Our Vanderpumpers stand solemn and still in a makeshift enchanted forest. A golden light, the kind that only falls during that magic hour right before the dusk, illuminates the blissed-out looks on their faces. For once, there is no evident contention between any of them. For once, nobody is projecting blame or backhanding someone across the face while wearing a large spiky ring. They are, each and every one of them, steadfastly focused on the present; at this moment, they have silently agreed to forget the past and to not even contemplate the certain messiness of the future, the one that will begin as soon as the bride slips out of her dress that’s apparently been constructed from dingy doilies. The floaties they went tubing in just a few days ago will have to be deflated for the long trip home. The empty cans of Coors Light will get tossed into a recycling bin. See, nothing lasts forever – not a wedding, not even an edible made from the finest cocoa, granulated sugar, and weed one can locate in all of Los Angeles proper – and even though the Bravo editors have worked overtime (and have seriously earned their paychecks) to keep us fixated on this one perfect second in time, those of us who aren’t slightly stoned and standing on top of twigs in some forest cannot help but understand that, despite the evident joy radiating off our television screens, what we are shamelessly being sold here is nothing but a comforting narrative, one that is completely unfaithful to all the interlocking tales that have come before.
I’ve long been aware that I am an easy cry, though it's far more typical for me to cry happy tears. Such a thing occurred just this week when I was (again) shut out of snaring myself a ticket to an event headlined by Bruce Springsteen and then, just an hour or so later, I received a text from my smoking hot fairy godfather with a picture of the ticket he’d procured for me. I cried right then and there – in public – and it was a combination of things that caused my reaction: the knowledge that I would be in a room with the one artist who has defined every single profound stage of my life; the Technicolor fantasy taking hold that maybe this would be the time I’d meet him and we’d end the evening weaving one another friendship bracelets while deconstructing every lyric he's ever written; the understanding that another person did whatever he had to do just to make me happy – all of it together yielded a joy that manifested out of my tear ducts. When it comes to movies or TV, I’ve also been known to cry the second a montage begins, especially if it’s scored by some instrumental music heavy on the violins. There are times I hate myself for those tears. I’m aware, even as I rustle around my purse for some probably-used Kleenex, that I’m so being manipulated, that the movie isn’t even all that good, that what I’m really reacting to is a carefully assembled collection of sounds and images and yet I’m still sitting in a dark theatre dabbing at my eyes. Under no circumstances am I saying here that no movie moment deserves my tears. In fact, I’ve long lived under the assumption that if you didn’t bawl your fucking eyes out when Mufasa was thrown off a cliff, you’re categorically dead inside.
As neither Mufasa nor his spirit showed up at Katie and Schwartz’s wedding ceremony, I did not tear up during last week’s episode of Vanderpump Rules and I didn’t expect that I would. But I did buy in for a while to the idea that these people are such wonderful friends who root for one another and support one another and have gathered in the woods to honor a couple who will probably be together for all of eternity – and then I fell with a thud right back to Earth. Oh, right, I said to myself. Because in just the wedding party alone, these minor skirmishes have occurred:
• Stassi slapped Kristen hard in front of friends, strangers, and a camera crew.
• Katie was sliced out of Stassi’s life for a good year or so for reasons a mere viewer like myself cannot even begin to comprehend.
• Kristen slept with Stassi’s boyfriend and has publicly fantasized about murdering both Sandoval and Ariana with instruments that include – but are not limited to – a sharp knife and a Mack truck.
• Jax singlehandedly tried to break up the bride and groom.
• Jax also started a rumor that his girlfriend (perhaps the bustiest of the bridesmaids) went down on Kristen (perhaps the most clinically insane of the bridesmaids) one drunken evening.
• Staying on Jax for a second, it was also this man who proves definitively that modeling has an expiration date who leaked all the information about the time Schwartz cheated on Katie in Vegas. Did he do such a thing so Katie could carefully weigh her options and then make an informed decision about whether or not she wanted to remain in her relationship? Please. Jax spread the news because his terribly limited belief system is ruled by one thought alone: When confronted about being a lying asshole, deflect by pointing out everyone in this hemisphere who has also at some point told a lie. And should you have to point at a friend and subsequently ruin his life in the process, well, that’s just the way the steroids crumble.
• The groom has continually announced that the bride is crazy while the bride made sure to let every person who has ever watched Bravo know that the groom suffers from periodic impotence.
So even though the ceremony is picture perfect (you know, as long as the bride’s dress gets cropped out of every frame of film), it’s patently impossible for many viewers of this show to buy what we’re being peddled here. We’ve seen too much. We know too much. The people who literally helped us form our negative opinions about the bride and the groom are the actual bride and groom! And so, though I wish Katie and Schwartz well because why in the hell would I not, I will not be the least bit surprised if Scheana ends up with a new member in her Divorced Women’s Club, an organization that will serve no shellfish at its gatherings and whose offices will be lined with humungous photographs of Scheana stabbing the crop top she wore to her first wedding with an icepick while she wonders if maybe Stassi will show up at some point and pass her a note written on loose-leaf paper that’s been folded into a triangle with “Do you like Scheana?” scrawled next to the words “YES” and “NO” and Stassi will have finally checked the “YES” box and all will glorious in the universe.
But Katie has to get married before she can eventually be anointed Vice President of Questionable Fashion & Loyalty Lieutenant for Scheana’s organization, so we begin tonight back in that happy place where resentments have been repressed for the time being. Lisa is presiding over the ceremony and she’s dressed like she just hightailed it from the fanciest coven meeting on the planet where I hope she sacrificed James to the Gods of the underworld. She’s in the forest now, though, and every single person there hangs on the words of advice she bestows upon a couple that looks really happy after tirelessly brawling with one another for an entire season. That advice? You are never too old to hold hands. Respect each other. Don’t text after doing shots of tequila. And it’s all rather good advice, though I sort of wish she’d tossed in that perhaps brandishing their lives for pay on a reality show might not be the finest of ideas, but Lisa is an executive producer on this show and she probably knows that if Katie and Schwartz leave, she’s bound to be stuck with Kristen and Jax until the very end of time.
