This week in reality TV started off with a bang. The Real Housewives of Potomac kicked us off on Sunday with a pretty heated reunion – but I’m really sitting tight to see what tea Gordon has to spill. Anyhow, I find out Jeremiah isn’t his…whew! Anyway, let’s get into it!
Kristen crying over getting cancelled
I was wondering when The Valley was going to get entertaining, but I had no idea that it was going to be so unintentionally comical and simultaneously melodramatic.
Here’s the rundown. Kristen Doute, who currently stars on The Valley, used to be a castmate on Vanderpump Rules. But back in 2020, she and Stassi were fired from the show for revealing that they once called the cops on Faith Stowers, a Black coworker they had at SUR. I covered some of that in this piece. In 2020 of all years, this revelation was just totally unacceptable – so they got the axe.
But she resurfaced again on Bravo recently. Once in a late-season episode of Vanderpump Rules and now with a starring role in The Valley. This season on the show, one of the storylines that’s stirring up drama is Kristen repeating a rumour she heard, which alleges that Michelle, a castmate, is both a racist and a Republican. Now, there’s lots of racists and lots of Republicans. But not in L.A., where filming for the show takes place, and a city that loves to ignore its own history of racism. And according to pretty much everyone on the show, being either one of those is a cardinal sin in that city, at least publicly, it’s just not the place for that. So naturally, it turns into this big huge thing that of course, gets brought up at the…*drumroll please* - dinner table!
Michelle, the woman who was accused of being a double R, is a successful real estate agent that works alongside her husband. And so the two of them are just pissed because if word gets out that she’s all Trumpy and anti-Black, they won’t have any more houses to sell. So at the dinner table, her husband takes the opportunity to remind Kristen that she was removed from Vanderpump Rules for “being an actual racist”. Mic drop.
Cut to a confessional where a teary-eyed Kristen is offering up a mea culpa to cameras, with all the headlines from 2020 saying she’d been fired for being racist (those producers are so shady), and saying, and I quote:
“It is the worst thing in the world to be labelled as anything, let alone, a racist.”
Then she went on to talk about how horrible it is to be cancelled. For me, the gag was the fact that not even four years after being “cancelled”, she’s in a confessional on a show she now stars in on the same network of the show she got kicked off of for being racist. I mean, did you really get cancelled? I Doute it.
Kyle getting asked to be the flower boy at Carl and Lindsay’s no-more wedding
Now, correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Carl literally officiate Kyle and Amanda’s wedding? My jaw just about dropped to the floor when Carl made the proposition to Kyle for him to be a flower boy on Summer House. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a flower boy past the age of like, 6, which is just about Kyle’s internal age anyway, so it fits. But naturally, whatever Lindsay wants, Lindsay gets – and that would mean having Kyle be anything but a groomsmen in her wedding.
When Carl was in the confessional explaining his odd ask to cameras, he revealed that it all had to do with Lindsay – which I’m sure we all knew.
“I mean, I’m like, this is how I really deep down feel –– Lindsay didn’t want Kyle to be a groomsman,” he said. “Now, did it come out of Lindsay’s mouth, ‘I don’t want Kyle to be a groomsman? No. I want Kyle there, but I also have to play ball with my wife –– or future wife.”
Lindsay’s lack of desire for Kyle and his mullet to be a groomsmen likely stems from many things that have happened over the years, but it was most likely an incident that took place last year where Kyle wished Carl good luck on his engagement to her, reminding him that she is a “f-cking psycho.” And given what we’ve seen so far this season, I’d have to agree.
This is why real Bravo fans are suggesting that Summer House is doing overtime to provide some of the entertainment that’s lacking in the current roster of shows on air right now. Because we’re getting to see all of the things that led up to Carl calling off his engagement to Lindsay – and as I predicted, the mere thought of marrying her would be a horror for anyone. Every episode I watch I am more and more glad for him that he woke up and smelled the coffee. Yes, the drunken nights, Paige serving looks, Ciara serving body – all of that is great. But to see an actual engagement crumble before our eyes? We have no choice but to stan.
Ariana’s rage
It’s been three days since this week’s episode of Vanderpump Rules aired and I still cannot get snippets from the show out of my head. This week, we really saw Ariana’s seething rage – which stemmed from Tom being what she calls an “attempted dog murderer”. But we also saw Lala’s judgement over whose fault it really was that the dog almost died (I mean, Lala made a fair point about the importance of throwing your garbage away with pets in the house), and finally, the beach scene with almost the whole cast. Let me be clear in saying that when fans were chomping at the bit to see the fallout after Scandoval air on TV, this is what they meant. Well, minus a dog almost dying. No one wants that.
The thing is, scenes like these, with Tom and Ariana actually interacting, if you can call it that, must have been really hard to come by. Most of that had to do with Ariana’s reluctance, and at times, outright refusal, to film or be in the same vicinity as Tom. But during this episode, we saw them in close quarters on at two separate occasions, once at James and Ally’s and again at the beach. And to be honest, seeing just how triggered Ariana was by Tom, I kind of understand why she opted to stay as far away as possible in the first place.
I think my favourite thing about this episode was that if I hadn’t known any better, I would have assumed it was a sketch comedy show about a f-cked up group of friends. Like, you just can’t make this stuff up. I think producers were wanting these types of interactions all season long and were probably so, so frustrated at the lack of opportunity to extract as much drama as possible from Ariana and Tom’s storyline. If that is the case, it makes complete sense that we saw mountains be made out of molehills from the rest of the cast this season – and so much focus on Scheana. Had the show been on this energy since the season premiere, the chatter online would be a lot more favourable now.
I will say, Tom admitting his delusion in hoping that he and Ariana would be “more civil” than Tom and Katie just proves to all of us how out of touch with reality he truly is. Still reeling from having to watch that breath work bullsh-t that he did. Please, production, don’t subject us to that ever again.
