Intentionally or not (I suspect not), Vanderpump Rules is a cautionary tale about the dangers in store for women who make themselves smaller in service of romantic partnership with men. Within the show’s universe, men have always been the prize. A woman must earn the right to be treated with respect and dignity, and if she’s enough of a bitch, it’s okay to cheat on her, lie to her, and call her names.
This is, I think, where all the vitriol around Scandoval came from. Ariana was the one this wasn’t supposed to happen to. She played by all the rules. She defended Sandoval time and time again, even when he was wrong. She spun false narratives with him and lied for him for nearly a decade. She watched in silence as he unleashed his rage on all the women and some of the men who pointed out the truth of him. She did everything a woman in that universe was supposed to do. And what did she get for it? He betrayed her anyway.
If there is a great love story in this group, it’s Schwartz and Sandoval’s. Their sincerest apologies are reserved for one another, their deepest tenderness for one another. They are, after all, the human embodiment of Marilyn Frye’s dictum on heterosexual male culture:
“To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking) exclusively with (or upon or to) the other sex, i.e. women,” Frye wrote. “Almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments, to whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, humor, reverence, and love they desire are, overwhelmingly, other men. With women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity, or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex.”
This is the Vanderpump way, and though the women have largely freed themselves from these stifling expectations, this week was a stark reminder that they still contend with men who are less than comfortable with these shifting dynamics.
We open with Scheana and Brittany, who are having a heart-to-heart about the tension in their relationships. Scheana and Brock have gotten into tiffs about their anniversary plans and their ongoing search for a permanent nanny, but Scheana suspects the root of their fighting is Brock’s insecurity that she’s the breadwinner. “Why can’t [he] be a stay-at-home dad and I make the money? It’s so old-fashioned,” Scheana complains. Brittany has had the same issue with Jax, after the pair’s Vanderpump contracts weren’t renewed for Season 9 and she began to outearn him via brand deals.
Scheana also confesses that her anxiety is magnified by intrusive thoughts about Brock cheating on her. Apparently, people make comments about Brock and Lala’s closeness, and concerns about infidelity — largely driven by the fallout from Scandoval — are at least part of Scheana’s hesitation to get a permanent nanny.
This is another thing Brittany can relate to, and the two commiserate about their fear of not just emasculating their men but also the potential humiliation of “losing” him to a household employee. Somehow, the idea that there are more secure and faithful men out there, never crosses their minds.
When Scheana and Brock go for their anniversary dinner, Scheana tries to make it clear that Brock gives her exactly what she needs — a reliable source of support in her and Summer Moon’s lives. “Have you ever thought this is your second chance at being a dad?” she asks, which is a wild way of saying Brock isn’t allowed to see his first two children until their mother decides he has really changed.
There’s some inversion of gender roles happening here, but Brock is still occupying a familiar masculine role — the absent father. Brock may be available and present for Scheana and Summer, but Scheana’s unspoken fear that one wrong move might put her in the same boat as Brock’s last partner is impossible to ignore. After all, if she can’t make Brock feel like a man, what’s to stop him from finding another woman who will?
James and Ally are playing out another familiar dynamic — the woman who has changed her life for a man who insists on having his way. Burbank’s favorite couple are at the Face Gym, where they undergo some kind of electroshock treatment so they won’t look like old hags at their advanced ages of 28 and 32, which Gen Alpha apparently thinks is when your skin turns to crepe paper and arthritis sets in. Ally and James were supposed to go to Ohio to be in her best friend’s wedding, and had planned for James’ brother Harry look after Hippie. But now Harry is going to be out of town, and James is adamant that he will not leave his dog to a stranger.
Ally is not happy. Her and James’ lives have changed a lot since he brought home Hippie. The two are sleeping in separate rooms so each can cuddle their respective pets. This only fuels my conspiracy theory that Ally and James have an arrangement where she pretends to be his girlfriend in exchange for music production and a platform for her astrology business.
In any case, Ally is upset that James is prioritizing a dog over her. When the group gathers for a pool party, the women press him on whether someone besides Harry can watch Hippie. “Maybe next year,” he replies. Katie looks concerned and says she doesn’t want his inflexibility to become an issue in he and Ally’s relationship.
James, to put it lightly, loses his mind. He babbles at 300 words a minute about how no one can understand his devotion to his dog, how Hippie has been through enough, and how he absolutely, in no circumstance, will compromise on what he wants to do with his pet. “But Ally comes and supports you with everything you do,” Lala reminds him. “She’s taken on this dog that she did not sign up for.”
“You don’t understand like I do,” James groans, to the woman who shares custody with a man who the FBI is allegedly investigating for activities related to pedophilia. DJ James Kennedy continues on about the anxiety attacks he’d have and how awful a four-day wedding trip sounds. By the end of his soliloquy, he’s blubbering, and nothing anyone says is making any difference.
