The Ruthless Cruelty of the 'Vanderpump Rules' Reunion

As a Bravo virgin, this season of Vanderpump Rules was my introduction to the network’s reality show chaos. I’ve never seen a Deck, a Housewife, or a Southern Charmer, which also meant that I’d never seen a Bravo reunion show. Holy shit. I don’t know if all the reunion shows are like this, or if it’s specific to Vanderpump Rules, but the feeling I’m mostly left with is: Is Andy Cohen a sociopath?

I watched the entire season of Vanderpump Rules because people wouldn’t stop talking about Scandoval and I had a mix of FOMO and morbid curiosity. The season revolved around the fallout of Tom Sandoval’s affair with Raquel Leviss, a close friend of his girlfriend of nine years, Ariana Madix. Leviss also happened to be the ex-fiancée of Sandoval’s buddy, James Kennedy.

Tom Sandoval was the clear villain in this mess, a vaingloriously selfish prick who repeatedly tried to position himself as the victim of his own indiscretions. Confronted by several cast members with the wreckage inflicted by Sandoval’s affair, he would typically counter with, “But what about how it hurt me?”

But I’m not here to recount Tom Sandoval’s sins. Those have been well documented elsewhere. I’m also not here to defend or critique any of the other cast members—after spending 14 hours with these people, the only character who seemed like a real person instead of a reality-show-enhanced cartoon character was Brock Davies, a guy with a shitty history of domestic violence assault and unpaid child support.

I’m here to talk about the unspeakably cruel reunion episodes. I’m sure it’s all been normalized for regular viewers, but I was floored by the emotional torture that Andy Cohen casually inflicts on these people. A typical segment would look like this: Cohen would replay a clip from the show in which one cast member said horrible things about the other cast member, and then ask the victim to react to the horrible things said about him or her. The victim would devolve into a sobbing mess because they’re not only watching a close friend say terrible things about them, they’re also aware that there are millions of people watching and judging and filling up comment sections they can’t bring themselves to avoid.

Does Andy Cohen console these sobbing messes? Does he provide space for them to compose themselves or offer them on-the-spot therapy? He does not. He smiles and casually moves on to the next segment, where he will repeat the process again. This goes on for three hours until everyone on the stage has been completely wrung out. Ariana had to relive the affair, the aftermath, and all the terrible things her friends said about her, and then she was asked to react to it, to open up an emotional vein and let it all out until she was completely numb.

The cameras continue to roll even during the commercial breaks, just in case someone has a nervous breakdown, because that would make for great television. If Ariana had murdered Tom Sandoval on stage, Andy would have stepped back to give the cameras room to get a close-up of the wound, and as he lay dying, Andy would have asked Sandoval to react to his own stabbing. “Before you pass on to the great afterlife, please tell us how it felt when your girlfriend of nine years mortally wounded you?”

I’m not begrudging anyone for watching. It makes for compelling television. But whatever they are paying them, it’s not enough to cover the therapy bills for the PTSD Cohen repeatedly subjects them to. There was a moment in the third hour, when Ariana was screaming that she just wanted Sandoval to go away forever and that she never wanted to see him again and “Please just get out of my life” that I actually felt a tingle of sympathy for Sandoval, who had been reduced to ugly crying. No one should have to ugly cry on camera.

It was mean and cruel, but these cast members must be made of different stuff than the rest of us because while I’d disappear from public life forever, they’re already reacting to their reactions and pouring their hearts out on various podcasts. Maybe that’s how they process, or maybe they’re just self-hating masochists who value fame and money over their own mental health. I don’t get it. All I know is that I went in hoping for some high drama, but ten minutes into it, I had to put down the popcorn because I was sick to my stomach.