Tom Sandoval arrives at the season 11 premiere of Vanderpump Rules at The Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, on Jan. 17.Jordan Strauss/The Associated Press
In the summer of 2013, I had just turned 30 and decided I needed a vision quest in Los Angeles, to experience the Santa Ana winds and walk amongst the beautiful people of southern California. I told my live-in boyfriend that it was a nod to writers like Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, Thomas Pynchon and Raymond Chandler; that I wanted to experience their California.
In the end, I traced the footsteps of other giants: the staff of Lisa Vanderpump’s infamous chain of restaurants, with her golden jewel, SUR (a.k.a. Sexy Unique Restaurant Restaurant), right in the middle of her crown.
At the start of the year, I’d been struggling with my career. I’d been in the same job for years and at the same company for nearly a decade. Every day I sat in an office, I felt the last few glimmers of my youth fading away. I’d get home late every night after work and I needed a couple of hours to detach from reality before I could go to sleep, so I indulged in trashy TV. Lucky for me, a show called Vanderpump Rules had premiered. Roughly shot and edited, it followed a group of people you might not have expected to see on reality TV ten years ago: bartenders and waitresses who worked at SUR, vying for their own piece of the L.A. skyline.
I instantly loved it. They were in their mid-20s to early 30s, old enough that the breakout roles they were searching for had probably passed them by, yet they kept on trying. I could relate to the hunger, the ambition, and the growing knowledge that maybe it was all for naught.
I watched the show religiously and was mocked for it for years. Some people – even my own friends – considered it the lowest of the low as far as reality television went. Who wants to watch a bunch of servers living in low-rent apartments, fighting with each other at over-the-top birthday parties they’re too old to be throwing for themselves? I did.
As the years passed, the main characters: Stassi, Jax, Kristen, Tom Sandoval, Tom Schwartz, Katie, Scheana and Ariana, became embroiled in cheating scandals, opioid addictions, failed marriages, pregnancy scares and more cheating scandals. New cast members were introduced, some less memorable and some – like Lala Kent, James Kennedy and Brittany Cartwright – became part of the fabric of the show.
As my own career stalled and my personal life went through ups and downs, I turned to Vanderpump Rules to remind me that, actually, I didn’t have it so bad.
By 2016, I’d moved to a new job at a new company and it was the fresh start I needed. I was surrounded by other people my age with similar interests, including Vanderpump Rules. For the first time since I started watching the show, it didn’t feel like a dirty secret I had to hide. There were fellow Pumpers around.
Things were starting to change for the cast too: these fledgling, wannabe actors had become stars in their own right because of the show. They worked fewer and fewer shifts at the sexy, unique restaurant and the show started to feel a little less like verité and more like a soap opera. Katie Maloney, the long-suffering girlfriend of serial cheater Tom Schwartz, finally got a proposal with an actual engagement ring. Her dreams of flaunting a ring at work finally came true, despite the fact that it came attached to a lifetime of living with Schwartz.
I was also sporting a ring on my finger by then – two, in fact: my engagement ring and a wedding band. I’d come back from my L.A. vision quest ready to settle down, and so we did. The only work I brought home with me from California was a blind rescue dog, who the shelter promised me was four but was probably more like 12 years old. At that point, about five seasons in, the show was neither tawdry or taboo; everyone seemed to be watching or at least aware of it, and its stars had abandoned the scandals for marriage and the dream of home ownership – much like myself. I will admit to becoming bored by the domestic bliss on-screen. If I wanted the ins and outs of married life, I thought, I could just turn off the TV and talk to my husband.
And then, in early 2023, a scandal hit that seemed to reach people beyond the usual avid watchers. Tom Sandoval was revealed to have slept with his good friend James Kennedy’s ex Rachel while living with long-term partner Ariana. That melodrama on my cheesy reality show made headline news. The New York Times ran an explainer on the bombshell, dubbed Scandoval, and suddenly, Vanderpump Rules exploded beyond the confines of Bravo regulars and into the mainstream.
The next season, which picked up on the fallout from the affair, was blockbuster TV. Millions tuned in, but they weren’t watching the same hungry, ambitious, desperate-to-be-on-TV 20-somethings from years ago. These were now well-employed adults with fancy homes in the Valley, some with young kids – like I now have – crawling over them, demanding their time away from the camera. It felt suddenly quite sad to watch their lives implode, knowing what we all now know about what it’s like to pick up your life and start again at 40.
So it doesn’t surprise me at all that the show has decided to start all over again with a new cast, which Bravo announced earlier this week. As we – myself and the OG cast of Vanderpump Rules – find ourselves in middle-age, it’s increasingly difficult to find the time to engage in drama when you have school drop-off, mortgage payments, grey hairs and aching backs to navigate and balance.
It’s time to let a new generation fight it out on screen, while we sit back and thank the stars we’re not 25 anymore.
