The greatest sin in reality television is not being a terrible person. It’s not doing abhorrent things. It’s not even committing literal, actual, crimes. No, the greatest sin in reality television is hiding from the cameras, holding things back, trying to present your life as something that it’s not to save face.
Many, many people join reality shows thinking they will be able to use the fourth wall to their advantage and get famous without paying for that fame in blood. Almost every reality star has tried to keep secrets, and almost none have succeeded. This is not a genre that leaves anyone unscathed.
The Valley’s latest victims are the Booko-Sanchezes, who have been working overtime to keep Danny’s obvious drinking problem under lock and key. Danny threw a wrench in these plans during the offseason when he groped both Jasmine and her partner Melissa, and despite Nia’s impeccable media training, it seems like the lid is about to blow off the whole operation.
It starts off innocently enough. The gang heads to a wine tasting, and Danny joins them late after completing a voiceover acting gig. “I have to catch up,” he says about a million times, and promptly sets about chugging wine. He makes a big show of swirling the wine, sniffing it, and checking its legs. It’s harmless, lame-dad shtick. Fancyboy Jesse tries to interject that legs have nothing to do with wine tasting, but nobody — including me — cares. After a few glasses, Nia tells Danny he’s caught up, but he keeps going. Jasmine and Melissa, doubtless fearful of being groped again, exchange A Look that portends what is to come.
Back at the house, Danny is trashed. He follows Janet into the pantry where she’s fetching an Easy-Mac cup, and for a moment I thought he was about to grope her too. Thankfully, he doesn’t. Instead, as Janet tells us, he hunches down and starts chugging tequila. This is pure Shannon-Beador-level alcoholism, and tracks with what Jesse and Jason told us earlier this season about Danny’s penchant to sneak extra drinks. Janet relays this to the group, as she should, and Jasmine and Melissa’s antennae go up even further.
At dinnertime, Danny is missing. When Nia goes to investigate, she finds him fully clothed, snoring in bed. She then acts out an entire conversation as if her husband isn’t dead to the world: “Chef is ready!” she chirps. No answer. “Ooookay!” No answer. “Sounds like you need a rest!” No answer.
Back at the table, Nia tells everyone that Danny is tired. This may have worked last season, but post-grope and post-chugging-tequila-in-the-cupboard, the group is not having it. When Nia leaves the table with Michelle to check on Danny again and perform another conversation with his catatonic body (“Hey baby! You look like you’re just living your best life! I’ll turn off the lights for you. Sweet dreams, my angel.”), Brittany, Jasmine, and Janet go to town.
Janet thinks Nia knows how much Danny drank and just doesn’t want to admit it. Brittany is upset that she has to share her life but nobody else has to. Jasmine is “sick of the bullshit” excuses that Danny is just napping. “It’s the Miss USA answer,” she correctly points out. “We all know what is going on.”
Luke and Kristen jump to Danny’s defense. Luke thinks Danny is just tired because of his children. Kristen doesn’t understand why Nia should have to admit that her husband is wasted and takes issue with the fact that the women waited until Nia left the table to bring this up. This is fair, but it’s ultimately a procedural argument meant to deflect.
“We know Darkside Danny,” Jasmine reminds her. “We’re calling bullshit. We can all see it. It’s triggering me and making my head spiral.”
Kristen, who is finding herself on the wrong side of basically every argument this season, takes this opportunity to parrot every sex pest’s male friend’s favorite line: “That’s not the Danny I know.” I’m sure it’s not, but he’s on record groping two women just on this cast, and I find it hard to believe that someone with that hit rate in this not-very-large friend group has never groped anyone else. First Team Jesse, now this? Bleak.
The fight continues into the house, where Brittany takes to her room to vent to Janet and Jasmine that her relationship gets raked over the coals while Nia and Danny pretend to be “Mr. and Mrs. Perfect.” “Your life is on display, but we can’t talk about anything else,” Jasmine agrees.
Brittany doesn’t really have a leg to stand on here. We’ve witnessed her jumping down anyone’s throat who dared to call Jax out on his bullshit one too many times. She’s only telling the truth now because things have gotten so bad that she can’t hide from it any longer, and her going after Nia and Danny is at least a little driven by her desire to get the spotlight off of her.
So yes, Brittany is being a hypocrite. But if only people who had the moral high ground were allowed to start fights on reality television, this genre would simply not exist.
