Practicing nonviolence is a respectable pursuit. It takes discipline, fortitude, and self-control. It also felt totally impossible while watching the 11th season of Vanderpump Rules, because Tom Sandoval sure kept acting like he wanted to get punched. This is not to say I personally want to punch Sandoval. But if someone were to feel such an urge after watching 15 episodes and three reunion specials of him trying to sell himself as a romantic hero after cheating on long-term partner Ariana Madix with their friend Raquel/Rachel Leviss and blowing up the series, well, I would completely understand.
Vanderpump Rules’s 11th season was an often messy, frequently unsatisfying experience in fourth-wall-breaking and failed image rehabilitation. As Madix vowed to avoid filming with the man who lied to her for months, slept with Leviss while Madix was out of town for her grandmother’s funeral, and tried to turn the coolest weather phenomena into a symbol of his torrid affair, Vanderpump Rules pivoted to center Sandoval’s desire to be forgiven by his castmates. This mostly involved everyone asking Sandoval to practice some — hell, any — self-awareness and take some responsibility for destroying both his relationship and the show as we know it, and him mostly refusing to do so. The series did its best to make him seem pitiable, but Sandoval undercut that attempt at every turn with his perpetual side-eye, smirk, and volatile temper. This man has Gaston’s chauvinism without any of its accompanying silliness, one-hit wonder Rex Manning’s egoism without the necessary one hit. He is white jeans worn after Labor Day, the candy-necklace string that gets caught in your teeth, a bottle of sour mix left unrefrigerated, and, as Madix said during a production-engineered beach trip, an HR violation waiting to happen.
Lest we end this cursed season with Sandoval thinking he succeeded in winning anyone over, here is a chronological, incomplete list of every time he was just asking to catch hands.
1. Offering to get Ariana “a nice hotel room” while he invites people over for his birthday. Buddy, why don’t you get the nice hotel room for your party instead of kicking her out?
2. Saying he got a white-noise machine because his conversations in the house were “being overheard” by Ariana and her friends. You are choosing to live in the house, but sure, go all The Conversation with your audio paranoia.
3. “I’m still very much in love with Raquel.” 🙄🙄🙄
4. What is this manicure? White and milky blue? Are we doing Easter year-round?
5. Calling Ariana “lazy” for not doing things around the house while he did — the entire evidence of which is footage of one time he emptied the litter box. The “this woman is an immoral failure for not being domestic enough” defense, cool, cool.
6. His smirking “I still do have friends” toast at his birthday party, attended entirely by randos involved with his band, friend Billie Lee (whom he allegedly isn’t talking to anymore), and a TomTom server who implies he’s tight with the “friend-group” and whom James hilariously dismisses with a “Who the fuck is this guy?”
7. Bringing up that James slept with Tom’s ex-girlfriend Kristen Doute as a way to absolve himself of sleeping with James’s ex-fiancée Leviss. Something that happened over a decade ago is no longer relevant to this situation.
8. Every time he did one of these big sighs in a confessional to underscore how emotionally wounded and vulnerable he’s become by all this.
9. Making Ann clean up the mess left by his birthday party. Does she get paid more to clean up after him? She does not.
10. Yelling at Lisa Vanderpump. She’s your greatest ally and strong-arms other cast members into hanging out with you, and you’re going to accuse this woman who basically signs your checks that she’s not being supportive enough???
11. When Sandoval’s not sighing, he’s doing this pouty, burying-his-head-in-his-hands thing. Blech.
12. This reaction … it’s very “child in trouble whose only response is to blame someone else.”
13. Winking at the camera: pass.
14. Comparing yourself with every white dad’s favorite cinematic protagonist … the one wrongfully convicted of a crime … the nerve.
15. Doing this reborn-martyr baptism pose, in a cold-plunge tub, is so much what people mock about the concept of Los Angeles that I’m surprised no one has yet edited this clip into an episode of Everybody’s in L.A.
16. Getting mad other people were making money off the affair, as if this entire show hasn’t been about the Vanderpump Rules cast making money from each other’s miseries, feuds, and infidelities. As Brian Moylan noted, “Lala sold hoodies, Katie has the sandwich shop, Scheana has her little song. Shit, even Sandoval has the continued success of Schwartz & Sandy’s and all of his band’s gigs, not to mention the ‘Dipped Out’ T-shirt he wore in last week’s episode.” Sandoval’s made money off being on the show for years; now he’s just pissed that other people are doing it, too.
