'Vanderpump Rules' Recast with Soulless Simpletons

I don’t even know where to begin, because I only came to Vanderpump Rules so I could follow the Scandoval controversy because no one would shut up about it. Scandoval, however, led to the series’ ultimate demise — Ariana Madix is hosting Love Island and Tom Sandoval detoured onto America’s Got Talent — and the show has been completely recast.

By the end of the 11th season, I was done with the original cast, but dear sweet lord, what I wouldn’t give to have them back. They were so “adult” by comparison. This new cast? Blandly attractive idiots, every last one of them. There isn’t a single likable person in the bunch, and they’re all playing hard for the cameras. It’s not about organic reality-series storylines. It’s about branding and follower counts.

There’s plenty of drama, but it all feels performative. The reboot returns to its roots — Lisa Vanderpump’s SUR restaurant — where servers and bartenders are sleeping together, screaming at each other, and drinking on the job. You’d hope for some Below Deck-style competence, at least, but these people can’t even manage that. SUR looks like it’s circling the drain, and no one seems to care.

There’s one woman, Natalie, who has worked at SUR for eight years and appears to be the nucleus of most of the mess. She’s coming off a week-long suspension because, on her night off, she showed up at the restaurant and got into a loud, drunken fight with her 54-year-old ex-boyfriend (she’s half his age). He also used to be the ex-boyfriend of another SUR server, Demy, who doesn’t even have the decency to spell her name with an i. Demy and Natalie somehow maintain a fragile friendship, which is more than we can say for Natalie and Kim, another employee who’s been dating Marcus for over a year. Kim is jealous of Natalie and Marcus’s so-called brother-sister dynamic — and probably for good reason, because Marcus seems like the kind of guy who will screw anything that walks.

Marcus is also best friends with Shayne, who likewise doesn’t know how to spell his name and who is — like everyone else — some kind of dollar-store model. He doesn’t work at SUR, but he’s generically hot, so he’s in the cast. God knows it’s not because he has charisma, charm, or even a spark of personality. The same goes double for Jason and Chris, who are “training” as bartenders but also work as male strippers, have OnlyFans accounts, and probably shouldn’t be allowed to serve drinks to anyone. They’re idiots. Worse, they’re boring idiots.

That’s really the theme of the entire cast: people who look and act like AI-generated models powered by the energy of half a glass of room-temperature water. They’re the worst of humanity. And while I’m sure we’ll get a handful of cheating scandals this season, those only matter when there are actual stakes. These people are incapable of genuine emotion and still perform for the cameras as though they’re trying to shake seismographs in Calabasas.

Hell, this show had the audacity to force us to watch two men bro out on the weight machine, then follow it with the male trainees after a surfing excursion talking about how they’re going to be the next Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Please. This isn’t television. It isn’t even trash. It’s loud, vacant people mimicking what they’ve seen on other reality shows, desperate to squeeze a few more OnlyFans subs out of the void.

Tom Sandoval had a dark and ugly soul. But at least he had a soul. It’s more than I can say for any of these people.