And crucially, she’s not wrong. No matter how self-interested Brittany’s motives are, I want Danny’s drinking out in the open. I want to see just how far Nia will go to defend him — will she brush off his treatment of Jasmine and Melissa? Act like she doesn’t have a practiced routine for spiriting drunk Danny away before he becomes Gropey McGee?
I also want to see how Danny talks about his actions. Will he acknowledge that alcohol alone does not make one a groper? That sneaking tequila in a pantry is a clear sign of a problem? Or will he make excuses for why he seems to black out every time he gets going?
Nia is working hard to conceal the depths of Danny’s dysfunction and papering over his obvious issues, even after he sexually harassed two of her coworkers and friends. They remind me of Sandoval and Ariana in their heyday, who presented a unified front and made off-camera pacts to lie for one another for years so they could position themselves as the golden couple. (They even insisted Ariana’s brother Jeremy, who drunkenly sexually harassed several of their female coworkers and friends on camera, did nothing wrong. There really is nothing new under the sun.)
All we’ve seen of Nia and Danny is the shiny-happy-Christian exterior they want us to see. If that’s the truth, more power to them. But in this genre, there’s usually far more going on than meets the eye. We already know that Nia apologized to Jasmine for the groping on Danny’s behalf. We know he didn’t text Melissa an apology for weeks after the incident, and that it took Jasmine confronting him on camera for him to apologize in person. We know he apologized to Jesse when he thought he groped Michelle. So what don’t we know?
This deception is probably what’s best for the Booko-Sanchez marriage, but as a viewer, I have no patience for it. If you want to lead a respectable, quiet life free of public scrutiny, that is your right and your prerogative. But you need to get off reality television so Bravo can rellocate the salary to hire people who are willing to play ball.
I did appreciate how the show itself was addressed explicitly. There’s always a danger that a reality show that acknowledges itself will wind up an ouroboros. But when it’s done right, it’s far more honest and interesting for us to hear the cast members talk about how the show affects their castmates’ behavior. This kind of fourth-wall breaking, which flows directly from a genuine storyline — in this case, Nia’s pattern of brushing Danny’s drinking problem under the rug — is the perfect way to self-reference.
We also need to talk about Michelle and Jesse. This week, Michelle delivers the star turn I’ve been waiting for by accusing Jesse of spending all their money, accepting a handout from a client to pay for Isabella’s birthday party, and getting sugar daddy payments from a “gay guy” (identity not provided). She waves her phone in his face, declaring that she can see the direct deposits into their account and threatening screenshot evidence.
Jesse barely denies any of it. He calls Michelle a hooker at the winery, then accuses her of having a two-year affair back at the house, which prompts Michelle to hurl a glass of water in his face.
“My HUSBAND spent all our money,” she yells, loud enough for the whole house to hear. “My husband refused to hug me and kiss me and tell me I’m pretty.” Get his ass, girl.
Downstairs, Jasmine, Melissa, Zack, and Luke’s eyes widen as they huddle under blankets, surely thanking God that they do not have to be in relationships with straight men.
There is, of course, no resolve. Jesse told us last season that he would do everything in his power to ruin Michelle’s reputation if she left him, and he remains as committed to that agenda as ever. Michelle is just as hell-bent on proving his shittiness, which at this point is hopefully clear to the viewing audience. The two of them are locked in this psychosexual battle of wills (because I can’t be the only one who senses a flavor of foreplay under all the screaming, right?) for the foreseeable future.
While they’re both definitely lying, Jesse about just wanting peace and Michelle about never having cheated, their willingness to engage with one another reveals the truths they’re both trying to hide, and in that sense they are both delivering what Nia and Danny cannot. Next week, Brittany vs. Nia continues and Scheana Shay makes her first appearance! God bless us! Every one!
Balls and chains
- Between Luke helping the bus driver with the borked engine, saying “I’ve never been to Monet,” and admitting that his hall pass is the Little Mermaid, I gained a lot of affection for him this episode. It’s possible he and Kristen are getting the golden-couple edit this season (a producer said last season that they hid the most of the entire Valley cast), or maybe he really is a halfway decent human being.
- Jasmine and Michelle origin story! This week, we learn that they’re from the same hometown, which is also where they met, and that Jasmine went in for a kiss the first night they met but that it turned out Michelle was spoken for. They’ve now been together for four years, and in our timeline, are engaged. I worry that the two of them are too normal to last on this show, but Jasmine showed signs of life this week that I hope to see her carry through the rest of the season.
- “Jesse is complicated. On the one hand, he called Michelle a hooker. But on the other hand, he set up this nice dinner for all of us.”