What will it take to save Vanderpump Rules?

Vulture

"There is something rotten in the state of Vanderpump," says Brian Moylan, echoing complaints from a Variety column that ran last month. "Sure, Lisa Vanderpump’s businesses on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood are all closed because of California’s state-wide lockdown, but there is something else wrong with her empire: Her signature reality show, Vanderpump Rules, sucks now." Moylan adds: "As a result of all this, some fair-weather fans have called for the show’s cancellation, but that seems like a waste of a good franchise and some of the greatest reality television personalities this side of Calabasas. So let’s instead take a glass-half-full approach here and ask what it will take to save what we once loved about the show. First of all, the old cast needs its own show(s). The original promise of Vanderpump Rules was that it followed the lives of people who worked in Lisa’s restaurant. As anyone who has worked in food service (in the before times) can tell you, it’s always a hotbed of partying and complex interpersonal relationships, so Vanderpump was a lot like Real Housewives but everyone was younger, hotter, and screwing each other. Eight years in, though, it is not that show anymore. All of the main characters are coupled up and settling down in the Valley. They have $2 million houses and are thinking about having kids. They have IRAs and mortgages, they should no longer be getting sloppy at Hollywood dive bars on a weeknight." ALSO: Vanderpump Rules has become maddeningly dull.