It's Not About Scandoval!!!!!!!!
(It's obviously about Scandoval)
This week marks the start of the inevitably chaotic three-part Vanderpump Rules Season 10 Reunion, so I simply have no choice but to bring the conversations I’ve been having about #Scandoval daily offline here to all of you.
And before anyone says, “That’s not news” á là Liev Schreiber, I want you to stop and think about why you believe that. Clearly, this is a conversation that matters to a huge number of people and is just as much real news as Tom Brady flip-flopping in and out of the NFL was (or is…I can’t remember if he’s really retired this time).
We all have things that bring us joy that others might not understand, but it is typically interests that are gendered more feminine that are labeled “guilty pleasures” and are mocked and discussed with the implication that you shouldn’t really claim to love it out loud. Obviously, that shit should have stopped yesterday but we also need to talk about why so many people still do this when they should just mind their business.
With all that said, this week, I’m looking at why the Scandoval drama has become so much bigger than the show itself as well as how reality television—and Bravo shows in particular—are actually so much more than just “guilty pleasures.”
Pure Innocent Fun That Turned Into Drama
Before we begin, I should note that I am staying true to my brand and warning you all that this is a small part of a much larger conversation—whether you’ve decided to still cling to your Judgey Judy beliefs or not. For a good guide to the nuances of Scandoval, check out Allie Jones’ interview with Wilson Wong in the New York Times.
Now, let’s dive into the history of Vanderpump Rules for any of us today who aren’t up to speed on everyone’s favorite mid-tier Bravo show: for the last ten years, VPR has followed the lives and careers of the servers and bartenders at Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump’s Los Angeles restaurant, SUR. As Lisa coyly tells us in the show’s very first episode, her (now-defunct) restaurant Villa Blanca is where you take your wife and SUR is where you take your mistress.
Right off the bat, we see that the cast of twenty-somethings are all delusional and dramatic and sleep around with one another like it’s actually part of their job descriptions. I don’t have time to introduce the entire original cast, but it is important to note that of the cast members from the very first season, only three and a half still remain: Tom Sandoval, Scheana Shay, Katie Maloney, and Katie’s ex, Tom Schwartz who did not join the show full-time until season 3 and is Tom Sandoval’s best friend.
(Sidebar: Katie and Schwartz were together from 2011 until last year when she asked for a divorce. At the end of their relationship, Katie’s main request was that neither of the two get together with anyone else in their friend group—remember this!!!)
The rest of the core characters in this saga joined at various points of the show’s run, as listed below:
Scandoval is the shorthand moniker given to the recent revelation that Tom Sandoval cheated on his partner, Ariana Madix, with their castmate and one of Ariana’s best friends, Raquel Leviss. The affair (as far as we know) started while the show was filming and continued until March of this year, at which point the season had already ceased filming (although the cameras resumed rolling, and for that, we are all grateful).
The couple at the core of this drama—Sandoval and Ariana—began dating sometime in 2013. However, the exact timeline is intentionally murky as Sandoval was in a relationship with former castmate Kristen Doute at the time which, like, come on!!!!1 Get a hobby besides cheating and fronting your weird band!!! Still, the two managed to stay together for either nine or ten years (depending on which half of the couple you ask) and, despite what Sandoval is now telling everyone, seemed to be one of the few relationships formed on the show that was going to stand the test of time.
That brings us to Raquel Leviss—or Rachel, if you’re nasty.
Rachel, as she is known in the eyes of the law, was introduced on the show as DJ James Kennedy’s girlfriend and SUR server in 2016 and was then just kind of there for a while before getting promoted to the full-time cast and calling off her engagement to James in 2021. Her role on this season could not have been more cringy (even without the hindsight we have now) but once the news broke mid-season, it was almost painful to watch how diabolically unsubtle Rachel was for the entirety of the affair.
Now, I was raised on the credence that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women, but this—spending months hooking up with men in relationships and bragging about it, like when she went so far as to sit down with Katie at dinner and share her plans to get with Schwartz—feels like it gets its own level. Don’t get me wrong: I know just as well as anyone that the blame rests the heaviest on Sandoval, but that doesn’t mean Raquel/Rachel just gets absolved for her actions.
