Vanderpump Rules is kind of a bummer this week

Even if Vanderpump Rules is a highly-produced reality show, it’s still an account of many of the worst moments of these people’s lives.

By Drew Gillis | February 14, 2024 | 2:24pm

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Vanderpump Rules is kind of a bummer this week

Katie Maloney, Scheana Shay, and Lala Kent Photo: Nicole Weingart/Bravo

Well, that was heavy. Most of this week’s Vanderpump Rules is dealing with talk of suicide, with a big dose of the decision to get sober. While it’s certainly the least fun episode of the season so far (and the least easy to be flip about) it’s a reminder that even if this is a highly produced reality show, it’s still a mostly-real account of many of the worst moments of these people’s lives.

The main thrust of this episode is Tom Sandoval’s campaign to hang out with his former friends (read: film with the rest of the cast). We pick up where last week left off, with Tom and Ariana’s shrubbery freshly wettened by DJ James Kennedy’s urine (not any kind of euphemism). Back in the house, Sandoval talks with Tom Schwartz, the last person in the main cast still willing to be around him, who basically tells Sandoval that he needs to get better at receiving people’s anger, for responding with “what about the bad thing you did” isn’t a working strategy. It’s some rare good advice from Schwartz.

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James, meanwhile, heads to Emo Night, where Ariana, Scheana, and Katie are “DJ’ing.” In reality, they are pressing play on a playlist they already made. James is indignant. Lala Kent thinks Nickelback is emo. The vibes are, overall, pretty good, but the conversation inevitably shifts to Sandoval. Scheana clearly still harbors some bad will toward him that is personal, not just because she’s Ariana’s friend. Since their scene together in the most recent season finale and the restraining order Raquel filed against her, Scheana has been appearing on podcasts basically just to talk shit. She’s hurt, and Tom, we soon find out, is also hurt by it. Ariana says there’s no one around Sandoval to give him honest feedback, which is true, even if it’s lobbed from a glass house.

The real turning point in the episode is when Sandoval goes to visit Lisa Vanderpump at the hollowed-out husk of the now-closed Pump. If there is one person on the show who will give Sandoval that honest feedback without unnecessarily kicking him while he’s down, it’s Lisa, who gives him the solid advice that if he wants to be back in the “group,” he needs to stop coming in so hot, stop being so defensive, and start being a whole lot more apologetic. She tells us that while she knows what Tom did was objectively wrong, she doesn’t feel like the punishment fits the crime. Cheating on someone probably shouldn’t get abuse hurled at you by random strangers across an entire nation. It’s here when Sandoval tells Lisa that there were points in the Scandoval backlash that he did consider killing himself.

While it’s easy to dismiss Tom Sandoval as a liar (and he is—he lied about a lot, for a while), this writer doesn’t think he’s lying about this. The backlash was really beyond intense, and having, like, The New York Times cover your misdeeds—ones committed in a personal relationship on a reality show; we’re not talking Watergate here!—would probably take a toll on even the most mentally healthy of us. This is obviously incredibly upsetting to Lisa, not just because this is a generally upsetting thing to hear, but because she lost her brother to suicide a couple years back, and still feels a sense of guilt that she didn’t do enough to stop it. Logically, of course, there is little to nothing she could have done and it’s not her fault, but emotionally, this completely tracks.

Lisa later relates this to Schwartz, and it’s at this point that her reality-TV-producer brain takes over for her mother-figure brain. Hey Schwartz, she suggests, why not get everyone together for a ~~commercial at~~ trip to my new restaurant in Lake Tahoe? In fairness, she does say “everyone” and then “get someone to go with you” to Schwartz. These are very different directives; they are a lot less mad at Schwartz, and he could definitely find one buddy to take on a trip to Tahoe. But everyone? Not going to happen. Even Lisa admits getting Sandoval and Ariana to spend time together is a line that doesn’t really need to be crossed.

The last chunk of this episode is Sandoval going to James’ DJ set at See You Next Tuesday. Schwartz tries to get James and the ladies to go to Tahoe with him and is pretty flatly shot down. There’s a lot of back and forth here, but the real highlight is Sandoval’s conversation with Scheana in the famed Sur Alley.

Tom tries to get Scheana a drink; she’s three weeks sober. Rough start. Scheana is really colder than we’ve seen her in a long while, and maybe ever. She’s usually one for trying to make things work and to smooth things over, but she is legitimately hurt. “Don’t you think you had been honest and remorseful from the beginning, it could have been a different outcome?” she asks. Even Sandoval knows she’s right. But Tom also thinks that Ariana has been “100 times less co-actively vindictive” than the rest of the cast. He thinks the rest of them have been riding the Scandoval wave for their own benefit. Scheana calls Tom a narcissist, and he responds by calling Lala one, for some reason.

It’s ultimately just sad. These two were friends before the show was even picked up—14 years, as they tell us. Even if one person is a lot more wrong than the other, it’s sad to see a relationship hit this point. It’s not a happy one, but it is a conclusion.