Not very long ago I stumbled upon a Buzzfeed article titled Why Parents Hate Caillou – a cartoon (advertised as educational) that features a 4-year-old boy who apparently is a complete asshole, with his tantrums and piss-poor attitude and such. From what I’m told this is the general demeanor of any 4-year-old yet parents are convinced that if their child watches this cartoon then Caillou will infiltrate their child’s mind like a subliminal message and subsequently posses them with behavior that probably already exists. I’m not convinced that this is how it works but if you believe that your toddler will become a monster by simply watching this cartoon then by god don’t let your tween and/or teen watch Vanderpump Rules – it’ll have you convinced that your child will remain mentally locked in their teen years for the rest of their lives, thus directly contributing to the demise of our world. And it’ll be All. Your. Fault. (No, no, it’s OK that I watch it. I’m a for real grown up with bills and responsibilities and everything! It can’t turn me!)
Vanderpump Rules does a better job of showing what a 30-year-old with high school problems looks like than the 90s version of Beverly Hills 90210 ever did. But Jenn, maybe it’s the producers plying them with alcohol and getting them drunk in an attempt to instigate drama? Maybe, but that doesn’t explain why they continue to be stupid while sober. Then again, I can’t quit watching the show so what do I know. I’ll tell you what I know: I’ve been watching the show since its debut a few years ago and unless my TV is out-of-date I’m pretty positive that quite a few of them are nearly unrecognizable. If they were actual teens I would chalk it up to aging but in this case it’s 30-year-olds who are combating aging with the help of their plastic surgeons.
Take Jax for instance: A former model who looks so different that if it wasn’t for his inability to quit lying, stealing and womanizing you’d think he’d been replaced. In addition to a new face, this season he has added theft charges and extreme narcissism to his resume´. Not that he wasn’t full of himself before, but this year he’s brought in an arsenal of conceit that I can only surmise is a side effect of his latest nose job, and can only hope will result in a scenario that’s something out of a Tales From The Crypt episode where he becomes so engrossed in himself he wakes up one morning to find that every last person in the world has morphed into a heightened version of himself and upon discovering that his new nose is the culprit behind this debacle, hurries to see his plastic surgeon only to find that it was no plastic surgeon at all, but instead a satanic wizard who’s taken the form of one Stassi Schroeder.
In real life Stassi is back: not as a satanic wizard who preys on Jax, but as a satanic wizard who preys on everyone. After quitting SUR and telling everyone to suck it she found her self friendless, jobless and homeless, so naturally she conjured up her magics to weasel her way back in. Her comeback was a very humbling one as she kicked off her return by apologizing/groveling to Lisa and freeloading off her once arch nemesis Kristen Doute. She then used her special wizard powers to make Schwartz believe she’s no longer an asshole. And finally she used her last ounce of power to win over Katie and with all of her powers drained her story line became boring and who cares.
And then there’s Kristen, who managed to keep her job on the show by turning up her crazy by about 5 notches. At least once a week Kristen made sure to mention she was in therapy and tried her best to convince America that she was totally and completely, 100% sane. If you watched the same show I watched (which shut up yes you did) then you’ll notice that what therapy actually did for her was give her a level of self-confidence that manifested itself into some sort of mild form of turrets which caused her to constantly say “suck a dick” and made her head – whole upper body, really – sway and twitch non-stop whenever she spoke, although the twitching could just be the shakes from always being drunk. Who knows. What I do know is after a while it became pretty painful to watch. In addition to her role as The One Most Likely To Have a Psychotic Breakdown she’s also the proud owner of a t-shirt line. Never heard of it? Well I took a moment to look at her product and, well, how should I describe it? You know those annoying posts that annoy you on Facebook and have now been turned into pictures by self-proclaimed poets and show up in your Instagram feed by people who probably need a bit of counseling? You know the ones: they say ridiculous things like “today is now, tomorrow hasn’t happened yet, so don’t worry.” And then idiots reply with things like “OMG, so needed to read that today.” That’s what her t-shirts are like: every annoying post on Instagram turned into a walking billboard. They’re awful.
Speaking of annoying, did anyone else find Scheana unbearable this season? I mean, more unbearable than usual. At first it was just her voice, which I hope is just an affectation she developed after moving to LA. But this season she really brought out the big guns. In seasons past Scheana got her attention by showcasing her ability to channel other personalities and make them her own: first she channeled Tammy Fay Baker with a focus on her makeup skills, then she channeled her inner T-Pain when her songs had to be extremely auto-tuned to mask her undeniably cringe-worthy voice. This season she took a different approach and used a new attention grabber: crying, sympathy-garnering crying. Shed a tear as she cries while downing a bottle of wine, explaining that she is fortunate enough to not know what it’s like to have an addiction problem so she simply can’t understand what’s wrong with her husband, so she berates him like a child. Pour one out for the demise of her friendship with Katie – a situation that she completely made up in her head because she didn’t want to be left out now that Stassi was back. Grab the tissues and try to hold back your tears as you watch her shed her own because Ariana basically told her she needed to quit her shit. It’s tough being Scheana; all of the crying she did this season has resulted in an influx in her need for Botox. Scheana 2.0 is awful, I’d like her to bring back T-Pain Scheana – the one that created terrible music but really didn’t care what anyone thought. At lease that version was tolerable.
As for the rest of the cast, either they were just extra boring this year or everyone else’s heightened bullshit overshadowed them. Tom Sandoval (Tom 1) has a band, Ariana is sick of everyone’s bullshit.
Tom Schwartz (Tom 2) and Katie Maloney are still together and, after some coercion from Katie, now engaged. Katie spends her days working at SUR, planning the wedding, and writing her blog. Tom spends his days hanging out with anyone who isn’t working and sprinkling in an audition here and there. While it may appear he’s the most immature, he actually appears to be the most level-headed. I like Tom 2 and I believe he’s on the show so the producers don’t cause everyone to completely lose faith in humanity.
And last but not least, this season we were treated to some new people: one James Kennedy and one Lala Kent. James is a busboy by day, DJ by night and a tantrum throwing alcoholic full time. Lala is the new hostess who is also the new Scheana, i.e., the one the girls pick on for no apparent reason. Both are in their early twenties and when liquored up, both are equally ridiculous. They fit in perfect. Side note: James used to date Kristen, then moved on to Lala after he and Kristen broke up. Kristen hates Lala because of this which makes Lala hate Kristen, which makes Lala act crazy around her, which is how Kristen used to act around Ariana who is dating Kristen’s other ex-boyfriend, which means that Kristen now has to deal with her very own Kristen. What goes Kristen, comes back Kristen. Don’t be Kristen.
So there you have it, what it looks like to be a 30-year-old with first world problems and a teenage mentality. Does it make you nervous? Is it your worst nightmare realized? Don’t worry, the show will be back for another season so there’s plenty more where this came from. Except next season I’ll write after each episode so you get a weekly helping of paranoia. You’re welcome. Now off you go, enjoy the weekend while you can.
jennavision 