It was at all times in regards to the pasta—and it was at all times about Tom. If that sentence means nothing to you, then you definately’re most likely additionally unsure why one thing referred to as “Scandoval” has been trending nonstop for the previous week.
The reply lies within the Bravo-verse, which has been aflutter since TMZ broke the information that Vanderpump Guidelines star Tom Sandoval has been dishonest on Ariana Madix, his costar and girlfriend of almost 10 years, with their fellow castmate Raquel Leviss—who was beforehand engaged to their castmate James Kennedy, who as soon as cheated on Raquel with their costar Lala Kent, who…properly, you get the image. The drama surrounding SUR—that will be Horny Distinctive Restaurant, the Lisa Vanderpump–co-owned eatery round which Vanderpump Guidelines revolves—is at the moment at an all time excessive.
The messy, genuinely surprising information of Sandoval and Leviss has shaken even essentially the most informal Bravo fan to their core. The small print and allegations of the affair—that it had been occurring for six months; that Sandoval’s finest buddy and enterprise companion, Tom Schwartz, could have helped cowl it up; that when Madix reportedly caught Sandoval sneaking out of Leviss’s visitor room in the midst of the night time, he allegedly instructed Madix he was merely getting her a glass of water—are sufficient to make your head spin. Heck, even the paper of file has gotten concerned, with The New York Occasions releasing an explainer breaking down the affair for the uninitiated.
Even the initiated, although, could really feel shocked to see *Vanderpump Guidelines—*a decade-old actuality franchise—making such a splash in spite of everything this time. Lately, it’s appeared as if Vanderpump Guidelines was on its final legs, even that it wanted to be put down for the nice of humanity.
The present’s nadir got here in June of 2020, when longtime solid members Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute—an ex-girlfriend of Sandoval’s—have been fired from the collection after allegedly calling the police on one of many present’s solely recurring Black solid members, Religion Stowers. (Doute and Schroeder each apologized for his or her actions shortly earlier than the information they have been fired.) Bravo additionally fired lesser Vanderpump personalities Brett Caprioni and Max Boyens, after discovering outdated tweets of theirs that used the N-word.
And it didn’t finish there. In December of 2020, authentic Vanderpump solid member Jax Taylor and his spouse, Brittany Cartwright, introduced that they have been leaving the present as properly. Their exit adopted intense criticism of their determination to rent (then hearth) an antigay pastor to officiate their marriage ceremony. (Like Schroeder and Doute, in line with Folks, Taylor additionally made false allegations about Stowers, saying that she was needed by the police. Taylor has not commented on his assertion.) In her wider have a look at the racial reckoning at Bravo in 2021, author Anna Peele famous that the as soon as delightfully messy actuality collection had change into “a legal responsibility”; the solid shake-up appeared to be the community’s try to rescue the franchise.
As if the stench of racism and homophobia weren’t sufficient to bitter the scrumptious cocktail that was Vanderpump Guidelines, the truth collection subsequently received, properly, sort of boring. Reducing free all these brokers of chaos left the present with a core solid that was older, wiser, and wealthier than ever earlier than, swapping drunken fights behind literal rubbish cans for passive-aggressive arguments between semi-stable {couples} shifting into an identical houses within the Valley. Illicit affairs and questionable hookups have been traded for tense arguments about whether or not or to not have kids (Sandoval needed them, Madix didn’t—maybe sensible in hindsight.) It’s true that after virtually a decade, the previous 20-something servers of SUR have been now of their mid to late 30s, coming into new, extra mature chapters of their life. However whereas that made sense from a passage-of-time perspective, it didn’t essentially make for thrilling actuality tv.
