If you are a person of taste, you long ago stopped watching Vanderpump Rules because it is a good television program. Its cast, once unruly and unfiltered, are too sober, camera-aware and media-trained to make a show that feels real. The ones who do are punished by fans who seem to have forgotten that this is Bravo, not the Hallmark Channel. It is more out of morbid curiosity than anything else that I continue to tune in to this godforsaken show, and by now, I am Reese-Witherspoon-screeching-in-The-Morning-Show-pilot levels of exhausted.
Yes, it has been a long time since I had fun watching Vanderpump Rules, which is why its first successful spinoff (no, the off-network Vanderpump Villa does not even begin to count), The Valley, is like a breath of fresh air. Built around ex-Vanderpump cast Jax Taylor, Kristen Doute, and Brittany Cartwright’s friend group, The Valley got its backdoor pilot vis-a-vis an uncomfortable meet between Jax and current Vanderpump big bad Tom Sandoval and catapulted us into what might be Bravo’s next big thing.
The show boasts a massive 12-person cast, featuring five straight couples and two gays who, despite mostly being married parents to young children, serve up the drama that has been so sorely missing from the Vanderverse. Over the next 12 weeks, we’ll be recapping their utter dysfunction, and because I no longer remember what happens in a TV show unless I am taking notes, it will kind of be like I’m watching for the first time.
We open with Miss Mariposa herself, who was fired in 2020 along with costar Stassi Schroeder for filing a false police report against Faith Stowers — one of only two Black women to ever appear on the show — as revenge for sleeping with Jax when he was with Brittany, both of whom were also fired for propagating the false rumors. (Kristen, Stassi, Brittany and Jax were far from the only people who were racist to Faith — but if Bravo had fired everyone associated with her harassment in their brief attempt to appear committed to social justice in 2020, they would have had to cancel the show.)
“The concrete jungle, the hardcore city life, that’s for when you’re in your 20s,” Kristen says. “But I’m 40 now. The Valley is where I need to be.” The concrete jungle is famously New York City and not Los Angeles, and right away I’m glad the always-confused Kristen is back on our screens. She, Jax and Brittany narrate us through a meet-and-greet of everyone else.
First, there’s Jesse and Michelle Lally, who separated before the show aired. You can tell Jesse is going to be a terrorist, because he met Jax when the two were twentysomething models, back when Jesse was sleeping with Anna Nicole Smith. Jesse and Michelle hate each other and clearly came on the show to get divorced, but one thing they agree on is that they would never deign to live somewhere as low-rent as the Valley. Instead, they have a home behind Chateau Marmont that Jesse thinks “screams ambition.” I think it screams “desperate to join the nouveau riche,” but same same.
When the producer asks Michelle how she’d use to describe Jesse, she sits and stares blankly, at a loss. “Loving? Sexy?” he prompts. “Come on,” Michelle protests, unable to conceal her complete apathy for this marriage.
Then there’s Danny Booko and Nia Sanchez. Kristen wants to be them when she grows up, a hilarious thing for a 40-year-old to say about anyone. Danny, who met Jax at a club, is a voice actor who thinks we will recognize him from his stints on iCarly and Hannah Montana. (I do not.) Nia is a former Miss USA who gave birth to twins Isabelle and Zariah six weeks ago, hot on the heels of 18-month Asher, and whose boobs are on the verge of exploding. Life as a milk machine cannot be easy, and the specter of her three-under-two brood strikes terror into my heart. Danny and Nia actually seem to like each other, and they giggle about the doctor clearing them for “sexytime.”
Next, we meet Jason and Janet Caperna. Jason is a lawyer who defends corporations against worker’s comp claims (workers of the world, unite against this man) and Janet used to co-host Scheana Shay’s podcast. Janet is pregnant, and she’s also the “aggressive” one in the relationship, counterbalanced by Jason’s “voice of reason.” She instantly annoys me with her nonsequitur explanation about how she would do great in prison and end up “running the place.” (Let’s put her in there and see how it goes, for science. I bet she’ll be no Jen Shah.)
