Well folks, I’m back on my bullshit. And by that, I mean I am once again re-binging a reality show I’ve already seen before.
The first time I watched Vanderpump Rules was somewhere around 2018 or 2019. I lived in Chicago at the time and I remember watching the series and thinking, “God, I’d love to live in LA…” Which is, without a doubt, an insane thought to have while watching Vanderpump Rules. If anything, their drunken antics, barhopping, brunch-dwelling, popcorn ceilings/vertical blinds apartments, and days and nights spent slinging drinks and serving (alleged) food in one of West Hollywood’s most underwhelming restaurants should have had the exact opposite effect. But alas, the power of VPR (and the draw of LA itself) was inevitable for me.
After a little over a month, I am already midway through Season 6. The only thing that can get me through the depressing realization that I’m in another content rut where I can only stomach VPR for the second time is the realization that it seems like everyone is rewatching VPR right now. On Threads, X1, TikTok and Instagram, I scroll past pages and pages of clips, favorite moments and memes from the Golden Era of the show. (The “Golden Era,” I would argue, is probably Seasons 3-6, then picking back up again for “Scandoval” in Season 10.) I’ve posted about my VPR rewatch a few times online, and 90% of the responses are from people also re-binging the series.
People who don’t watch the show don’t really get the magnitude of its depravity. But those of us who are fans have a built-in mutual understanding amongst each other, even if we may never meet. And that understanding is: This show is so fucked up, and we are really fucked up for loving it, but we love it anyway.
Becoming a faithful viewer of VPR means getting in touch with every cast member’s shadow side and, ultimately, your own. Before you know it, all eleven seasons (with the original cast) are over, and you’ve unknowingly begun your own personal shadow work journey and transformation. Fitting, in a way, for a show where a group of women call themselves “The Witches of WeHo” and dabble in tarot and voodoo (in a pretty chill, exploratory “LA” kind of way).
So what is it about now that makes us VPR/Bravo fans want to revisit one of the most deliciously dark reality television series of all time? Is it just that its spinoff – The Valley2 – is airing again? Is it because Stassi Schroeder’s semi-spinoff House of Stassi3 just started airing on Hulu? Is it because everyone is stanning Ariana Madix as the fashionable host of Love Island USA? Is it because inflation is so bad that we need to be transported back to a time when rent was half what it is now and berries didn’t cost $8 and also give us diarrhea? Is it because our President is unconscious at all public events and yet there’s no end in sight to our residency in Eternal Hell? Is it because Mitch McConnell won’t admit he’s dead?4 Or do we just really miss Jax?5
I’m not 100% sure what the answer is for my own rewatching, but I think it has something to do with comfort. A rewatch always equals comfort to me – and apparently even the cheating, lying, fame-hungry cast of VPR brings me more comfort right now than most other things available. Living through the inexplicably chaotic world of present day, you would think that a debaucherous tornado such as VPR would be the last thing you’d need – but it’s actually the opposite for many of us. Somehow, I am soothed by the sounds of Brittany screaming at her then-boyfriend (soon to be husband and father of her child) Jax to “RAWT IN HELL!!!,” by Scheana Shay repeating her famous catchphrase that’s also tattooed on her arm (“it’s all happening!”), by seeing the Namesake and HBIC Herself – Ms. Lisa Vanderpump – calmly chastise the entire cast one by one in her posh English accent at a table in an empty dining room, the many scenes of Kristen selflessly humiliating herself on camera all for our viewing pleasure, or Lala saying over and over again, “my man, my man, my man.”6
Some things are perhaps better left unquestioned. Like how just a few nights ago, I entered the doors of SUR in West Hollywood and ordered the world-famous7 goat cheese balls and two mocktinis. (Ms. Lisa Vanderpump’s establishments8, I must admit, kill it in the non-alcoholic beverage department). After apps and drinks, we of course strolled behind the restaurant and past the infamous SUR Alley – home to countless inter-employee brawls, inter-couple admissions (or denials) of infidelity, and perhaps most famously (to me and my friend Emily, anyway) where Jax realized his truck had been towed late at night in a season finale episode.
It’s beautiful, in a way, that a reality show could still give us this much to talk about even after the series with the original cast is over. Maybe we are in mourning and not able to let go. Maybe we want to go back to where we were in our lives and in a pre-COVID society when we first watched the show. Sure, we support our faves of the cast moving onto other adjacent or brand new adventures, but it will never compare to the magic – the sickening magic – of Vanderpump Rules.
For better or worse, the internet will not let things die; it will always keep breathing new life into any perceived “dead” pop culture. There will always be younger generations who want to see what the previous generations were getting up to. There will always be memes, and then the frantic search for the origin of those memes. If you’re chronically online, many roads (in the form of quotes and catchphrases) lead back to VPR – it’s something we can all enjoy, explore and rediscover together.
So let’s ride this one out a while longer, because I’m actually having fun for once.
Previously on the glitching hour…
I still hate calling it that…
huge in my household (of me)
something I will not be watching under any circumstances
allegedly
especially amid SmartWaterGate
if your name is Stassi
including the Vegas restaurant – yes, I’ve really been AROUND the VPR Block!
I did give up this show a while back and probably won't pick it up again (my tolerance level for the toms and jaxes of the world has reached its limit) but I also have, in fact, been to the West Hollywood SUR and ordered the goat cheese balls. So, solidarity 🤝
‘Mitch McConnell won’t admit he’s dead’ took me out!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