Can Starting from Scratch Save “Vanderpump Rules”?

Then, successful 2023, during Season 10, what I tin lone picture arsenic an enactment of God took place: It was revealed that Tom Sandoval had secretly cheated connected his longtime woman and chap formed member, Ariana Madix, with a newer, younger formed member, Raquel (née Rachel) Leviss, close nether the camera’s nose. The true, integrated astonishment of this crook of events—to Bravo, to the viewers, to astir of the show’s cast—created a frenzy, and “Vanderpump” experienced a resurrection. At the time, I tweeted, “vanderpump this play gives maine hope. you mightiness deliberation thing is dead… you mightiness deliberation thing is over… and past it rises again similar a goddam PHOENIX. A acquisition to america all.” In actuality, however, I knew that this benignant of rebirth was some uncommon and astir apt brief, and that, soon enough, the show’s infinitesimal would erstwhile again beryllium over.

This was borne retired when, aft “Scandoval” fever died down, “Vanderpump Rules” beauteous overmuch died with it. Season 11 dealt with the affair’s fallout, but betwixt the deficiency of authentic, gripping caller communicative lines, Madix’s refusal to movie with the adulterous Sandoval, and a fig of the “Vanderpump” O.G.s’ decampment to “The Valley”—a sequel of sorts astir their depressing if inactive messy married-with-children lives—the penning was connected the wall. When quality officially broke, successful precocious 2024, that “Vanderpump Rules” would beryllium rebooted with an wholly caller formed for Season 12, the Bravo honcho Andy Cohen, who isn’t a shaper connected the series, called it “absolutely the close happening to do,” noting however impressed helium was that the amusement had gone arsenic agelong arsenic it had when, for years, “slowly but surely, nary of [the formed members] were moving astatine SUR.” Now it seemed similar it was yet clip to spell backmost to wherever it each began.

Heraclitus erstwhile suggested, “No antheral ever steps successful the aforesaid stream twice, for it’s not the aforesaid stream and he’s not the aforesaid man”—a sentiment echoed by Lisa Vanderpump when, connected the archetypal occurrence of Season 12, she laughingly tells a cameraperson, “my tits, they get little and little each year, truthful we request to marque the framework wider.” Time’s flux affects not lone the assemblage but besides the satellite extracurricular of it, which successful Vanderpump’s lawsuit means the West Hollywood edifice country SUR is portion of. As the camera captures the deserted intersection of Robertson and Santa Monica Boulevards, she notes that, since the pandemic, West Hollywood has ne'er recovered its onetime vibrancy arsenic a night-life hub, and that her ain establishments person suffered arsenic a result. In 2023, she was forced to shutter the cheery lounge PUMP, conscionable astir the country from SUR, which she admits besides “hasn’t been thriving.” Vanderpump, however, isn’t 1 to springiness up. When SUR’s co-owner, Nathalie Pouille Zapata, tearfully reminds her that the edifice has been “struggling truthful much,” Vanderpump reassures her, “We person survived implicit the years, we’re going to past now.” Later, successful a lecture she delivers to her staff, she admonishes them to signifier up: “Many restaurants . . . person closed down. . . . This is endurance of the fittest!”

From its precise beginning, arsenic a amusement whose formed had travel to municipality with dreams of making it successful the amusement industry, “Vanderpump Rules” has had a hint of the Darwinian astir it. (As Alfred Hayes, successful his 1958 caller “My Face for the World to See,” writes astir accomplishment successful Hollywood: “Did 1 ever spell from occurrence to success? But 1 went, simultaneously, from nonaccomplishment to failure.”) And yet, erstwhile the amusement premièred successful 2013, we were inactive successful the Obama years. Hope was successful the air, SUR was bustling, and, if the unit started retired poor, they were inactive agleam and bushy-tailed, definite that the lone mode was up. As Kristen Doute, a longtime server, said connected the series’ archetypal season, Vanderpump “doesn’t privation america to beryllium lifelong waitresses oregon bartenders but to benignant of usage it arsenic a stepping chromatic to get into immoderate it is that we aspire to be.”

To beryllium sure, the unit connected Season 12 of “Vanderpump” are inactive searching for stardom. Audrey, a twenty-two-year-old blond Texan who serves arsenic a hostess, has been waiting tables since she was sixteen to enactment her “dreams of becoming an actress”; Natalie, a self-proclaimed “crazy bitch” and bartender, is an aspiring vocalist and histrion who “grew up going to the aforesaid mall” arsenic Ariana Grande, and “trained with the woman that discovered Orlando Bloom”; Chris, a ripped New Jersey bartender who lives with his cousin, the arsenic ripped big Jason, wants to beryllium a “big actor” and “model for John Varvatos.” But the grandness of these dreams butts up against the precarity that their dreamers are facing. If, successful the show’s archetypal iteration, the unit lived mostly adjacent to West Hollywood, wherever SUR is located, they are present much acold flung, suggesting Los Angeles’s progressively inhospitable real-estate climate. Chris and Jason unrecorded successful Marina del Rey; Venus, a flamboyant server, lives successful Winnetka, successful the Valley; Shayne, a buff, lady-killing person of the pack with a daze of “nineties hair,” lives successful Burbank. There is overmuch speech of rent and the lengths radical are consenting to spell successful bid to wage it. Survival is the currency of the hour.