This essay is a part of a special Vanderpump Rules Avidly cluster, guest co-edited by Olivia Stowell and Jay Shelat.
Vanderpump Rules star and Britney Spears wannabe Scheana Shay wastes no time in her 2019 song “Better Without You”. It recounts the history of a bad relationship, but it just as quickly transitions into a declaration of independence and newfound self-love. The admittedly catchy background music amplifies the song’s postfeminist thesis: “I don’t need a man to validate my life / I done hit rock bottom but I’m doing fine.” Conversely, Shay’s follow up 2020 song “One More Time” dwells on a desire for a former flame once again: “I just need more time, just to feel you, ya.” The tone has shifted; the speaker falls into a self-acknowledged pattern of romantic mistakes: “Boy you’re my kryptonite.”
This recursive pattern of domestic and romantic instability is Vanderpump Rules’ biggest draw. It’s a show about the repetitive personal comings-together and fallings-apart of a friend group employed at Lisa Vanderpump’s West Hollywood restaurant SUR (Sexy Unique Restaurant). The cast is intimately familiar with each other, not only by virtue of close friendships and working together, but also by the simple fact that they all sleep or have slept or will sleep together. We watch as these sexual and romantic dalliances unsettle, upturn, or altogether unmake home lives. Domestic instability drives and organizes the show, and we love to see it.
Consider the show’s first, inciting scandal in 2013. Scheana, then a waitress at SUR, sits with Vanderpump’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills castmate Brandi Glanville, whose husband Scheana has been sleeping with. “‘Don’t ever be the other woman. Just don’t, like, you’re better than that,’” Brandi advises Scheana. The younger woman responds earnestly: “‘I’m really, really sorry that I hurt you.’” Not only is this VPR’s first scandal, but it’s also the show’s very first scene. Beverly Hills seamlessly transitions into VPR as Brandi exits SUR, and Scheana makes her way through the restaurant’s cramped interior. The restaurant’s spatial dynamics amplify Brandi and Scheana’s intense interpersonal dynamic; dirty domestic laundry is aired out in a workplace, extending the definitional boundaries of home. SUR transforms into another domestic sphere wherein intimacies flourish and whither, illustrated in the unstable fraternal and romantic relationships among the staff. Even the restaurant’s back alley infamously sees the collapse of bonds.
To me, the domestic dramas that frame and fuel VPR feel literary. Its crises of masculinity, marital bliss, or child rearing can make VPR read like a Richard Yates novel or John Cheever story. The show resonates with what Kristin J. Jacobson has termed neodomestic American fiction: contemporary novels that “renovate the ideal home’s usual depiction by positioning instability—as opposed to stability—as a key structure of quotidian American home life.” In other words, the domestic sphere no longer offers solace, functioning instead as a space of volatility, opposition, and strife. With its highs and lows of romantic and domestic life, VPR illustrates this idea well; we obsessively watch as these hot professionals make and unmake homes and relationships with each other, within and beyond the workplace.
VPR is a bitter cocktail that is as repulsive as it is intoxicating, and these unhinged domestic dynamics sustain the show’s steadfast ratings and structure its form. Its seriality speaks to this: each week, we are granted a peek at the gloriously chaotic intimate lives of these beautiful people, only to be left hanging at the end of an hour. And so, we must return again next week to see how conflicts develop, fizzle out, or resolve.
The show has taken a more explicitly domestic turn in the last few years, privileging the cast’s intimate lives over their professional endeavors. In season ten, almost each of the show’s central couples seems in fraught freefall. Only Scheana Shay, the show’s original arbiter of marital strife, revels in domestic bliss with her new hunky husband, Brock. Without conflict, however, the show wouldn’t work. Disorderly family and domesticity make for addictive television.
In March 2023, VPR’s biggest scandal to date broke. Season ten had finished filming when TMZ reported that Tom Sandoval cheated on Ariana with her best friend Raquel. “Scandoval,” as the internet deemed it, rocked social media. Fans of the show, who watched Sandoval cheat on his girlfriend Kristen Doute (a former cast member) with Ariana nine years prior, were rattled. Over the course of their relationship, rumors had swirled about Tom’s infidelity (Miami girl!), but Ariana remained “ride or fucking die” for her boyfriend. Scandoval, however, was different. The proof was irrefutable, retroactively concretized by Raquel and Tom’s strange “friendship” throughout season ten. Hours after TMZ broke the news, Bravo picked cameras up again to film Ariana’s reaction. Fans cheered at the network’s historic decision, gleefully celebrating Sandoval’s fall. The new finale, aptly entitled “#Scandoval,” documents in real time the shifting contours of a home, relationship, and friend group. And how lucky we viewers felt to watch it unfold.
As “#Scandoval” begins, “sun keeps on shining” by almost monday ironically soundtracks footage of a rare Los Angeles rain falling ominously. We watch principal cast members do regular domestic tasks: Lala feeds her dog, Tom Schwartz washes his face while his dog humps a stuffed bear, Katie brews tea, and James and Ally cook salmon. The everydayness of their actions sharply juxtaposes the forthcoming fallout at Tom and Ariana’s house. Their domestic stage is set instead for eruption. The catchy pop song halts, and disquietude reigns. Ariana drinks wine straight from the bottle on the cream-colored couch, while Tom avoidantly putters about the kitchen. “‘Do you want anything?’” Tom asks. Without missing a beat, Ariana hisses, “‘For you to die.’” The camera jarringly shifts perspectives between the two. Domestic instability constructs the finale’s architecture: every compositional brick—soundtrack, structure, camera shots—is built on the unhappy couple.
“#Scandoval” garnered 4.1 million viewers, making it the highest rated episode in the show’s history and one of the highest ever for Bravo. It makes sense: narratively and formally flawless, the episode was arguably the best thing on television in 2023. The decision to restart filming after domestic scandal, too, reaped accolades: season ten was nominated for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program and Outstanding Picture Editing For An Unstructured Reality Program at the Emmys. That Scandoval received such popular and critical praise reiterates the lauded position of domestic narratives in American culture, and our love for watching the ouroboric repetition of domestic fallouts and makeups, of renovating and remodeling lives and homes speaks to our grotesque fascination to be in the know.
Perhaps it’s the perpetual nature of it all that draws us into the homes of these people. We find thrilling pleasure in the repetitive quality of Vanderpump Rules. It veers towards banal drama, yet its compositional elements steer it clear of pastiche. Wearying emergencies and crises define our reality, so watching how the intimate, domestic lives of a friend group crumble and rebuild is comforting, dependable, trustworthy. For an hour or so, things feel good as gold.
Jay Shelat is an assistant professor of English at Ursinus College. He is in academia solely to be a scholar of the Real Housewives. He routinely tries to convince his students to watch anything on Bravo; they only sometimes listen.