BRITTANY AND BETRAYAL: FAREWELL TO THE LAST SOMEWHAT RELATABLE CAST MEMBER ON VANDERPUMP RULES

Left to right: Lisa Vanderpump, Jax Taylor, Brittany Cartwright. Photo: Bravo/Nicole Weingart/Bravo

After part 1 of the reunion, I’m out of sympathy or empathy or quite frankly f*cks to give for Brittany, the last remaining “relatable” cast member of Vanderpump Rules.

It’s generally agreed upon that Brittany Cartwright is the only decent human being (if we could even call the others human beings) of the SUR/Pump crew. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, she’s never cheated, lied, or stolen while she was on the show. She comes across as a generally polite and sweet person.

Yet somehow she was suckered into a relationship with human trash barge, Jax Taylor. Jax made her (yes, I’m going to say made) get breast implants. He has yelled at her in an outright abusive manner. He has cheated on her and eventually admitted it. He is, as Stassi Schroeder has repeatedly pointed out, most likely a sociopath.

So why have I given up on Brittany? Because in spite of the absolutely awful way Jax has treated her, she reveals in the Vanderpump Season 6 reunion that they have gotten back together. She had an opportunity to get out of a completely toxic situation and chose to stay.

They didn’t have kids (no, fur babies don’t count). They weren’t married. Yes, keeping the apartment they cohabitate in on her SUR salary was probably going to be tough. However she could have extricated herself pretty cleanly. At one point earlier in the season I wondered if her motivation was she was afraid she wasn’t a character enough on her own to maintain her role on the show if she broke up with Jax.

This fear was dispelled when the entirety of the rest of the cast rallied around her after Jax admitted cheating on her. The show crafted a story line about her trying to explore single-hood, thus solidifying her space in their social ranks.

I know there’s a redemptive moment where Jax seems like a normal human being when he talks about his father passing. That is admittedly a horrible thing for anyone to experience. However it doesn’t excuse the rest of his terrible behavior. He even talks over her during her trying to share her part of the experience.

Also holy shit, I never thought the entirety of the cast would defend Stassi, but I guess Patrick was a disgusting enough character to bring together this volatile band of miscreants. The way Patrick talks to Lisa Vanderpump during the season finale was disrespectful, predatory, and despicable. I’m glad that Stassi seems to finally have snapped out of her Stockholm Syndrome.

Sandoval meanwhile, continues to be a combative moron and bite the hand that feeds them. He’s so insanely deluded, thinking that he knows better than LIsa who is a proven restaurateur (to a degree, I have eaten at Pump and it is…. yeahhhh). She certainly has a lifetime more experience than Sandoval. Watching Sandoval get upset over being called out for taking a Fireball shot right before a business meeting proves exactly how deluded these people are.

Tom Sandoval, who thinks he knows better than Lisa Vanderpump how to run a bar. – Bravo

Speaking of the queen of delusion, let’s talk about Scheana and Rob. Watching everyone shut down when she begins talking about him is hilarious. That relationship was doomed from the start, and yet Scheana was so enamoured of him it’s kind of gross … also her defending Shay is bat shit cray. Also she is not a good enough actress to fake the surprise at hearing Rob is still trying to contact other cast members.

Does Lala know how to say any word without abbreviating or infantilizing it? I guess for someone who still drinks from a bottle (I am still beyond baffled by this) it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Jax freaking out at the end of the episode and screaming at no one, and Brittany just sitting there quietly goes back to my main point that I am out of ways to try to empathize or sympathize with the people of this show. Imagine if she was your friend in real life (she’s probably the only person from the show until now I’d even be willing to hypothesize this about), and kept going back to Jax? You’d run out of patience for it real fast, and that is where I’m at as an audience member.