When Keeping It "Real" Goes Wrong
A chat with Olivia Stowell about the end of Vanderpump Rules as we know it.
The recent news that Vanderpump Rules would continue into Season 12 with a new cast was seismic but entirely predictable. Although “Scandoval” (the memeable nickname for the 2023 news that cast member Tom Sandoval cheated on his longtime partner Adriana Madix with a third cast member, Rachel Leviss) elevated the reality TV series to new pop cultural relevancy, it also made VPR exceedingly difficult to produce. By the end of the Season 11 reunion, most of the core cast seemed ready to walk away, unwilling to speak to one another, or some combination of both. So it’s over, for now.
I’m a late convert to the VPR world (shout out to my wife), so I thought the reboot news be a great opportunity to chat with an expert. Olivia Stowell (Bluesky) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication & Media at the University of Michigan, where she’s working on a dissertation about U.S. reality television. She co-edited an Avidly Cluster on VPR and wrote a great piece about visiting the series’ primary restaurant settings, SUR and TomTom. Olivia’s also the Film & TV editor of Mid Theory Collective.
CB: Olivia, you’re a Vanderpump Rules expert. How are you handling the news that Bravo and Evolution are rebooting the series with a new, younger cast of SUR employees and saying goodbye to a core group of reality TV legends?
OS: Honestly (perhaps surprisingly?), I am at peace with this! I love Vanderpump Rules, but I think season 11 revealed a kind of narrative gridlock between the cast, as well as between the cast and the production team. There was a flash across seasons 10 and 11 where it seemed like VPR could chart new space for a reality show that was self-consciously (rather than only implicitly) about itself—about what it’s like to be a cast member on a Bravo show. But instead of really chasing that direction, the last season quickly got stale for me, even as a superfan. So I’m okay with moving on! I think some fans felt like season 11’s finale was an abrupt end, but I think those final shots, showing the cast’s early confessionals, are a satisfying goodbye for me.
CB: The ending of S11 certainly felt like a conclusion, at least for anyone hoping that Ariana and Tom Sandoval could consistently interact in ways that would produce reality TV-appropriate tension. You mentioned the recent efforts to embrace the pop culture impact of “Scandoval” and be more self-conscious about the artifice of filming a reality series. What worked about those efforts? And what didn’t?
OS: For me (as both a viewer and a scholar), I enjoyed the moments that got more meta about how it feels to play yourself on TV. Scheana crying about how she wanted the Dancing with the Stars spot—amazing and hilarious. The season ending with Tom Sandoval saying “I love it. It’s good for me.” about Ariana walking off set—chilling, mask off! Jeremiah the producer chasing everyone around at the finale party! These moments work for me because they feel like they document the mundane or affective dimensions of being in a ridiculous situation (having “grown up” on reality TV), even as they lean into the artifice of the context. That, to me, is an intensification of the classic authenticity/artifice blend that has always animated reality TV as a genre—supercharged by the acknowledgments that making this show is (or was, now, I guess!) the cast’s primary job.
What worked way less for me was the season-long arc of Lala and Scheana trying to get Ariana to film with Sandoval (especially via the “Ariana and Sandoval’s house” plotline), as well as the attempts to cultivate sympathy for Schwartz and Sandoval. These all ran out of steam for me very quickly—because they felt like the show’s economic engine (“Lala and Scheana don’t want the show to get canceled because they need the money!”) got submerged within weird moral posturing by the cast.
The show certainly had a challenge at the level of narrative, in that Ariana is compelling, but not necessarily protagonist material. Because Lala and Scheana’s storylines became about trying to get Ariana to do something she wouldn’t do, and then criticizing her for not doing the thing she said from the start that she wouldn’t do, the season lost momentum for me as a viewer.
And, to be frank, “two cast members try to force two other cast members to talk on camera” is just not a narrative plot with juice, in my opinion. It can’t hold a candle to Stassi slapping Kristen!
