This past season of Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules was the kind of success story that reality TV producers can usually only dream of: Late in filming the season, cast member Tom Sandoval cheated on his longtime girlfriend Ariana Maddix with fellow cast member Raquel Leviss, and while the cheating itself didn’t happen on camera, it was exposed by tabloids long before being mentioned onscreen—meaning fans were able to examine everything that did happen on camera with an exciting new context. Naturally, the show milked it as hard as it possibly could, leading to the best ratings it has ever had.
It was also pretty repugnant from a moral standpoint, since even if these are people who have signed their lives over to the reality TV gods, they are still people, but why bother trying to unring that bell? In that spirit, the Vanderpump Rules people are moving forward with one of several spin-offs for the show, a list that already includes Hulu’s Vanderpump Villa, with a new series focusing on former cast members Jax Taylor, Brittany Cartwright, and Kristen Doute—all of whom had been previously booted from the show for comments they made about cast member Faith Stowers. Basically, if they wanted to specifically generate some buzzy drama, this is a good way to do it.
This comes from a Vulture report, which says that regular Vanderpump cast member Lala Kent (who has “anxiety” about the next season) said on an Amazon Live appearance that the Taylor, Cartwright, Doute spin-off will begin filming this week. She added that it’s “so weird” that they have their own show and that they’re not on the regular show, and also that the people from the regular show aren’t on their show, since they’re all “best friends” anyway, but that is sort of the point of it. This way, they don’t have to walk back firing anyone and they can get multiple different kinds of Vanderpump Rules shows out of the same cast of characters.
It’s like when The Avengers split off into their own solo movies, except these people aren’t generally as… helpful as The Avengers. So maybe it’s like when the Justice League members split off into their own solo movies. This show about Jax and Brittany is like The Flash. Hopefully there’s some crossover between people who watch Vanderpump Rules and people who know what The Flash is so they can explain if that’s too mean or not mean enough.