Ally, by the way, is the closest thing we have on the show right now to a “Rules” girl. She’s no doormat — all last season, she refused to defend James’ outbursts and made it known how she felt about his behavior. But at the end of the day, she understands the pecking order and acts accordingly. James is the one with the show, and he’s probably the one paying for the house, and he’s also the one with the temper so bad that Ally left their home with her cats after a particularly bad fight. This is the only time we’ve seen Ally ask James for something he doesn’t want to do, and his refusal to even consider it is telling.
“It’s clear James comes first in the relationship and Ally comes second,” Lala says in a confessional.
Then there’s the Jax vs. Katie of it all, which is well-worn territory for Vanderpump. Like Sandoval, Jax is a badly-behaved man who has more anger about a woman calling him out than any shame over behaving badly in the first place. Jax and Katie have never liked each other, but this latest flare-up is because Katie repeated a Reddit rumor that Jax had cheated on Brittany.
Jax yells that Katie has some nerve to go after his family like that. Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to Jax that if he weren’t already a well-known philanderer, a post speculating about infidelity probably wouldn’t have gotten traction in the first place. But rather than reflect on how his past behavior would make it easy to believe that he was cheating yet again, he tries to warp the narrative into one about a vindictive woman coming to get him.
The real blowup is between Sandoval and Scheana. Sandoval is still annoyed at Scheana’s song about him and Rachel, and complains yet again that she is being too hard on him.
“What you two did to Ariana fucked me up in more ways than one,” Scheana counters. Sandoval spits that Scheana wasn’t even involved, yet is acting like the biggest victim of all. Scheana reminds him of the restraining order of it all. Sandoval is having none of it and keeps pummeling her, sniping that her interest in the affair is unreasonable.
Scheana snaps. “Do you know that I now have fucked-up thoughts about Brock and Lala, one of my best friends, because I’m like, oh my god, can someone do that to me?” she yells, jabbing a finger in Sandoval’s face. “Because they did it to Ariana! I think that shit now! You did that!” (James, who has appeared out of nowhere, chimes in, “I think that shit too!” About Ally and Sandoval? What is the equivalent here?)
“Dude, you’ve been the other woman in a relationship!” Sandoval exclaims, as Scheana gathers her things so she can get home to Summer. “You did it!”
On one level, this is classic Sandoval whataboutism. If anyone dares criticize him, he will bring up every reason he can that their perspective is rendered moot by their past mistakes. He hasn’t even been able to resist pulling this lever with Ariana — from last season’s attempts to paint her as a bad girlfriend who forced him to cheat on her, to this season’s insistence that her alleged negligence of household tasks means the property should go to him.
But his reflex to go there evokes something else that’s been at the core of this show from the start — that a woman’s mistakes should define her, but a man must be allowed to move on. Scheana was 21 when she met Eddie Cibrian, and though I don’t believe that she had no idea he was married, her ancient history clearly doesn’t make the Scandoval any less bad. And if an 18-year-old affair can be used against Scheana, then surely six months is nowhere near enough time to wipe Tom’s slate clean.
More than that, I couldn’t shake just how similar Sandoval sounded to the fans. I’ve always been struck by how closely the mostly-female fanbase’s narratives about the Vanderpump women mirrors what the men have said about them all these years. Even in seeking to defend Ariana, the fans hewed to the men’s rules by insisting she deserved more support and empathy than any of her female castmates because she was better than them. (Sotto voce: A woman must be exemplary to be treated well.)
Aligning with Ariana against Sandoval was labeled the feminist stance to take, any critique of her deemed misogynist. Such deification is always suspect, but especially so if you pay attention to how the fanbase has spoken about all the other women on the cast who are not Ariana in defense of this notion. They say Lala was a gold digger, Scheana was a mistress, Kristen was crazy, Brittany knew what she was getting into, and Rachel was a subhuman cunt who deserved death threats.
To position Ariana as better than her colleagues may earn her some points on a scale designed by the men, but her empowerment was never going to come from the denigration of the other women on the cast. So it feels only fitting that Sandoval, the show’s ultimate big baddie, has reminded the audience of the utter futility of that line of reasoning. It might just be the first useful thing he’s done all season.
Last calls
- Craig Watch, Week 2: He asks Ariana how long she’ll be in her and Tom’s gym for, because the boss man wants to get in a workout.
- I basically forgot that Ariana has had a new boyfriend this entire season. It looks like we’ll finally get to meet him in next week’s episode, and I’m very interested to see what he’s like.
- Schwartz and Ariana had a nice moment as they talked about Sandoval’s indecent proposal to have Schwartz move in. Schwartz hasn’t earned Ariana’s grace, but for her sake I’m glad that mere proximity to Sandoval isn’t enough to set her off anymore.
- Bolstering Jax’s remarks that Lisa is superfluous and a producer’s prop, we didn’t even talk about their conversation at Jax and James’ brunch. There’s not much to say, other than the fact that Lisa’s only mad because Jax pointed out what we have all known to be true for years — LVP SURves no purpose on the show anymore. To double the irony here, Lisa wouldn’t even have been on the episode were it not for Jax’s brunch in the first place. Oh, how the tables turn.
- I do believe that Jax doesn’t know what “superfluous” means, though. This is a man who thought #MeToo meant “women power,” after all.