When your loved one is in crisis, it’s only natural that you’ll feel stress too. To avoid being an asshole about it, psychologist Susan Silk’s “ring theory” is a useful framework.
Here’s how it works: The person in crisis is the center of the ring. Their innermost circle — a spouse, for example — is the first ring. The next might be a sibling, parents, or children. Each successive ring represents a group of people who are more and more distant from the crisis at hand. The right way to hold space for both your and your loved one’s pain is to “comfort in, dump out,” or what Silk calls the “kvetching order.”
That means you don’t complain about your stress to someone closer to the crisis, nor are you obligated to provide comfort to those who are farther removed. The Vanderpump cast’s complete inability to apply this framework is the driving tension of this week’s episode. It’s a mess, and no one is on their best behavior. In other words — and I’m relieved to say it — we are so back.
We open with yet another tooth-brushing montage — our third in six episodes — interrupted by James rummaging through the fridge and bellowing, “Where are my chocolates?!” Ally makes coffee. Sandoval journals. Schwartz looks out the window.
Shannon, a “wellness coach,” arrives at the house. While Sandoval explains the tension in the group, Shannon pretends she has no idea which affair he is talking about. She says she’ll lead a session that will help the group get in touch with themselves and each other, and gets to work laying out yoga mats.
“Play a movie of your life in your head,” Shannon instructs. We are subjected to a black-and-white montage of the cast screaming at Sandoval that is not nearly as funny as the supercut of Jax’s life flashing before his eyes when he almost drowned at Rob “Hangs a TV in Seven Minutes” Valletta’s lake house.
Soon, it’s time for partner meditation, and Scheana gets stuck with Sandoval while Brock opts to sit with James and Ally. Though Scheana shoots her husband death glare after death glare, he says he’s fine where he is, thank you very much. Resigned to her fate, she sits back-to-back with Sandoval and immediately starts weeping.
“I still fucking hate you,” Schea-Shu mutters about ten seconds later, leaping up and running into the house. Brock follows her to explain that he wanted her to have a one-on-one with Sandoval. “You were feeling uncomfortable touching him, and you should go into that,” Brock says, in an uncanny imitation of an Evolution producer. “That’s why I stayed over with my three.”
This is our first kvetching order violation. Yes, Scheana clearly has a lot to unpack when it comes to her relationship with Sandoval, but it’s hardly Brock’s place to decide it’s time for a conversation she is clearly not prepared for. Within the hierarchy of the show, who is Brock compared to our Schea-Shu? He barely even goes here, and Scheana is having none of it.
When they return, Shannon dials it up. “Imagine this is the last time you’ll ever see your partner,” she intones. “No matter what has transpired, remember there is so much love before the loss.” This is an insane thing to say in a meditation session, let alone one attended by a guy who is supposedly suffering suicidal ideation. One can only assume that while Scheana was crying in the kitchen, Shannon was on the phone with Lisa Vanderpump getting advice on how to make this experience as traumatic as possible.
We suffer through another montage (please…editors…it’s enough), this time of Scheana and Sandoval. In a particularly shady choice, we flash back to a conversation from post-Miami Girl Season 3 where Scheana warns Ariana, over many eye-rolls, that Sandoval has been a cheater and a liar.
Despite production’s and Shannon’s best efforts, Scheana holds the line. She tells Sandoval she knows who he is to her, but she can’t move past what he did to Ariana. “You just don’t understand,” Sandoval sighs. “I don’t know if I need to,” she whispers back. Brock cries, Lala pats his arm, and then — to everyone’s great relief — it is over.
The group heads out to take a gondola ride. Brock, Schwartz, and Sandoval share one, and they immediately start discussing Scheana. Sandoval thinks Scheana’s OCD diagnosis “makes sense” because she is so fixated on the affair (possibly the most delusional thing he’s said yet), and insists again that neither he nor Rachel acted maliciously. Brock, in the episode’s juiciest reveal, snaps that he knows that Sandoval’s team planted rumors that Brock and Rachel had a fling of their own. Between them, Schwartz cringes and twitches like he’s undergoing shock therapy, which to be fair, he kind of is.
This is violation #2. Scheana and Brock may have podcasted, but they did so in the open. Planting rumors about your friends’ marriage is a different kind of twisted, and as Brock says, it’s absurd that Sandoval’s talk track is still 90% demanding apologies while being unwilling to offer his own. “He just doesn’t get it,” Brock tells Scheana upon disembarking, and though he apologizes to Sandoval for his tone, the two get nowhere.
Meanwhile, Scheana reads a Page Six article about a group photo the cast took for a fan’s birthday the previous night. When that picture came out, hordes of fans flocked to call her a traitor, even creating the #ForLisa hashtag as a catchall on any post about how much Scheana sucks, a jab at her attempted clapback.
And so it is that violation #3 belongs to the audience. A few weeks ago, I posited that the fans are the real villains of this whole enterprise, and it’s refreshing to see the show acknowledge it. The harassment is all a bit much considering Scheana is Ariana’s friend, and the fans are…you know…random people on the internet. I don’t say this often, but if you feel compelled to deliver vigilante justice for someone who does not know you exist, it might be time to step away from the internet and touch some grass.
I can only defend Scheana so much, though, because as soon as the cast goes on their boat trip, things get even messier.
Scheana Facetimes Ariana, who is with Katie and Chef Penny interviewing candidates for Something About Her. Scheana recounts the morning’s ordeal, and Ariana is sympathetic, pulling appropriately horrified faces. And then Scheana commits the kind of characteristic faux pas that makes her one of the most entertaining people on this show.
