“We come to this place for magic,” Nicole Kidman says in her AMC ad that has quickly become the stuff of camp legend. While she may be talking about cinema, she’s also describing how I’ve felt about Bravo since the first episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County aired nearly 20 years ago.
We (or at least, I) don’t watch reality television for aspiration or inspiration. No amount of fancy cars, gorgeous gowns, or beautiful homes could ever make me forget that when I tune in to a Bravo program, I am doing so to watch people debase themselves for money and a shot at Z-list fame. The juxtaposition of cast members’ glamourous lives with their ugly realities — from Lynne Curtin getting evicted, to Kyle Richards exposing Kim’s alcoholism, to Joes Giudice and Gorga’s escalating blood feud — is like oxygen to me.
The Valley’s second season has been dark even by Bravo standards, which is to say that for me, it’s also been one of the most compelling. At the center of it all is Brittany Cartwright, who after years of lying and obfuscation seems to have finally realized that the truth will set her free.
This week, Brittany takes her separation from Jax to the next level. With just days to go before he’s released from the asylum, she not only calls over her friends to pack up all of Jax’s worldly possessions, she meets with a divorce lawyer to initiate formal proceedings against her nightmare of a husband.
Fueled by approximately $5,000 of McDonald’s and Domino’s, the women of the cast and Zack convene at Brittany’s to exorcise Jason Cauchi. They gather his shirts, his sweaters, and his shoes into giant garbage bags so that Miss Kentucky Muffin can get a true-blue fresh start without his demonic energy weighing her down.
At the sight of a jean jacket (which triggers a dead-wife-style flashback to Jax wearing it on Vanderpump Rules), and some “#1 Guy In The Group” merch, Brittany starts to cry. She still loves Jax, and the reality of the path she’s walking has hit her all over again. “He’s the father of my child,” she tells us in a confessional. “I have built a life with him. I never thought I would be here.”
The internet is full of people who are foaming at the mouth to tell Brittany she should have seen this coming. Maybe she should have. There were certainly signs. But, pardon my French, I don’t give a fuck. Brittany didn’t see it coming, and now she has, and she’s dealing with the wreckage of her life.
I’ve spent many, many years frustrated at Brittany and Jax, whose tendency to pretend everything was okay when it very much was not played a massive role in the downfall of Vanderpump Rules. But her moment of sadness over a sweatshirt was the single most compelling thing I’ve seen from her since she waltzed into SUR in her tiny romper all those years ago. And as I watched her mourn the loss of her marriage to the world’s most terrible man, I got over it.
It’s brave to be honest. True power comes from admitting your real feelings and asserting your right to those feelings, especially when you have as many dedicated online haters as Brittany Cartwright. A simple Google search will lead you to a entire Reddit sub exclusively dedicated to insulting her, and every news story or Instagram post about her is filled with hateful comments from women who need the world to know that they don’t feel sorry for Brittany. It would be very easy for her to paper over the messy side of this breakup, to act as if she was totally over it and looking toward the future. But it wouldn’t be real.
At the divorce lawyer’s, Brittany lays out more details of what Jax has put her through. Apparently, he had over $1 million in tax debt when they got married. The couple had to remortgage their Valley Village house of horrors to pay it off, driving their mortgage from $8,000 a month to an eye-popping $17,000. Brittany even had $100,000 of her own money garnished to pay off the lien. Brittany says Jax would have gone to jail had they not covered his debts with the house as collateral, and while I’m not so sure she has her facts right — my understanding is that debtors don’t usually go to prison unless their nonpayment was due to fraud — the situation is clearly dire.
Even more dire are the latest rage texts she shows the lawyer, whose bug-eyed reaction tells me that she has never seen even a single episode of Vanderpump Rules: “I have eyes and ears. Everyone is gonna tell me if you tattle on me again. Go party while I am in here. I have everyone watching you like a hawk.” His texts reminded me of Lala’s ex, Randall Emmett, who she claims would send people to their home to at random times to make sure she hadn’t left him after he cheated on her and tackled her to the ground. Luckily, Brittany is clear-eyed enough to realize that things are bad. Really bad. And so she decides it’s time to walk away from this marriage once and for all.
