Friends, countrymen, Vallerinas…after 10 torturous months in which nothing good besides The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City was airing on Bravo, happy days are here again. That’s right: The Valley is back for its sophomore season, which showrunner Alex Baskin called “the craziest second season of any show I’ve ever made.”
Coming from the guy who made the second seasons of both Vanderpump Rules (Tom and Ariana’s affair allegations, Kristen and Jax’s dangerous liaisons) and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (Russell Armstrong’s domestic abuse and subsequent suicide), that is a serious thing to say, and I am in a place of Jessie-from-Saved–by–the–Bell-on-caffeine-pills excited and scared.
All reality shows live at the intersection of “these people are evil and it’s amazing” and “these people are evil and should be excommunicated from society.” More than any other Bravo programme, the suburban horror show that is The Valley embodies the tense symbiosis between entertainment and exploitation.
Every reality fan has a different tolerance for this tension. I am forcibly reminded of this every time I encounter the myriad calls to fire cast members for being pathetic (Britani Bateman) or mean (Tamra Judge) or classist (Sutton Stracke). The pearl-clutching has always confused me. I long ago made peace with myself and my gods that I am part of this mess, and therefore have no leg to stand on when it comes to finger-wagging bad behavior. I love to watch horrible people doing horrible things, and that love creates job prospects for those people. It is what it is.
I say this because if there was ever a cast who play fast and loose with the line between horrible conduct and incredible entertainment, it’s the demons on The Valley. Everyone is on their absolute worst behavior, and I could not be more seated. The Cauchi and Lally marriages have imploded, and Jax and Brittany’s divorce in particular seems certain to take us to more explicitly dark places than we’ve seen on this network in a while.
In a chilling opening montage, Jax screams at Brittany for cheating on him (as we’ll soon find out, she did not); Brittany screams back that she’s going to get a restraining order against him; Kristen asks Jax why not being allowed around Cruz alone isn’t his rock bottom. A distraught Brittany cries: “You need to go get help for yourself and for our son. He cannot grow up and become a person like you!”
Before we learn anything more, Bravo yanks us back to seven days earlier. Jesse drives to Jax’s home — which, at this point in the show’s timeline, he is refusing to move out of while his wife and autistic son have been uprooted to an Airbnb. Judging by Jax’s reaction to Jesse’s car, we are supposed to be impressed, but I can’t even tell Mazdas apart from Teslas, so the flex was lost on me. Meanwhile, Brittany is with Michelle at said Airbnb. Kadooze to production for setting up the two halves of these warring couples up as scene partners, especially for the conversation that’s about to follow.
At some point before cameras picked up, Jax found “sexy texts” between Brittany and his friend Julian on the family iPad. The way Jax tells it, Brittany was cheating on him with this guy, but according to Brittany, they only briefly dated after she and Jax separated, and ended things long before Jax got his hands on the texts. (I believe Brittany. Awbviousleee.) What they agree on is this: Upon seeing the messages, Jax lost his shit. He threw furniture, he screamed, he flipped the coffee table into her knee.
“It turned black immediately,” Brittany recounts. Jax says he’s just grateful Cruz was in the next room and didn’t see anything, which I don’t really believe but is no excuse even if it is true. The kid has ears.
The rest of the cast manage to pass the first moral test of the season. To a man, they all acknowledge how unacceptable Jax’s behavior was. While everyone dances around actually saying “domestic violence” — because to be clear, that’s what this was — it’s clear they know Jax crossed a line.
Brittany is doing her best to move on. She throws a white party (Kyle Richards who?), and Jax is so peeved about being excluded that he throws a rival “party” at “his” “bar,” the patio attached to and owned by Rocco’s. It immediately reminds me of when Sandoval threw a competing pool party in Season 8 of Vanderpump Rules, and the guest list is sadder than Sandoval’s sexy singles pool party from Season 11. In attendance are Schwartz, one Schwartz triplet (Bert), some guy named Mikey with a mullet, and two other nameless men in baseball hats. Everyone else in the 22-person “fella’s chat” group text has elected to attend Brittany’s, it seems.
Schwartz and Jax break off to film a scene, and Schwartz makes it clear that Jax has fucked up and needs to seek outside help. If Schwartz was giving me sound life advice, I would be brainstorming ways to kill myself. But Jax is too busy whining about how he’s supposed to be Cruz’s hero, a revealing way for him to frame his duty as a parent. Schwartz’s face looks like it did the time Sandoval compared himself to Scott Peterson and cried in his closet, which is to say he’s dissociating and wondering how this became his life. To be fair, I did crack up at the shot of his hand hovering near Jax’s shoulder, unable to decide whether he should pat it.
