There is a certain kind of Bravo fan I cannot stand: the kind who sees the first trailer for a new season of Housewives and posts on Elon Musk’s social media on Al Gore’s internet, “Ugh, they got nothing. FLOP!†It’s like this person wants to seem smarter and cooler than all the other fans by being the first to declare that something is over before it has even started. That’s why a few weeks back, when my editors here at Daddy Moneybags Vulture III’s website asked me if we should recap the new Vanderpump Rules spin-off The Valley, I couldn’t just say, “Ugh, they got nothing. FLOP!†I needed to come up with evidence.
There was plenty of it. The whole project seemed a bit doomed from the start, rushed into production post-#Scandoval in a seemingly cynical move by Bravo to capitalize on some of its frozen assets, and by “frozen assets†I mean Jax Taylor’s Botoxed forehead. Did we really need Jax Taylor back on our television screens? Here is a man who wouldn’t know the truth if it teabagged him, who drove us all insane for years with his nefarious egotism and willingness to beat even the silliest of stories to its death. And pairing him with Kristen Doute, a woman fired from Vanderpump Rules for racism reasons just a few short years earlier — were we expected to just forget these two’s checkered histories in exchange for some watered-down Vanderpump runoff? Because the first teaser didn’t give much reason to think it would be more than that; Vulture commenter Mcarman summed it up perfectly:
That was the prevailing sentiment from fans even after the first full trailer dropped. It was just lots of introductions and talk about babies, pregnancy, car seats. There were all these new people whom I didn’t want to meet, and even the people I knew I didn’t want to see again unless I was watching a TikTok compilation of Brittany saying “Rawt in Hell.†The trailer only has 110,000 views to this day.
What really clinched my disinterest, though, was Jax and Brittany’s separation, which came just days before the premiere of The Valley. I would not put it past Jax, who learned at the feet of meddler extraordinaire Lisa Vanderpump, to fake a separation just to get people to watch his new series. If they were resorting to fake scandal to promote this show, then there couldn’t be anything good on it, right?
This was all the evidence I needed, so when my editors asked what I thought, I said, and I quote, “Ugh, they got nothing. FLOP!†Well, of all the things I’ve been wrong about in my career, I think I might have been wrongest about The Valley.
We decided instead of full recaps to add a little tag to the end of the Vanderpump Rules recaps (which are some of the most popular on Vulture), and even as I started to watch the show, with my nose in the air and a sneer on my face, I didn’t believe it could be good. All of the people seemed somewhat interchangeable, except for Zack Wickham, a gay with a disposition and hairline that only Teresa Giudice’s mother could love. And what about Luke Broderick, Kristen’s new boyfriend, who seemed more like a pile of mulch in your driveway waiting for your father to put it in his treebeds than a real person? Please.
Even when fans started praising The Valley, I thought, This is the first time since the Obama Administration that there hasn’t been a new Housewives season on Bravo. They don’t like this; they’re just craving something new. But slowly, slower than even the rollout for MeeMaw’s Beer Cheese, I started to come around. A little laugh at one of Kristen’s jokes here, getting invested in whether Janet called Michelle a “racist Republican bitch†there. We have officially come to this place, and I have to admit that I was fully wrong: The Valley is — ugh, I have to say it — good reality television.
A lot of this is due to returning champion Kristen Doute, who talked about her cancellation on the show but still doesn’t seem to have learned from it. She’s still the misremembering, shit-talking, drama-creating goblin we first met in the SUR Alley (a future UNESCO World Heritage Site), and it turns out we wouldn’t want her any other way, other than maybe grappling a bit more with what got her fired in the first place. And the boyfriend, Luke? Not only does he hate living in L.A. and most of the other people on this show, I haven’t seen someone so raring to fight since Jax ripped off his chunky knit on season one of Vanderpump.
The rest of the cast is equally compelling. Jesse Lally is reality-television gold, a handsome narcissist with anger issues and a marriage that is rapidly falling apart. His wife, Michelle, doesn’t seem like a racist, but I think the “Republican†and “bitch†part of what Kristen said Janet said about her are fairly true. She also may or may not be having a long-term affair with an anonymous A-list Hollywood director who fans seem to think is the same man behind a two-part kung fu revenge movie Murder William. These two have already announced their separation, but I hope that if the show continues past this season — which I now must admit I would like —they both stay on as singles, because Jesse is gonna be a jerk about the divorce, Michelle is going to have a star-studded rebound, and we’re gonna see the whole friend group taking a variety of sides. Janet Caperna seems like a grade-A shit stirrer (a compliment) and her husband, Jason, was voted Jungle Gym We’d Most Like to Climb by Brian Moylan Magazine. Nia Sanchez is a perfect baby angel with postpartum, and she needs to be protected at all costs. Her husband, Danny Booko, is … there.
It’s been interesting to watch, as a chronicler of the reality-television arts and sciences, how the untested newbies are driving the show forward just as much as the nasties we knew from SUR. This all congealed in last week’s episode when Kristen stormed out of a dinner because she said that Jesse was attacking her with his aggression. Jesse and Luke then got into a huge fight in the hallway with Zack as a casualty, and Kristen retaliated by telling the entire world that Michelle had a boyfriend for a whole year whom Jesse didn’t know about. Suddenly, not only did the show have something, it had so much. Now I can’t stop watching.
And since I can’t stop watching, I know that means you, the Bravo faithful, can’t stop watching either. That’s why I’m not just here to apologize to Jax, to Kristen, to Bravo executives, to Zack’s wig, to the stupid fight about Jesse twisting Kristen’s nipple that made me want to die, to the memory of Giggy Vanderpump himself. The Valley is actually good and I was wrong. But, as a good Catholic boy, just saying sorry isn’t enough; I must also atone for my sins. That’s why you will be getting full recaps of the remaining episodes of the season. Please enjoy them and Bravo’s latest hit show. I always knew it would be good.