When it’s time for the vows, Schwartz’s hands shake and he eventually begins to break down and the whole thing is pretty adorable. Katie follows by declaring her love right back and everyone in the wedding party – including the dogs – look positively overcome with emotion. And now they’re married officially and I think I speak for everyone when I say that I hope Schwartz’s penis works on his wedding night and that Kristen eventually truly commits to a lifetime of therapy because hearing her mention the fake engagement ring she sometimes wears concerns me terribly.
At the reception, Jax splits his pants right near his crotch, Shay sits as far away from his wife as he possibly can without climbing a tree and eating dinner from high in some evergreen, Lisa mentions to Sandoval that he should consider running her new business, and one of Schwartz’s triplet brothers gives not one but two drunken speeches because he knows this might be his only chance to ever speak in front of a crowd before heading back to the bedroom he shares with the rest of his brothers in Florida. Then it’s Sandoval’s turn and he manages to refrain from recommending that the bride and groom get an annulment immediately so he and Schwartz can finally just be together forever and then Stassi gets up and declares the entire wedding “really fucking cool” before the party really begins. A band is there and everyone dances and eventually Brittany and Jax wander away to a place that’s private – you know, where only the cameras are – and he starts the conversation by telling her that he doesn’t think things are going well for them anymore before laughing and saying that he’s just kidding because apparently it wasn’t enough for him to tell Schwartz right before the wedding that he’d never see another vagina ever again; he also though it would be hilarious to pretend to break up with his girlfriend during the reception. But Brittany has nothing to worry about because Jax informs her that marriage will happen for them and the only thing they need to figure out are the logistics, like where the wedding should be and how he should propose and when they can get their next set of implants so they will have set properly before they take off on a honeymoon to one of the Hawaiian islands that have not permanently banned Jax from its shores. That Brittany is one lucky girl, huh?
Then Sandoval takes Ariana aside to tell her that Lisa offered him a great opportunity to run her new restaurant and that he wants to have children one day with her and to marry her and there’s something sweetly comforting about seeing two people on one of these shows who always have one another’s backs and choose not to sell the other out for the sake of a juicy storyline. It’s also vaguely comforting to see a woman on television who’s not desperate to go the conventional route and get married because that simply might not be her path and for her to announce such a thing while wearing the best outfit in the place almost caused me to fucking burst into a round of applause.
Also: Jax motorboats Brittany’s tits on the dance floor.
Also: Kristen makes sure to tell her boyfriend her ring size and the guy does not run fleeing into the wilderness.
Also: Shay is still absolutely nowhere to be found.
As the evening progresses, Lisa takes Sandoval and Schwartz aside to let them know that she’d like both of them to run her new business and that she’s thinking of calling it Tom-Tom’s. At this bit of spectacular news, Sandoval becomes ecstatic and Schwartz becomes catatonic and it’s a bit of a reminder that it’s a damn good thing Schwartz is so cute because it’s clear the guy doesn’t have an ambitious bone in his entire body and that would be a way tougher thing to deal with if the guy didn’t have a nice face. Meanwhile, Stassi bounds over to Ariana to ask if Ariana still thinks she’s annoying and Ariana all but nods her head and agrees that yes, Stassi is annoying. But then she becomes emotional and explains that she’s working so hard so she doesn’t end up some thirty-year-old bartender and though Stassi comforts her, she’s also rather thrilled that she has finally broken through Ariana’s steely exterior because she had a bet with someone that Ariana does so have working tear ducts. At the end of their conversation, Ariana basically announces that she doesn’t think Stassi is a total monster and the two bond over how often they both fantasize about murdering people extra slowly and I suppose their surface friendship lasted for a time, but rumor is that time came to an end and I guess we’ll hear more about how such a thing came to pass as well as the most effective ways to leisurely suffocate someone during the upcoming three-fucking-part Reunion.
With the wedding now behind them, we flash-forward three months and land back in Los Angeles where Scheana pulls up to Lisa’s home in quiet tears. She’s there to explain that her husband goes missing for six days at a time and she’s not only been lying to her family and friends, but to herself as well. “Since you’ve gotten married it’s been bullshit,” Lisa declares – and it turns out Queen Vanderpump is correct because Shay’s back on pills and he’s been hiding it from her and he cleaned out her bank account and she loves him but she knows she has to finally be done with this marriage. And that night, Scheana and a camera crew sit in her living room when Shay walks in. The guy looks worn out – dirty – and he tells her that she never listens but at least he got her attention by not coming home. These are the rantings and the rationalizations of a toddler strung out on pills and Scheana lets him sit there and lie to her face enough times so she can walk away knowing she gave it everything she had, that she cannot be married to a man who looks her in the eyes and blatantly deceives her, and then she tells him that she is going to see a lawyer on Friday and this relationship is over and the whole thing is so sad that I kind of wish Schwartz’s brother would fly back to California – just for one more day – and make a speech right there in Scheana’s living room about how her future will be bright and that one day she will marry a man who is nothing but honest with her and they will stand together in an enchanted forest under the moonlight as Lisa Vanderpump’s tuxedo-clad puppies howl happily in the distance.
Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon.com in paperback and for your Kindle. Also be sure to check out her website at nellkalter.com Her Twitter is @nell_kalter