If art is a mirror, reality television is a disco ball. Cast members are flanderized versions of the personalities the average human is surrounded with, further amped up by editors who must reduce months of film into cohesive storylines. These interactions in an artificial environment nevertheless reveal fundamental truths about the human experience by depicting arguments from every biased, heightened perspective, doubtless why so many millions tune in week after week to watch grown adults with the emotional maturity of preteens squabble with each other.
This season of The Valley, the fundamental truth is about sexual assault. While the show is still draped in the candy-colored locations and cheery sunshine of Los Angeles, it’s also become a discomfiting masterclass in how social groups rearrange themselves around sex pests so as not to ruin everybody’s good time. As a firm believer that the audience response is an essential part of the reality TV experience — after all, textual analysis is as revealing as the text itself — I’m sad to report that the tried-and-true playbook for accommodating perpetrators to smooth over ugliness is as effective as ever.
After a few weeks of the group tiptoeing around the fact that Danny’s drunken groping was not enough to get him to lay off the bottle, this episode features two long-overdue confrontations: a man in the friend group finally taking Danny to task, and Jasmine and Melissa finally getting to express how they feel. Neither conversation goes that well, and we end up right back where we started — with Danny’s problematic drinking swept under the rug and the people who are rightfully calling him out cast as the real problems.
Let’s start with Jason. At a burger outing with Luke and Danny, Jason tells Danny that not only did his secret pantry drinking make Janet uncomfortable, but that Jasmine is still triggered.
Danny doesn’t want to hear it. “I just wanted to have a little fun,” he gripes. When Jason reminds Danny that he had so much fun he couldn’t make it to dinner, Danny pulls out the excuse he and Nia clearly workshopped off-camera: He only drank one White Claw and one shot of tequila on a trip where everyone else was drinking, too. (He conveniently doesn’t mention the multiple bottles of wine he chugged at the vineyard while “catching up,” but why would he?)
Jason tries, and fails, to articulate that Danny’s commitment to drinking after such an egregious incident demonstrates that he really isn’t taking what he did seriously. “I thought you would get a little accountable,” he says. “The connection is obvious.” Unfortunately, Jason can’t land the plane, and this gives Luke an opportunity to redirect the conversation.
“Nia decided to let him sleep,” Luke says. “She made that call and now it’s coming back on her.” This is besides the point. Of course it’s better that a blacked-out Danny went to bed instead of groping someone else. The problem is that a man as horrified by his own actions as Danny claims to be should be doing everything in his power to avoid any situation where he might lose control of himself again, and that should include more than a few conversations with a therapist (read: megachurch pastor).
Danny, for his part, reveals himself in the intensity of his reaction to Jason. “Can I talk for a second?” he snaps. When Jason doesn’t let him, he gets louder and angrier: “Stop interrupting me! Shut your mouth! I’ve gone to Jasmine numerous times and apologized!” (For the record, Nia apologized to Jasmine on Danny’s behalf when the groping initially occurred, and Danny did not directly apologize until he was asked on camera at Brittany’s white party.)
Resigned to going through the motions of accountability, Danny meets up with Jasmine and Melissa at a brewery where he makes a big show of ordering an ice water. He centers himself immediately, calling the Halloween party the “worst night of [his] life.” He insists that he would “never objectify [Jasmine and Melissa] in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable,” and that “I don’t treat women like that,” despite the fact that he already has.
We are what we do, and until Danny takes concrete steps to change his behavior — not drinking to excess or drinking at all, ever, would be a good first step — it’s hard to see his words as anything but empty platitudes. Danny is hardly Harvey Weinstein, but Weinstein said “I so respect all women and regret what happened,” too.
Jasmine and Melissa explain that as queer women, they are constantly leered at and harassed by men who “ask us to kiss to prove [their relationship] is real.” Jasmine says men have never done this to her when she’s dated men, and Melissa adds that if either she or Jasmine were male, this situation would have unfolded more seriously.
