An unfortunate rule of reality shows is that you absolutely should not sign up to do one if you have secrets that you want to keep secret. You cannot live an admirable life and make good television at the same time. The best you can hope for is for some horrible trauma to happen to you that galvanizes the nation to side with you for a season or two. Many reality stars have tried, but very few have ever managed to outplay the networks that employ them.
Reality shows are at their best when a cast exposes their true, horrible selves in exchange for fame. Halfway through The Valley’s inaugural season, every scene where its cast are living regular family lives has bored me to tears. I do not care about Danny throwing a ball to his (admittedly very cute) son Asher. I do not care about Jason and Jesse building a crib for Nia. I do not care about Michelle playing with Isabella in a ball pit. Sorry!
That’s why Kristen Doute is so important to me. Even when she is merely talking prenatal vitamins and gecko food, she still serves up utter dysfunction that makes me question my sanity. I do not particularly like Kristen, nor would I ever describe her as a “good person.” But she will forever be an essential reality television worker, and I have never been more on her side.
We open with Kristen and Luke feeding his gecko Bronx, a name that feels vaguely hate-crime adjacent but which I don’t have the capacity to explore right now. Luke has LA fatigue and feels like he’s staying in Kristen’s apartment, not their apartment. He doesn’t have a place to shoot his bow, go fishing, or use his “tools,” whatever that means. The next time he and Kristen are at his Colorado ranch, he wants to go through his things that he can bring to Los Angeles and make her place feel more like their own.
Speaking of the ranch, we find out that it’s more like an 1800s prairie homestead. They have to haul in their own water. They just put electricity in. I always thought the point of living on a ranch in high-altitude Colorado was to get ahead of the inevitable water wars. Now you’re telling me Doomsday Broderick has no electricity OR a renewable water source outside of trucks bringing in plastic coolers of Poland Spring? He is doomed.
Meanwhile, Jasmine and Jax meet up. Jasmine’s goal is to tell Jax what he needs to hear about his relationship with Brittany. “Men are stupid, oblivious, and don’t know what’s going on half the time,” she sagely observes. Jasmine tells him to compliment Brittany throughout the day to keep the spark alive, and Jax jokes that her love language is his “mouth between her legs.” I think this is actually called acts of service.
Jax’s goal is to move the plot along. He tells Jasmine that he knows what Kristen’s endless “protection” comments are about: He heard that Michelle has been texting men behind Jesse’s back. Jax makes a huge show of pretending he’s worried that Kristen is going to blurt this out in front of the group and asking Jasmine to keep it between them. And this is why I love Jax. His ass is not worried about Kristen spilling the beans! If anything, he’s annoyed she hasn’t come out with the rumor yet and is hoping that Jasmine will take the bait and go tell anybody who will bring this up in a group setting and deliver a damn storyline.
Before Jasmine can pass the baton — and thankfully, she does — we take a detour to Jax’s Studio City, the “bar” that “he and Brittany” are “opening” in the back of Rocco’s Tavern. Jax wants to show Brittany the progress he and his “partners” have made on the place, and hopes that involving her at this stage will prevent their relationship from going the way of Schwartz and Katie’s or Sandoval and Ariana’s. (Too late.)
After a perfunctory look around, they sit down to discuss Jax’s anxiety. “I don’t know how to manage raising a child, raising a family, paying a mortgage, and starting a business,” he admits. “It’s scary when we have a kid and want more.” Brittany is unfazed, and just wants to confirm whether they’re trying for a second child next month. Jax dodges the question, affirming that he wants another but making no promises on timeline. “We just need some alone time,” Brittany plows on. “Some me and you time. A little romance. Make me feel butterflies again.” At this, Jax’s entire body crumples, his head sagging into his chest: “I feel like I’m going to start crying.” And he does! Grim stuff.
We don’t pick up the thread of Michelle’s alleged infidelity until later. Instead of investigating the rumor herself, Jasmine — who has some reality experience from her time in Bachelor Nation — does just enough to ensure that someone else will: Janet.