While I can’t say that I’ve ever been exactly in Ariana’s shoes, I have definitely had friends who I believed were one person before they turned out to be a duplicitous other. I had a conversation recently about how female friendships are both the greatest blessing and potentially the biggest curse, as they often are so much deeper than relationships or friendships with men and yet, have the power to hurt more than anything should they ever end (@hellotefi explained this the best in the linked TikTok).
Watching Ariana go through this experience yes, with her partner, but also with a close friend calls to mind a pain that is nearly inescapable for all of us and for women especially. Say what you will about the role infidelity plays on the show in general and played in Sandoval and Ariana’s relationship in particular, but if I had to be fully honest, the dynamic between Ariana and Raquel/Rachel is the thing that has personally interested me the most…which is actually the perfect segue into the next part of our conversation.
So…Why Do We All Care So Much About This?
Ariana hit the nail on the head as to why Scandoval has garnered so much attention from those both in and out of the Bravo Cinematic Universe last week on Watch What Happens Live. Host Andy Cohen asked “Why do you think this has resonated so much? This has become national news,” and she stated:
“I think because it’s so layered…cheating is not that uncommon but I think it’s the best friend, it’s the manipulation, it’s the narcissism, it’s the double life. There’s so many layers to it that so many people have experienced one or all of those things…”2
It’s true: we all know someone that a part of this drama has happened to, perhaps even ourselves, and that fact in and of itself makes the drama less rooted in Bravo than, say, Denise Richards and Brandi Glanville potentially hooking up at the end of a season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills where Denise’s personality had seemingly done a 180° in regards to how she discussed sex and sexuality. You need two seasons worth of context and a whole lot of cultural cachet to fully get the significance of that.
But finding out some medium ugly dude has been cheating on his stable partner with a hot 20-something former pageant star that lacks morals and a fully developed frontal lobe to prolong his impending mid-life crisis? That shit is universally understood.
I think a part of why this story has gone so viral also comes from the fact that we all want to relate to Ariana who has, like a true girlboss, capitalized on this moment completely. When we interact with others, and especially when relationships are built or dissolved, we want to be the ones left standing atop the moral high ground. Even if we are clearly in the wrong, it is so much easier to be the person scorned than the one who fucked up. As we watch both Ariana’s arc this season—her dealing with painful yet inevitable life events like death, rocky friendship, and changes in her relationship—and her subsequent national media tour, we want to believe that our struggles will elicit the same amount of justice and sympathy.
We neglect (and this is a strong royal we, friends) to truly take the origins of Sandoval and Ariana’s relationship seriously—like the way he counts the time they were together while he was still with Kristen, and Ariana conveniently doesn’t—just as we don’t want to admit that some part of “Raquel” was probably motivated to continue the affair by the need we place on reality stars to stay relevant and dramatic in order to maintain their jobs. Certainly, there are other ways to secure your bag besides sleeping with your best friend’s partner and lying about it, but hey, it’s the choice that got everyone talking about her!!!!
It’s weird and messy and entertaining as any good gossip always is, which is undeniably the primary reason why this has gotten so big. No one, not even the most misogynistic man who refuses to even consider doing anything feminine, can not deny the small thrill we all get when we hear someone airing dirty laundry.
When will we as a society grow up and admit that gossiping is fun???
Not only that but, whether we want to admit it or not, we absolutely gobble up other stories about other people’s lives so that we can constantly refine our places in the context of our social networks. We love hearing about others’ misfortunes because at least it’s not us, at least it is worse than what happened to us, or, most terrifying of all, this is nowhere near as bad as what happened to us which always earns the gold medal in the Tragedy Olympics.
Additionally, we have to remember that these are real people’s lives we’re watching implode before our very eyes. Yes, there is the argument that the show was plotted and planned and is therefore not really reality, but that was dispelled here by former VPR cast member Stassi Schroeder. Plus, even if the drama was handcrafted by the show’s producers (which, again, it is not), it is still Sandoval and Raqu(ch)el’s reputations that are taking irreparable hits. That is painfully real.