There is, of course, the question of whether Jax should be on television at all. It’s tempting to say that his abusive behavior doesn’t deserve a platform. But it’s not like he’s going to suddenly stop being abusive just because he’s no longer on television. He may even become more violent, as James Kennedy did after being booted from Vanderpump Rules.
This is Brittany’s reality, and as uncomfortable and dark as it may be for the audience to watch, it’s what is really going on in her life. If she’ll be safer if he’s fired and wants him gone, then he probably should be. But none of us are going to be there to protect Brittany and Cruz from Jax’s inevitable rage if he is let go, so our feelings on the situation don’t really matter at all. (In any case, it doesn’t seem like all this darkness has driven viewers away — The Valley is up 7% in ratings from last year, and is currently the third-most-watched next-day season of any NBCU show on Peacock.)
We also pull back the curtain on another person’s ugly truth: Michelle’s. We learn that her mother is battling cancer (she sadly passed away in November 2024). Between coping with her impending loss and struggling through a divorce, Michelle’s feeling abandoned. She repeatedly says her situation is worse than Brittany’s, and that it’s not fair that she’s not getting the same support from their friends. At a celebration for Brittany at Jax’s Basement Bar, which has been draped in all manner of Britt’s merch, she says she thinks it’s weird that the person who’s actually awful (Jesse) is just right there.
The way Michelle is handling her feelings is not going to play well for a reality-television audience. But it’s precisely her utter inability to spin her feelings into something palatable that appeals to me. While I don’t know that Jesse is necessarily worse than Jax, he is terrible in his own right. After all, nobody is falling for Jax’s shit anymore. But plenty of people on the internet and in her friend group (cough: Kristen Doute) are Team Jesse, despite mountains of evidence that he is awful. That makes him dangerous in a very different way than Jax, and I completely understand why Michelle feels alone. Maybe the cast could throw her a pizza party at Chuck E. Cheese.
Michelle and Brittany’s ordeals make a strong case that Lala has a place on this show. While Lala’s presence has felt quite random thus far, I’m giving her a bit of grace because she’s incredibly pregnant and nowhere near full power. Lala is by no means an expert, but she seems to be the only person in this group who can speak to what it means to leave a narcissistic abuser — and one of the few who seems to see Jesse for exactly what he is. (Kristen should have learned this lesson too, but Kristen never learns anything. Bless her heart. It’s why I love her.) I’ve appreciated Lala’s perspective on the aftershow and the brief moments she’s appeared on The Valley proper.
There’s barely time to delve into the last ugly truth of this episode: Danny Darko’s Drinking Problem. It was refreshing to see even Nia get fed up with him, but Janet and Jason are going about this all wrong. Like Tamra Judge with Shannon Beador before them, they seem to believe that browbeating Danny is the best way to get him to own up to his drinking problem. Unfortunately, this merely gives Danny more ammunition to feel like an aggrieved party. The way to expose Darkside Danny is just to let him get drunk and run amok. Sooner or later, he will show us his dark side.
Next week, Jax escapes the asylum and gets SURved with divorce papers, which means that surely things will only get uglier from here. I for one am very glad that, at least for this moment in time, everything he does is being filmed.
Balls and chains
- I don’t have the bandwidth or willpower to discuss Scrotox. Sorry to my loyal fans.
- The Jenna Willis cameo was a reminder that no friend group on the planet is as incestuous as these people, and thank god for that. For those who may have forgotten, Jenna first appeared on Vanderpump Rules when Kristen and James were still together — James cheated on Kristen with her and lied about it, only to be exposed by an Uber receipt that Kristen found in the trash of his email inbox.
- The Janet/Jasmine/Jason/Melissa conversation is too boring to even talk about, I fear. This is what happens when nobody wants to stand on business and back up the big game they talk.