At a party Jax hosts to announce his new partnership with a hair-loss product for men at the Mondrian, Jasmine gets the information out there without dirtying her own hands. She tells Janet that her lunch with Jax was “interesting”; she doesn’t feel comfortable repeating what was said; Jesse will think the information she was given was a 10; no one even knows if it’s true; and that Jax should really bring this information to Jesse and Michelle’s door instead of speaking to other people about it, just in case Janet hadn’t clocked the subject of the rumor yet. This is all catnip for Janet, the nosiest woman in the Valley. When she asks if she can ask Brittany what this is all about, Jasmine says it’s a bad idea, ensuring Janet has to go straight back to the source. Impeccable work, Jasmine.
As it turns out, none of these machinations were necessary. After Jax tells an insane story about how he spray-painted a bald spot he found on his head with Rustoleum, everyone decamps to a conference room for dinner.
Jesse is in a touchy mood. A few hours before he and Michelle had to come to this party, they had a session with their life coach where he realized their marriage was probably over. Apparently, she is once again talking about leaving him. He’s sullen at the table, not participating in the conversation or making eye contact with anyone.
Michelle, who seems giddy, spends the dinner waging psychological warfare on her husband. “You look too serious,” she chirps, while he stares off into the distance and swirls his drink. As the group conversation turns to when Jax and Brittany’s bar will open, Michelle pokes again, telling him he’s being too quiet. Jason asks whether Jesse’s okay, and Jesse brushes it off, getting up for a tequila shot. Jax notices, and asks Michelle what’s going on. “I’m good,” she twinkles back. “I’m just wondering why my husband isn’t okay.”
What follows is a torrent of chaos that will surely be blamed on Kristen, but might not have happened at all without Michelle riling up her husband. (Insane behavior, by the way. We may have to stan.)
“Everyone wants to know what the hell is wrong with you and to wake up,” she announces as the table looks on. “Nobody knows the quiet Jesse.”
This is Skinnygirl Lally’s breaking point. “Why don’t you propose something that will actually keep me awake, then?” he snarks back. For some reason, this activates Kristen, who snaps that he’s being rude. While Michelle smirks, Jesse pounds his fist on the table for reasons unknown. This activates Kristen even more. “Do you have something to say?” Jesse calls down the table. She does — she and Luke didn’t want to be here in the first place, and now she wants to leave. Jasmine and Michelle, who seem done with Kristen separate of what is going on tonight, retort that this has nothing to do with her. She doesn’t care, and thinks Jesse is being “abusive and shitty.”
Everyone at the table seems to think Kristen is being absurd, but am I the only one who remembers that she dedicated a chapter of her book to a partner who escalated from smashing mirrors and breaking furniture to putting his hands on her? It seems obvious that any kind of physically expressed answer is a trigger for her, and it’s unclear whether her friends haven’t made this connection or simply don’t care.
Either way, Kristen is out. She storms into the hallway, where a producer tells her to calm down. “Are you kidding?” she asks. “He’s acting like a psycho and banging his hands. He’s a horrific human. I don’t want to out their whole marriage and I won’t do it.” I assume people inside the room can hear her, because right on cue Jesse appears: “If you bring out any skeletons I don’t already know about my wife, I will fucking bury you.”
Luke and Michelle run out too, and now we’re off to the races. The fourth wall has crumbled, cameramen and producers and boom mics flying in and out of frame as they try to keep up with the cast. Luke is blocking Jesse from physically coming at Kristen, while Michelle’s yelling at Kristen, “Do you know what you have done to my life and my marriage and my family?” (I actually would like to hear Michelle elucidate this. Kristen’s rumormongering can’t be helping, but Michelle and Jesse’s problems seem to have started long, long, long before she got involved.)
“MY FUCKING FAMILY!” Jesse bellows. Luke is trying his best to corral Kristen and get them out of there, but she will not be tamed. “You don’t know what your husband is saying behind your back!” she screeches at Michelle. “Your husband says he’s going to divorce you within two months!” (Unfortunately for Truthteller Doute, she has gotten the facts wrong. You see, Jesse actually said that if anything, Michelle would be leaving him.)