Let’s check in with the couples we know. Jax and Brittany, who are also separated by now, spend their days recording Cameos, their podcast, making influencer sponcon, and parenting their son Cruz. Brittany emerges in full glam and a giant headwrap after some chin lipo from the same surgeon who did her boobs and all of Jax’s many nose jobs. Jax says he’s “reassessed and recharged”, which is code for “had to figure out how the hell to make money after committing all manner of emotional and literal crimes on television for eight years and took himself out of the running for any traditional employment.”
Finally, there’s Kristen and her boyfriend Luke Broderick, who looks like a Civil War-era soldier and lives on 70 wifi-less acres in Colorado. When we last saw Kristen, she had bought a home and was dating a realtor named Alex. After her firing, Alex sold her home and she moved in with him, where they broke up seven times before he kicked her out for good. Two weeks later, she attended a wedding where Luke was a groomsman, the two had sex behind a tent, and here we are. Never change, Kristen.
Homophobically, neither Jasmine Goode (bisexual) nor Zack Wickham (gay) get their own intros, and we meet them at a lunch with Kristen. Jasmine used to work at SUR, was a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, and appeared on Nick Viall’s season of The Bachelor. Zack is Brittany’s friend from Kentucky, and lived in the same building as Janet and Jasmine during the pandemic. Both were skeptical of Kristen and Luke’s relationship at first, but seem to agree that he’s her best boyfriend so far, which is not exactly a high bar to clear.
Intentionally or not, the specter of the cast’s rapidly approaching middle age hangs over the show. Kristen, who is five years past a geriatric pregnancy, yearns for a child and is having unprotected sex with Luke. Brittany, whose dedication to taking shots is only surpassed by her love of plastic surgery, says she loves tequila as much as ever but that she has to hire a babysitter when she wants to guzzle. Jax has Botoxed his waxen visage to the gawds in an effort to recapture his disappearing youth. Danny hasn’t slept in months. Jason keeps getting ominous warnings from the other fathers that his life as he knows it will be over as soon as Janet pops.
If Vanderpump Rules was about the horror of heterosexual dating, The Valley is shaping up to be about the horrors of the heterosexual nuclear family. Its pilot centers around Kristen’s quest to be a mother. Jax pinballs from one cast member to another to express his concern that Kristen might have a baby “out of wedlock,” a word I was surprised he even knew.
We first broach the subject when Luke joins the straights for some faux golf. Luke is clearly the odd man out, without the LA grooming, wardrobe or build of the rest of the guys, and the awkwardness is palpable. Jax does not like Luke and has him blocked on Instagram, not even bothering to acknowledge him at Scheana’s wedding.
The guys ask Luke about Kristen, and he says their next step is to have a baby. He’s spending the summer in LA to try and impregnate her, but has no plans to stop living in Colorado or any desire to settle in the “concrete jungle.” Jax makes one face after another and questions why the couple would have a child without getting married, and what would happen if they broke up.
Jax takes the speculation tour to Jason and Janet’s next, where Brittany gets approval to host Janet’s upcoming birthday party. Brittany argues that Kristen deserves motherhood, and Jason agrees that Kristen will be a good mother. Janet wonders whether Kristen just wants a child or whether it’s that Luke is the right partner. Jax says it’s the former, and that Kristen wanted a baby with Alex up until a week before the two of them broke up. “We’ve all known Kristen for many years,” he tells us in a confessional. “Luke is fucked.”
Things come to a head at Janet’s county fair-themed party, which features a real tattoo bar and all manner of delicious fried goodies. Michelle asks Kristen about babymaking, and cautions her to “ask basic questions” before going down this path, because she never asked Jesse anything and now she hates her life. Kristen assures her that Luke plans to move, a troubling contrast to what he just told the boys.
Across the pool, Jesse confesses to Jax that his marriage is on the rocks, and that separation has been broached. Jesse doesn’t understand what they’re fighting about and why they can’t get back to their pre-Isabella honeymoon stage. Perhaps because you made your wife sleep in another room for a year so your crying daughter wouldn’t wake you up? I just know Jesse is the kind of guy who refers to caring for his own kid as “babysitting.” In a confessional, Jesse at least has the wherewithal to realize that he has not evolved into the father Michelle expected him to be. Self-aware king.
