Popular reality show Vanderpump Rules is reprehensible
I really tried my best to watch the full 7 seasons of the Bravo Reality series Vanderpump Rules but it is so vicious and filled with backstabbing hatred that I just had to stop. The show that focuses on the lives of the employees who work at restaurants owned by Lisa Vanderpump is so depressing and annoyingly filled with lying, cheating haters, I just couldn’t finish. The show is reprehensible.
By Ray Hanania
I started binge-watching “Vanderpump Rules” on the recommendation of a friend who said it was a fascinating reality show about a West Hollywood restauranteur, Lisa Vanderpump, whose restaurant employees share their intimate social life each week with the world.
It didn’t take long, however, to be sickened by the show and realize that the only real talent is one of venom, hostility and loathing. The appeal of the show is driven by those “qualities” — how vicious and cruel some people can be.
The focus of the reality show are the bartenders and wait staff at Sur and Pump, two restaurant bars in West Hollywood owned by Lisa Vanderpump.
Vanderpump, a British restaurateur, television personality, “author” and former actress on the Bravo series “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” and ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” owns with her husband, Ken Todd, 36 restaurants, bars and clubs located in London and Los Angeles.
Watching Vanderpump Rules is like being in a traffic jam caused by two cars that have gotten into an ugly and bloody head-on traffic accident — the passengers and rivers are bloodied and their guts have spilled out onto the roadway. Sadly, many people love to stare at that kind of gruesome scene, and they enjoy watching other people’s tragedy, although they won’t admit it. It’s a sickness that Vanderpump Rules exploits to the max.
There are a few people on the show who are “good,” like Ariana Madix, Tom Sandoval, and Sheana Shay, characters frequently trashed by the other reality show antagonists, like Stassi Schroeder, Kristen Doute, Kattie Maloney-Schwartz, and Lala Kent, four of the most vicious women I have ever seen on television.
I always knew there were terrible people in the world like them, but you just don’t expect to have to suffer them longer than one encounter. You meet people like them often in life, but when you do, you walk away and avoid them. Stassi, Kristen, Katie and Lala are the primary drivers of the show’s vicious nature as they often very hypocritically attack others on the show to make themselves look good.
Stassi is one of the worst but the absolute most vicious is Kristen, who is such a hypocrite you will find yourself yelling at the TV. And the way Katie bullies her finance, husband Tom Schwartz, is truly disgusting. Schwartz is a kindly but frequently bullied male on the show whose abuse by Katie is painful to watch.
I guess that’s what Lissa Vanderpump wants to sell in order to drive business to her restaurants, vicious, ugly hatred in the form of beautiful women who spend most of their time male-bashing. The hypocrisy that Vanderpump cares about the LGBTQ is painfully laughable, given how the show sells vicious entertainment. It is outrageous as she always turning a deaf ear to the complaints of her male employees who are always wrong and panders to her female and Gay employees.
Vanderpump Rules is all about women bashing and bullying men and deciding, when it is convenient, to break up relationships.
The final episode for me was in early Season 7 when Vanderpump decided to fire James Kennedy, the God Son of the late musician George Michael. Kennedy is musically talented but has one major flaw, he turns sarcastic when he drinks. But he only does so when he is provoked, usually provoked by people like Kattie, an overweight, talentless whiner who is constantly complaining about others and always trying to tell others what to do.
Kattie provoked a confrontation with Kennedy by body shaming him after he finished a phenomenal DJ performance at Sur. Kennedy was targeted by the fearsome four monsters, Stassi, Kristen, Kattie and Lala, when a jealous Kristen managed to convince one of Kennedy’s former girlfriends to confront his current girlfriend, Raquel Leviss, asserting the two had been having an affair. Kristen’s only talent besides wild sex is to go out of her way to injure people. The whole purpose wasn’t to help Raquel, but to extract vengeance with Kennedy, with whom she also had an affair.
When Kennedy was confronted by the fearsome foursome, they taunted him and Kattie even body shamed him. But, she whined to the classless Lisa Vanderpump that Kennedy had body shamed her, never admitting it was an exchange that she provoked. Shame on you Lisa!!!!
It was the most disgusting moment of the show. But Kristen often leads lynch-mob injustice whipping up the Sur’s employees to attack anyone she dislikes with her poisonous spider pincers.
You have to wonder about someone like Lisa Vanderpump who claims to be a brilliant business woman, but whose real talent is to create an environment in which the most vicious and ugly abusive conduct is allowed to take place. She is more responsible for the abusive conduct of her staff than the small-minded staff members who have been taught that viciousness is how you get ahead in Hollywood.
Not surprisingly, the day before I sat down to write this review, having had it up to here with the moral corruption of her reality show, the news media was reporting that Vanderpump’s Dog Rescue business was being sued by an employee who alleged that she was being sexually harassed while working there.
Click here to read the Fox News story.
Apparently, Vanderpump claimed she wanted to create a safe environment for dogs but sadly can’t create an emotionally safe place for some of her celebrity employees.
The most entertaining aspects of the show involve moments when employees are in conflict, but a conflict that doesn’t go overboard with some really deep seated hatred. Those moments of normal crisis are resolved and made the show enjoyable to watch.
Sadly, the majority of the conflict is so ugly and hated-driven it pushes your senses and sensibilities.
I had to give up on the show before finishing the 7th Season on Hulu, where you can pick up past seasons without having to pay. Knowing how horrible everyone is
The few times I thought I might go to Hollywood to enjoy a dinner at Our or at Pump have been tempted by the fear of running into the crazies that work there and sell social injury as their only real talent.
I am most happy for one troubled cast member, Jax Taylor, who is frequently portrayed as a sleazy villain by the crazy Lynch mob assassins, Stassi, Kristen, Kattie and Lala. Jax had sex with Stassi and Kristen and they just can’t get over the fact he dumped them, finally meeting a decent girlfriend, Brittany Cartwright. Ironically it was a Stassi and Katie who went out other way to destroy the relationship between Kristin and Tom Sandoval, bullying Kristin to the point of tears.
Jax is frequently bashed by the four witches while they worked hard to break up his relationship with Brittany. The show’s incest is troubling and it is certainly not a TV show you would want your children, including your college-aged children to watch.
What Lisa Vanderpump should do to improve her show is to fire Stassi, Kristen and Katie, and rebuild the show around more positive characters like that of Sheana Shay, one of the nicest people on the series, or Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright, a couple caught in the normal problems that plague many couples. And there is the talented Tom Sandoval and his girlfriend Ariana Madix, who should get married immediately, if they haven’t already haven’t done so.
Sheana, Jax, Brittany, Tom Schwartz and Ariana are among the absolute nicest people on the reality TV show. You don’t have to be vicious and destructive to create entertainment drama. Yet, the conflict on Vanderpump Rules is not normal. It’s beyond normal and truly reprehensible. It is so destructive to social norms that it really should be banned from television as a destructive element for our youth.
But when you have an accident on the side of the road, bloodied to the extreme, you get the shock audience to stop and stare creating that traffic jam and a huge audience that apparently drives Bravo’s TV reality series ratings.
Vanderpump Rules’ ratings are soaked in social blood and gore. It’s a frightening program. There is no bravo for Bravo on this one.
Shame on you Lisa Vanderpump. You are not really as nice as you try to make yourself out to be.
Of course, as a viewer, maybe you like the social equivalent of the Halloween slasher films, or enjoy Crack. Then, you might find Vanderpump Rules to be entertaining, in a sleazy, disgusting way that appeals to society’s basest audiences.
Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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