They’re right! Unforunately, they seem to have decided that it’s no longer worth fighting this battle alone. After Santa Barbara, where Brittany and Janet decentered Jasmine by focusing on Nia’s lack of authenticity, it’s clear the couple knows that in order to win this argument, they’ll have to force the group to choose sides or go it alone. And so they’ve chosen to disengage, to go along to get along in a workplace where either they or Danny and Nia will have to be fired to be free of their triggers.
It’s a tale as old as time. How many women have decided it’s easier to pretend everything is okay rather than risk fracturing a friend group and being cast as the problem, as the public is already doing to Jasmine? How many women have, after being violated by someone they considered a friend, shoved their feelings down and kept going because they don’t want to find out how many other people they’ll lose if they force the issue?
At a shark-themed party Brittany is throwing to distract her from Jax’s impending release from his production-ordered stint in the asylum, Jason confirms Melissa and Jasmine’s fears. He pulls Danny aside to backtrack on everything he said, and apologizes for going too hard.
Like Jasmine, Jason has decided it’s not worth it to be the squeaky wheel in this group. Unlike Jasmine, Jason deserves judgment for that calculation. In 2025, it’s a cliché to say that men need to hold other men accountable, but they do, and it’s always telling when they don’t — even on a reality show where I assume everyone is a demon until proven otherwise.
Of course, we can’t talk about any of this without discussing Kristen and Nia, who have circled their wagons around Gropey McGee. Kristen is incensed: “What the hell does Jason give a shit what Danny does?” she splutters, unable to comprehend that any decent human should care if one of their friends turns into a sex pest when drunk. To retaliate, she pulls out a rumor that Jason takes off his wedding ring when he goes out.
I love drama, so I welcome her airing out the Capernas, especially if there’s any truth to this. But it’s also a complete deflection. Jason maybe being a cheater has nothing to do with his right to check his friend for groping two women. To frame his rightful concern for Jasmine’s feelings as an attack on the Booko marriage is also a reminder of the Kristen who called the police on Faith as revenge for sleeping with Jax. To Kristen, a Black woman’s safety will always matter less than the dysfunctional white couple whose happiness Kristen thinks she’s interfering with.
Then there’s Nia, the media-trained, locked-down fallout bunker keeping the Booko household in line and spinning the narrative that she and Danny are the real victims here. As impure as Brittany and Janet’s motives may be in holding Nia’s feet to the fire, her obfuscation of the severity of Danny’s drinking requires treating his groping as an aberration rather than a natural consequence of excessive substance use that he could very easily address by seeking treatment and/or getting sober. That is minimization, no matter how she tries to spin her past homelessness as the reason she doesn’t engage in negativity.
“It’s like Janet is targeting me,” she pouts, re: Jason calling out her husband for groping two women in their friend group. Not since Ariana Madix have we seen someone so skilled at playing victim, using her beauty and femininity to distract everyone from the fact that she is an adult who’s made the choice to cover for and therefore enable her partner. Her spin grosses me out, but I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that Nia is operating at levels of reputation laundering unrivaled by anyone else on this cast.
It’s a depressing episode, one that demonstrates all too well the way victims of sexual harassment and assault are pressured from all sides to not advocate for themselves. The fact that Jax — judging from a midseason trailer where he compares Danny to Ted Bundy — is the only man in the group who won’t be swayed from calling Danny out (for purely selfish reasons, it must be pointed out), is dire. And judging from the fanbase reaction, which mostly seems to consist of people accusing Jasmine of using this violation as a storyline because she wants screen time, we are no more liberated from rape culture than we were before #MeToo.
Still to come on this season of The Valley: A Janet-Nia showdown, a bug-eyed-Jesse vs. a bug-eyed-New-Boyfriend-Aaron confrontation, Luke’s proposal to Kristen, Jax’s return to the group, and a whole lot of chaos. See you next week, Vallerinas.