Lala and Scheana are also here! Jax catches Lala up on his concerns and quips that if Kristen should take a page out of anyone’s parenting book, it should be Lala’s. “Being a single mom is hard,” Jax says like someone who would know. Then, he holds court in the kitchen to Brock, Jason and Jesse, listing off all Kristen and Luke need to figure out, like where they are going to live and how they are going to parent. Lala and Scheana overhear, and Lala’s reality training kicks in: “There’s a bunch of men talking about motherhood and not one of them is a mother, so I’m going to go get her.”
With Kristen fetched, Jax finally says to her face what he’s been saying behind her back. “Are you mentally there to have a child right now?” he asks. Kristen glares and retorts, “I have been mentally there for a very long time.” (I really hope not, because otherwise this show is about to be boring as hell.)
By now, the entire cast has gathered to watch these two titans of reality television spar. Jason tries to intervene, arguing that pretty much no one can ever actually be “ready” for a baby, and that all the group needs to know is whether Kristen would be happy to have a baby right now.
Kristen says she learned in her last relationship that she wanted a baby, just not with Alex. Jax calls bullshit: “You were at my house telling Alex to come inside you, I was standing right here and a week later you guys broke up!” he blusters. Gross, but we are so back.
Poor Doute is near tears and says she just wants support. Jax replies that friendship is diving in and hitting the hurt spots. It’s definitely not, but it is what makes good television, and for that I thank him.
Unfortunately, pretty much everything Jax says is true. Kristen’s past relationships have all been disastrous, and while this one seems more functional than the others, she has a well-established history of pretending things are fine when they are very much not. She and Luke are clearly not on the same page, and despite her insistence that they have talked about their future, they haven’t even figured out where they are going to live.
But Jax’s relationship is hardly better, if he and Brittany’s time on Vanderpump Rules was any indication — and they had a baby anyway. It’s also hard to take Jax’s motivations seriously. Though he couches his shit-talking as worry, it’s clear the undercurrent here is his own dubiousness about the life he’s found himself in, his longing for the days where he could blow lines and rip shots til 6 a.m. without a child to deal with the next day. My runner-up explanation is that Jax is secretly in love with Kristen, the only person on earth who can match his freak. In any case, if Jax and his coke-addled brain can figure out how to parent, Kristen certainly can.
Hot off the heels of this conversation about maturity, Jax — egged on by Brock — decides a party with children around is the perfect place to pull down Danny’s pants as he’s posing for a picture with Janet, Jason and Nia. Unfortunately, Danny has no underwear on, and though everyone reassures Nia that they saw nothing, her postpartum hormones get the best of her. She dissolves into tears as Brittany tries to comfort her and Scheana looks on with an “Oh, honey” smile on her face, doubtless remembering all the far worse humiliations of hers that were caught on camera.
The Valley’s pilot does a good job establishing who all these characters are and setting up their relationships to one another. I was surprised by how reassuring it was to have Jax and Kristen on my television again. They may have been fired for good reason, but it is undeniable that these two are some of the best practitioners of the reality televisions arts and sciences that Bravo, if not the world, has ever seen, and their willingness to jump right back into the muck is a welcome relief after the exhausting slog that has been the last few years of Vanderpump Rules. Consider me converted, and let us pray that there will be many, many chaotic seasons to come.
Balls and chains
- I lol’ed at the photo of Jasmine in her SUR days, standing next to a blurred-out man who is very clearly Peter Madrigal. I guess when he declined to come back to Vanderpump Rules for zero dollars, he also declined to sign a release form for The Valley to use his image. Know your worth, king.
- Jax’s brown sweat stains were alarming. I believe him when he says it was runoff from his self-tanner, but it’s hard to shake the image that his insides are somehow liquefying into a putrid jelly and seeping out through his armpits.
- Jesse may have cemented his place as Worst Man on Bravo in one week, a stunning record. Besides the reveal that he is essentially a deadbeat father in his own home, he also calls Lala his “mistress” and twists Kristen’s nipple in the line for tattoos at Janet’s birthday. Told you guys he was going to be a terrorist.