Jax insists that everyone is talking about him behind his back because Brittany wants to paint him as a terrible person, that he’s the one suffering, and that anyone would have reacted like he did. He’s just self-aware enough to know that he has to cop to doing something wrong, but not self-aware enough to know that he’s telling on himself when he says things like, “Show me any guy who wouldn’t react like that.” We already know that Jax is headed to the asylum this season, but it’s hard to see how it will help unless he gets really honest about his role in the breakdown of his marriage.
Jesse and Michelle’s divorce is much more fun to watch, because unlike Jax and Brittany, their toxicity goes both ways and they seem much more evenly matched. Both are intent on winning the breakup. Jesse is dating an Orange County blonde who’s friends with Gretchen Rossi, and Michelle is with someone named Aaron who she slaps a mic on and brings to Brittany’s white party. They gush about how their new partners are, like, soooo much better than their old ones, and how much happier they are now.
“She’s one of the strongest women personalities I’ve ever met,” Jesse says of his new paramour. Typo his, not mine.
Michelle says she met Aaron a few years ago “on hikes and at coffee shops” with a knowing smile, and my ears immediately perked up. Last year, Kristen accused Michelle of having a boyfriend, and it sure seems like Michelle is wink-winking at us that Aaron is that boyfriend.
I don’t really care if Michelle cheated on Jesse. In fact, I support it. In my world, if you force your wife to sleep in a separate bedroom for a year after giving birth because you don’t want to be bothered when she gets up in the middle of the night to soothe your child, you deserve worse. It’s Michelle’s willingness to antagonize Jesse and out herself in the process that I find intriguing — she did great work inciting last year’s rumble in the hallway of the Mondrian at Jax’s hair loss party — and I can’t wait for somebody on the cast to dig up more dirt on the timeline.
They’re also taking every opportunity to provoke one another. At the white party, Michelle pokes Jesse about buying Isabella too many things. New Boyfriend Aaron asks Jesse if he ever says no to Isabella, which doesn’t really seem like his place, but I’ll allow it because it pisses Jesse off, which is funny.
Michelle’s hired an education consultant “who works with millionaires and billionaires” to get Isabella into elementary school. Jesse, already annoyed, says he’d rather Isabella go to school in Orange County. He insists to Michelle that Newport schools are better, but admits in a confessional that he just said it to cause chaos. Michelle counters that if he tries, she’ll take him to court and get 100% custody of Isabella.
These two really need to stop using Isabella as a pawn in their psychological warfare, but besides that, I am here for it. At the end of the day, they’re both displaying textbook “what not to do during a divorce” behavior. Reality television is so fun when there’s no one to root for.
The rest of the episode is about Kristen, which was welcome comedic relief. Janet is still mad about last year’s Racismgate, but she approaches Kristen tail halfway between her legs because she has realized that Kristen is a fan favorite and she is very much not.
Also, she unwisely took the feud to the gutter in the offseason by going on a podcast and accusing Kristen and Zack of wishing she would miscarry. This is one of the most over-the-top accusations one Bravoleb has ever made against another, so melodramatic and inappropriate that it’s horseshoed back around to being amazing.
Janet is fully committed to her narrative, and she will not be dissuaded. It’s reminiscent of the time Kristen flippantly said she wished Ariana would get hit by a plane, and Ariana spent an entire reunion pretending that Kristen was threatening her life. It makes sense that she and Janet are friends.
“I’m sorry I roped you in with Zack’s demonic behavior,” Janet says, refusing to admit that she grossly misrepresented the situation. Kristen calls this a “gaslight apology,” which is not what that word means, but it’s fun to watch her stand her ground for once after a lifetime of being everyone’s punching bag. This is the first time in all my years of watching Kristen on reality television that she’s in a position of power, and I can’t wait to see what terrorism is unleashed upon the rest of the group as a result.
We end with yet another harrowing montage of events still to come: Janet screaming “he sexually assaulted people”; Jason telling Jax he doesn’t want to “wake up to a headline,”; Brittany crying that Jax is dangerous and needs help; Michelle crying that she just wants to get divorced and never talk to Jesse again. None of this footage was in the season trailer, which teased Jason allegedly taking off his wedding ring when he goes out without Janet, Danny allegedly groping people when drunk, and Jasmine calling Janet a Karen (lol).
It’s going to be a long, evil, and awful season — and I could not be happier. God bless The Valley. We are so back.
Balls and chains
- Jesse has also apologized to Kristen, and it was a pretty good one. I don’t believe for a second he’s sincere, though. Remember last season when Jesse said he enters every situation thinking about how to manipulate it? He just wants people on Team Jesse, and is taking advantage of Kristen’s deepest desire to be validated to recruit her. It’s enough for Kristen, though, and just like that, the most toxic alliance of all time was born.
- I was shocked to learn that Nia was the Booko-Sanchez pushing for a fourth kid, but it was nice to see her looking much less depressed than she was last season. These two have got to move somewhere with housing they can actually afford.
- Zack and Jasmine were barely in this episode, which was a disappointment, but also a testament to how strong the entire cast is. Still homophobic, though.