CB: Lisa’s role in the series’ storylines also evolved in the last two seasons. While she certainly tried to insert herself into the Sandoval-Ariana fallout, it seemed to me that she mostly failed, gave up, and just faded into the background. Her meddling, framed as sage wisdom, had long been tired, but her inconsequential appearances also signaled that the series couldn’t pretend that these folks were wayward 20-somethings on the come-up who “needed” her advice. Naturally, a reboot with younger folks who work at SUR provides the opportunity to reinvigorate the series but also reaffirm Lisa’s role at the center of the action. What are you looking forward to with a new iteration of the series? And how might Lisa’s role evolve yet again?
OS: I agree with you that Lisa more or less faded into the background of Scandoval. Even Ken usurped her—who could forget his random entry into a sandwich-making session to drop the bomb: “I can't believe that Tom Sandoval had Raquel over when Ariana is away.”
Unfortunately, I think that Hulu’s Vanderpump Villa provides some answers here—and not ones that I’m sure will thrill original VPR fans! Vanderpump Villa did a lot of work to put Lisa back into the boss/mediator role (lots of footage of staff meetings and one-on-ones, lots of the staff calling upon Lisa to intervene), and I suspect the VPR reboot will follow that model.
With the total recasting/reboot, Lisa not only can reassert herself in that meddling authority figure role but can also assert herself as the point of continuity—it puts her back in that central role not only for the cast but also for the audience.
But I’m going to give the rebooted VPR a try—although I suspect it may go the way of the rebooted RHONY (where the cast is too self-aware and self-produced for the show to get its momentum going).
CB: You beat me to the new RHONY comparison. It’s a great cast—who amongst us wouldn’t die for Brynn—but the second season has been a snooze for the reason you mentioned. Do you think the “self-produced” phenomenon is simply unavailable in 2024 reality TV? Is it all just a content funnel toward Instagram and affiliate links?
OS: I would die for Brynn—who, by the way, had an incredible episode last week! But I’m torn about the answer to your question. There’s one part of me that does miss earlier reality TV (which is the reality TV I grew up with), especially reality TV before the age of influencers. I think some shows are really suffering from the content funnel + overly self-aware cast aspect—new RHONY, Vanderpump Villa, Survivor, and Love Island UK, I think, are all waffling there, and I expect the VPR reboot will too.
But I think there are shows out there that are finding ways to work with the synergy between reality TV and social media, either by leaning into it (a la seasons 4-5 of RHOSLC) or by leaning toward other things—like Top Chef’s turn to really being about culinary excellence and craft, shows like Great British Bake Off or The Great Pottery Throw Down that emphasize the nice, gentle, and mundane, Below Deck finding a fusion of documenting interpersonal shenanigans and structures of emotional labor/workplace dynamics, or Traitors US amping up the goofy, campy potential of the form. In fact, I think the latter two there might be models for an actually entertaining path forward for new VPR. Either make the show a bit more about working in a restaurant (the way Below Deck and its spinoffs sort of alternate every few episodes between the workplace drama of the charters and the interpersonal drama of the crew’s days off), or lean into being totally, ludicrously over-the-top.
But there’s always something about good reality TV that’s a bit of catching lightning in a bottle. And I don’t think social media stops that potential—it just shifts the terrain.
CB: One final question: if we view this as the end of an era for VPR, what do you view as the series’ legacy? Where does it land in the reality TV pantheon for you?
OS: The first five seasons of VPR are, to me, inarguably and indisputably peak reality TV. But the overall dip in quality in the back half (especially in seasons 8 and 9) makes its final legacy more mixed, as much as I hate to say that as a fan. At the same time, it’s hard to name any reality TV show that didn’t eventually eat its own tail—that ouroboros quality seems intrinsic to the genre’s structure. I do think Ariana said it well in her Instagram post goodbye to the show: “I don’t know that these were the best days of our lives, but they were definitely something special.”
Though it’s too early to call, for now I would say Vanderpump Rules’s legacy is multifaceted: a time capsule of ill-advised 2010s fashion choices (chunky necklaces galore!), an account of the layering of the gig work of reality docusoaps with the gig work of trying to “make it” in Hollywood, a record of reality TV’s increasing entanglement with social media over the past 15 years, a catalog of hyperbolic comedy and drama. What more could you ask for?
This is TV Plus, a newsletter about television written by Cory Barker, a media studies professor and veteran blogger. You can follow me on Bluesky and Instagram, or email me at barkerc65[at]gmail.com. Thanks for tuning in.