All this is to say: Scandoval is so much bigger than Bravo or reality television in general because it quite sincerely is someone’s reality that feels like it could happen to us. Life is chaotic and people cheat and sometimes your friends suck and sometimes they show up for you in ways you didn’t think they knew how to do.3 And even when these weird developments happen to someone else, what is more real than finding a way to make it all about ourselves?
Go Sports!!!
In writing this piece and talking with nearly everyone under the sun about some aspect of Scandoval, I’ve once again returned to thinking about why things like reality television and Bravos shows, in particular, are still referred to as guilty pleasures.
I’ve written about this concept a number of times, notably twice during my [redacted] years at Odyssey Online and once in earnest on this very newsletter, and the question that I always ask (as I am now while building this piece) is: Why? Why haven’t we put a stop to this discourse? Why can’t we just enjoy our shows in peace? Why don’t we ever say the same things about sports or Amazing Race or more masculine-coded content that we do about Bravo content?
Obviously, I know the answer is misogyny, but I also keep thinking about why we still put up with critiques from those who don’t even understand what they’re critiquing. In his book, The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives,4 journalist Brian Moylan writes:
The hardest part about loving The Real Housewives is the judgment received from people who are not fans or, even worse, are passing judgment on us for our obsession with the franchise when they haven’t seen an episode…Because of those reactions we couch our love of these shows as a “guilty pleasure” or admit that we know that they’re “dumb” or “silly,” but we love them anyway. I honestly think it’s time we stop doing that.
In truth, I’ve also been thinking about all of this a lot lately not just because Scandoval is so timely but because for the past month, I’ve been going into an office filled with Bravo fans. Twice last week alone, I spun on my heel and changed course because I heard someone say the name “Raquel” and hopped into riveting conversations. The common language Scandoval and Bravo offer has allowed me to not only build new relationships at an admittedly alarming speed but has helped me to feel comfortable showing up as myself in the workplace.
And why should I feel guilty about that? Why should anyone? It’s so powerful to say that in just a month, I’ve gotten to genuinely know people based on which Housewives franchises they watch and how they’ve interpreted the goings-on of Scandoval. Even if we aren’t in the same room viewing the show at the same time—the way my mom and I spend some of our best quality time with one another—these conversations are bonding us in a shared experience.
At one point in The Real Housewives, Moylan interviews Lucas Mann, author of Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV which is “about how reality shows (including The Real Housewives) brought him and his wife closer together.” Mann explains that
“If there is a certain amount of time spent every week watching these kinds of shows, that ish shared time. I don’t know if that time could have been spent in a better way or a worse way, but it’s inextricably important time…I feel like the dumb knee-jerk reaction about reality TV or any sort of cultural form that people seem to think lowly of is like, ‘Why are you watching that?’ That implies why aren’t you doing something else, but it’s the thing you’re doing together.”
I hope, if you were someone who started this piece rolling your eyes or wondering why it was relevant but have managed to make it this far, that you’ve gotten a glimmer of why this is the conversation du jour in culture right now. Why it is a litmus test for men’s toxicity, why Ariana Madix is everywhere, why Uber One was selling Boys Lie merch in LA and donating the proceeds to charity—by the way, if someone is reselling their shirt, let me know.
Not only is it genuinely entertaining to observe all of this drama, it’s also deeply personal and emotionally resonant. We are all watching the same episodes through our own eyes and then talking about it, connecting parts of ourselves with the people on our screens and the people in our real worlds.
It is both that deep and nothing very deep at all. At the end of the day, I really just love gossip and storytelling. I mean, why do you think I created a platform to pry into people’s lives and minds every week?
I would truly love to hear anyone and everyone’s thoughts on Scandoval so know the comments section, my DMs, and perhaps a little chat on Wednesday are WIDE open.
In fact, so many fans of the show have Sandoval’s number as they noticed the way he talked about Raquel Leviss mirrored the way he had talked about Ariana all those years ago.
She also said something similar in her recent new-worthy New York Times interview.
By the way, am I Team Scheana for the first time ever????? I’m certainly going to be apologizing to Kristen Doute until the end of time for hopping on the anti-her bandwagon years ago.
Which anyone remotely interested in Bravo should read immediately.