An early and enduring critique of reality TV is that it amounts to little more than a cacophony of petty screaming and fighting: sound and fury, signifying nothing. Nevertheless, the genre is one of the most popular emergent art forms of the 21st century. In the place of sophisticated scripted dramas like Mad Men or The Sopranos, vast swaths of American audiences, myself included, now find our attentions deeply attuned to the whims of Mormon tequila brand owners and Instagram influencers flailing in doomed marriages. Our attention has shifted from archetypal antiheroes to a smattering of villains of a more minor sort.

Our favorite characters may be close to our own age or decades apart, with tastes that feel close to home or wildly luxurious. Cast members could be thrown together into a bespoke competition with the common goal of winning love or money, or they might be a group of people who all came of age while working in the same restaurant; or a cluster of young mothers who pantomime friendship on TikTok while struggling in terribly manipulative relationships with their partners and the church. 

(That last one is a reference to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: I watched the entire first season in a day. Do I recommend it? Yes. Is it existentially horrifying in a way I can’t fully explain? Also yes. I’m fascinated by Mormon folks’ love affair with soda–they can’t drink alcohol or coffee. An obsession with carbonated sugar water is one that I happen to share.) 

Lately, I’ve been running back tried-and-true favorite programming and introducing some new shows into the mix. 

There are many healthy methods to escape punishing self-scrutiny, but sticking my head in a relentless technicolor Wonka waterfall of dumb TV is among my favorites.

Prompted by my affinity for the backstabbing-heavy series The Traitors, I’ve also begun a deep dive into the reality career of Boston Rob Mariano, a deviously charming Survivor champion who wields his popularity like a deadly paring knife. Mariano managed to wrest a wife and a large cash prize out of his time in the proverbial Survivor jungle, but his ability to be admired by all his adversaries–even after stabbing them in the back and coming out victorious–is what’s truly admirable. 

I’ve always found a strange sort of comfort in the interpersonal chaos taking place at SUR, PUMP, and TOMTOM on Vanderpump Rules. These aren’t acronyms for obscure syndromes, but rather the names of three Lisa Vanderpump-helmed bar-restaurants that serve as backdrops for show’s cast members, who are themselves restaurant servers-turned professional personalities. I’m now so familiar with the show, I can sometimes leave it on as background noise when I fall asleep. Listening to lovers fall out in a bustling industrial kitchen works on me like a particularly toxic ASMR track. 

I love Stassi Schroder’s arc on Vanderpump Rules. Her personal pendulum swings wildly from jumped-up Queen Bee in earlier seasons to desperate wannabe as the narrative progresses – before Schroeder is eventually reinstated as Alpha after many an apology tour. But really, you could pick any cast member to focus on in the beginning, and you would be rewarded with Dickensian-levels of character development … or deterioration. 

I gobbled up season 6 of Love Island USA after I heard Vanderpump star Ariana Madix would be hosting, and took in her sparkly outfits and the grace with which she was carrying her newfound, nearly-nuclear star power. I admired the spunky personality of Love Island breakout Leah Kateb, and rooted for her through her dalliances with snake wrangler Rob and sweetie pie hunk Miguel, who eventually became her off-the-show boyfriend. I let all the brightly colored images and pop music and stolen kisses and drunken rants pass by and through my eyes and my brain.

Other people’s chaos, so brilliantly lit and expertly choreographed by the producers on each program, gradually served as a pumice stone applied to the rough edges of my own, humdrum chaos. Like Jemima Kirke pointed out: we might be thinking about ourselves too much. There are many methods to escape punishing self-scrutiny, but sticking my head in a relentless technicolor Wonka waterfall of dumb TV is among my favorites. 

At The Daily Beast, I breathlessly wrote about and reported on every new twist and turn in the development of Scandoval, the Vanderpump Rules cheating scandal that made headlines all over the world. I wrote deep, involved essays about Raquel Leviss, the young woman who had a deeply unfortunate affair with Madix’s ex partner Tom Sandoval. Alone in my studio apartment, I filmed lengthy TikToks explaining explosive reunion episodes. I was really thinking about this stuff. 

Scandoval fascinated me so much because it read to me as anybody’s worst case romantic scenario. It wasn’t just a cheating scandal but a bone-deep-betrayal playing out in 45 minute increments. What if your partner of 10 years had a secret love affair with a close friend in your inner circle? What if he bought his (then-secret) mistress vintage Versace sunglasses and gave them to her for her birthday, at a trip that you attended, right in front of your face? 

“What makes Leviss such a fascinating villain is the sophistication of her disguise, whether she was intentionally constructing it or not,” I wrote. “Because Raquel is conventionally pretty, ditzy, and endeared herself to everyone early in the season, it was easy to write her indiscretions off at first as the actions of someone who’s just lost, and a little obtuse.”

“But the sheer brazenness and extent of her affair with Sandoval…reveal just how gallingly flat Raquel Leviss is.”

Years later, I remain just as fascinated by the foundational themes of interpersonal turmoil: heartbreak, betrayal, friendship and sex. But while reality TV offers a buffet of curated messiness packed with all our favorite flavors, ready to be devoured; I’m not sure if the medium itself is valuable aside from its entertainment value. It does its job. It diverts us. 

Reality TV is expertly and diligently designed to show us to ourselves in a way that makes every cruelty and misstep seem like simply a stepping stone to the limelight. For diehard fans, the genre functions like a beloved sports team and the nightly news combined: reality TV comes with constant updates and subplots, has winners and losers and is dependent upon new conflict always coming just around the corner. Entertainment this effective should come with a warning. 

Bravo recently announced that Vanderpump Rules as we know it will be coming to an end. For its 12th season, no original cast members will return, and the show will instead be rebooted with younger, all-new, as-yet-unknown cast members. 

There’s no reason to mourn this development. The original SUR servers gave literally everything they had to making the show–perfectly crystallized forever in the amber of streaming–what it was, and the development of the reboot proves this: had Sandoval not destroyed his life, Madix’s life and decimated the ties that bind this group of people with his affair, the original show would still be limping along as Scheana, Lala and company aged into their 40s. 

Instead, Scandoval’s destructiveness proved that everything about Vanderpump Rules–the relationships, the feelings, the secrets–was real. So real, in fact, that even the most toxic group of friends on TV are being forced to mature and move on. 

On a recent weeknight, a friend and I traipsed to City Winery to watch Jax and Tom Schwartz hold court in front of an audience of wine-inebriated devotees. Jax discussed The Valley, the spinoff show faithfully cataloguing the dissolution of his marriage to Brittany Cartwright, and Schwartz told the crowd in all earnestness that if they told him they loved him, he’d give them anything they want. Sitting in the front row, having the time of my life, I felt very grateful to a spectator rather than a direct participant.