At this point, we are in a place of incoherence. Brittany and Zack have joined the fray, and everyone is yelling. Jesse’s yelling at Luke to check Kristen, and that she is a “lying, cheating [bleeped].” “Or what? Are you going to lay your hands on her?” Luke is yelling back. They’re separated by Zack, who’s yelling at everyone to stop, Brittany, who’s put herself in between Jesse and Luke, and multiple cameramen and crew. “Your problem is with your wife, talk to your wife,” Luke yells across this human barricade.
Jesse does not take kindly to this. He barrels down the hallway, flinging aside first Zack, then Michelle, then Brittany, in his quest to get to Luke. The crew finally sees fit to intervene, and producers restrain Jesse while walking Luke to the other end of the hall. Michelle demands that everyone get back in the damn conference room so she can speak, but for the moment we follow Kristen and Luke as they flee the scene.
Kristen flings her hands up, a sure sign she is about to reach her breaking point. And she does. “Because she had a fucking boyfriend for a year!” she hollers. “There! We all said it! Now she’s protecting him and not me!” In a final confessional, she explains: Michelle was unhappy, met someone, and was hanging out with him and carrying on an emotional affair. “I was not against any of this because Jesse’s a piece of shit,” she admits. That’s feminism.
Look. I am well aware that Kristen started all of this with her insinuations about “protecting” Michelle. Of course Michelle is angry that Kristen made her secrets a storyline. Of course Jesse would prefer not to get cucked on national television. Unfortunately for the unhappiest couple in Los Angeles — who, by the way, clearly came onto this show to get divorced — they signed up to be grist for the mill.
It’s too bad that one day Isabella will be able to watch all this for herself, but it sure seems like Michelle did cheat. In the moral universe of reality television, revealing a secret will almost always be justified if it’s juicy enough.
Nothing will ever be more wrong than keeping a secret from the audience. When you inevitably get caught trying, the editors will — as they’ve done to Michelle — make it as clear as possible that you thought you could hustle them, and us. In a solo confessional, a producer prods her on what her secrets are. She pauses for a few beats longer than necessary, looks down at her fingernails, and sighs, “I no longer understand Kristen.” Unfortunately, she’s not a good enough liar to pull off her attempted nonchalance. Michelle would have much more control over her narrative had she had just admitted it the first time production asked her what she was keeping secret. Now, we know that she’s hiding things, and not well.
Whether the rumor was first planted by Jax, Kristen, or (most likely) the two of them working in concert to out their friends’ dirt, it’s good for the show and good for the audience that it’s out. Whether or not Jesse is starting to wonder what Kristen is protecting his wife from, enough of the cast have heard whispers of Michelle’s infidelity that they’ll have to hash it all out. Remember, Lallys: The house always wins.
Balls and chains
- I laughed out loud at Jesse’s announcement that life-coach-slash-marriage-counselor Scott suggested he go on a “plant-based psychedelic trip” to save his marriage. Apparently, shrooms and ayahuasca will help Jesse process his “alpha male” ego and “step outside of himself.” To me, it seems like Scott knows the Lallys are doomed and gave Jesse an excuse to have some fun before his marriage falls apart, mercy-killing style. I have to agree when Danny — whose ripped, distressed jeans and tight shirts are giving strong Kelvin Gemstone vibes — can’t hold back his laughter.
- You have to love Michelle dommeing Jesse when she catches him flirting with Gabby, who is selling a Burning Man-inspired clothing line off a rack set up on a different part of the Mondrian’s roof. (Are hotels just inviting random vendors to hawk their wares on the premises now?) She may not want that man, and she may have a secret boyfriend to boot, but she sure as hell isn’t going to let some floozy selling feather boas have him.
- Speaking of the Mondrian, I’m convinced they’re paying Bravo to send the Vandergang there. This has to be at least the 15th time we’ve been subjected to scenes here. Jax’s hair-loss party, Schwartz and Jo’s doomed singles event, the boys’ night that spawned Scandoval, the boys’ night that Peter and Dayna might have hooked up at…find someone who loves you the way these people love the Mondrian.
- Danny, Jesse and Jason join the proud pantheon of Vanderverse men who are utterly useless when it comes to practical skills. We already have Jax (can’t hang a painting), Sandoval (can’t build an IKEA table), Schwartz (can’t keep a lizard alive), James (is a DJ). Is every man in Los Angeles useless, or is it just the ones who get cast by Bravo?