“You know how close we were and it was a really heavy loss for me,” Schea-Shu sniffs to Sandoval’s former life partner. “I’ve just been struggling with that. I’m mad that he did all this because I miss my friend.” (Violation #4, which I don’t think I even need to explain.)
Ariana responds with as much grace as I think one could muster. “You putting yourself in a position to be friends with somebody who would do this to you, is not someone I want you to be friends with for you,” she tells Scheana. “That sucks. It sounds awful.”
After they hang up, Katie can’t wait to dish. She says Scheana doesn’t understand how close she is to crossing a line with Ariana, and that Scheana should choose her next move very carefully.
I am a Katie defender, but in order to maintain journalistic integrity I must point out that technically, this is violation #5. Scheana should not be dumping her feelings all over Ariana, but they are real, and Katie, who has always hated Sandoval and only put up with him for Schwartz’s sake, cannot relate. This is not really Katie’s battle, yet she seems less understanding of Scheana’s emotions than even Ariana, the person who was cheated on in the first place.
Back in Tahoe, Lala, who was never close to Sandoval and thus is struggling with no such loss, still has a bone to pick with him. She asks Sandoval how he could call her “not real” to her face and in the press, while lying about his affair.
True to form, Sandoval deflects and begins to rant about how Lala kept her relationship with her ex — which, mind you, started in 2015 — under wraps. He says everyone else put their life out there but that for six years, Lala didn’t. Lala loses her shit and yells that she always knew Sandoval was a scary person. “You isolate! You groom! You lie!” she shouts, and one has to imagine she’s just coined Vanderpump’s “Receipts! Proof! Timeline!”
This is violation #6. As Lala notes, she’s the one who has to live with her past, and in any case her past has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. It’s rich to hear Sandoval talk about putting himself out there when we know very well that he and Ariana hid their relationship warts for nine years. (Sometimes, the truth slipped through, like the time Ariana called him a “little bitch” for trying to muscle his way into the cocktail book she tried to sell prior to ‘Fancy AF,’ their collaboration with Danny Pellegrino. Longtime viewers will remember that the season’s edit suggested that she eventually let Sandoval onto that solo project, an assumption Ariana took to Reddit to correct. Ah, memories.)
Nothing is resolved until Scheana and Brock intervene. Sandoval backs down and says he didn’t understand what Lala was saying until Scheana explained it to him. He hugs Lala and they seem to reach a truce, but as there was nothing to repair in the first place, the moment carries no emotional weight.
When the group returns to the house, Scheana is deep in her mentions, reading every hate tweet that’s come her way. (Stars, they’re just like us.) By the way, someone needs to tell our girl about the quality filter, because there is no reason Scheana should be engaging with the peanut gallery. Lala asks if Ariana has spoken up for her. Scheana replies, “Of course not.” For the record, Ariana ends up defending Scheana, and it seems we’ll see the conversation that led to that decision next week.
And then Schea-Shu reminds us why she will forever be this show’s delulu queen. She starts crying again, because Ariana is “annoyed” when she hears that Scheana is struggling. Lala says her emotions are valid, and that “Ariana is fine. She’s booking everything under the sun.” Scheana is relieved that Ariana didn’t go into a “dark spiral,” but hilariously declares that Dancing With the Stars was her dream, and laments that Ariana doesn’t seem to have space for her emotions. In a confessional, Lala says Ariana “needs to pull her head out of her ass,” “remember who her friends are,” and at least validate what Scheana is feeling, even if she can’t be the audience for it.
Finally, finally, finally, we are getting somewhere. Ariana barely even has the space to walk around her bedroom, so I am not surprised that Scheana’s feelings can’t fit in there at the moment, and obviously, it is not really her responsibility. Were this not a reality show, it would be laughable for Scheana and Lala to even go there. But it is, and this medium forces people to confront all the conflicts and opinions that a normal would never bring to light.
This conversation, as hilarious as it is, also feels like the most raw and real thing we’ve seen all season. I have been itching for the show to plumb the depths of our new reality. Let’s get into everyone’s reactions to not just Ariana’s post-Scandoval comeup, but also the tension between her boundaries and other cast members’ (like Lala and Scheana) commitment to making good TV. Reality is at its very best when every cast member owns their genuine feelings and those feelings are in conflict with one another. After an incredibly slow start to this season, it seems like we may finally be moving toward something compelling.
Last calls
- Ann Watch, Week 6: No Ann. :(
- Katie is so real for saying she doesn’t want another “project boyfriend.” Emo Nite Kevin thinking penne is a sauce is a completely valid reason to get the ick. This time, it was about the pasta.
- Ally speaks for all of us when she says, in response to Schwartz trying to fill the awkward silence while Scheana cries in the kitchen at the group meditation with a story about a blue jay: “Oh. Wow.”
- Brock’s drink order — tequila with a splash of Smirnoff — is the most deranged thing I’ve ever heard. Gotta pump those brand deals.
- I couldn’t help but giggle when Ariana was talking about ‘Single AF.’ She says Sandoval believed she couldn’t do it on her own, and clearly she can, but it doesn’t quite hit when we learn that the entire book was built around her relationship with him.
- We need Chef Penny to give us a breakdown of exactly what she was trying to suss out when she asked each candidate about their favorite cured meat. Mine is a toss-up between mortadella and chorizo, and I’m dying to know what that says about me.