17. Did “the entire nation” get way too involved in this affair and its aftermath? Absolutely. But thinking that Lala and Scheana and their podcast appearances are the problem, rather than how unapologetic Sandoval himself seemed in the season-ten reveal episode “#Scandoval” and the reunion episodes, is really the height of delusion.
18. Anyone else notice Sandoval is still wearing a little hoop earring with a lightning bolt, the secret sign of his affair?
19. Crying when Scheana says hi to him at the airport on the way to Lake Tahoe, like he didn’t just yell at her in public a few days ago???
20. Attempting outdoorsman cosplay before the gang goes on a trip to Lake Tahoe … where they stay in a mansion renting for $1,600 a night. Who believes this man can put together a campsite or chop wood? Be honest.
21. Claiming he and Raquel/Rachel didn’t have “malicious intent” when they were in their affair … maybe the first time. But seven months of deciding every day to keep lying and keep seeing each other, including when your long-term partner’s grandmother dies? What would be “malicious” under Sandoval’s definition, then? Maybe his insistence that breaking up with Ariana wasn’t “that simple” because she threatened suicide — which would be a pretty crummy thing to share publicly even if he didn’t later try to secure sympathy for his own suicidal ideation — counts?
22. Using the sledgehammer demolition at Lisa’s new restaurant in Lake Tahoe to try and get one over on everyone who mocked and insulted him, and then ignoring Lala’s very reasonable, “How about you hit the wall for your actions, though?” Typical.
23. Brushing off Brock’s concerns about his team leaking a rumor about Brock and Scheana by insisting “It never fucking happened.” Brock was one of Sandoval’s most consistent defenders this season, and in return he got indignation and defensiveness because Sandoval can’t be bothered to at least pretend to care about his friends’ feelings.
24. Repeatedly telling his castmates “I didn’t do anything to you,” while also attacking Lala and Scheana for their romantic histories. Bonus punch for every time he tried to make up with a female cast member by complimenting them physically, because apparently there is no other way to communicate with a woman.
25. “He said that life is lying”? When people tell you who they are, believe them, etc.
26. Hitting on women at his singles pool party by insulting Ariana. Real mature stuff.
27. “I’m just tired of being the fucking scapegoat” — I don’t think that “scapegoat” means what Sandoval thinks it means.
28. Comparing yourself to alleged murderer Scott Peterson in a way that is sympathetic to Scott Peterson is really something.
29. Telling Ariana to “put on your big-girl panties” when Ann is on record as having to pick up his underwear … Others’ undergarments shouldn’t be your concern when you can’t take care of your own, you know?
30. Claiming he paid for everything in the house, from toilet paper to pens, and arguing with a producer who asked why he brought this up again. It’s because it’s such a silly hill to die on, dude! And saying of Ariana, “She’s gonna be in for like, a very rude awakening … when she gets her own place,” is the delusional icing on the self-involved cake: Ariana was nearly 30 when they got together and had seemingly lived alone before, I think she knows how to make a Target run!
31. Lashing out at Raquel/Rachel with “She used me and now has thrown me away” instead of taking the actually pretty smart cue from James that Sandoval isn’t owed closure.
32. “Relationships never end well,” says the man solely responsible for making sure that his relationship did not, in fact, end well.
33. Comparing himself to the Japanese art of kintsugi, the name of which he doesn’t know and which he clunkily explains as “You ever seen that pottery, uh, where they, they break it, and they glue it together with, like, gold?” Somewhere, Great Pottery Throw Down judge Keith Brymer Jones felt a disturbance in his spirit, and no one should make this lovely man feel a disturbance in his spirit!
34. Everything involved in Tom Sandoval and the Most Extras’ performance their song “T.I.P.,” from Sandoval’s light-up leather harness to the lyrics “Is your ass good luck, ‘cause girl, I want to rub it.” All genies and djinns would like to be excluded from this narrative.
35. Why would you bother seals like this? Follow the National Park Service recommendation and maintain at least 25 yards’ distance from wildlife! Don’t be a jerk!
36. “Give me an example of male rage”? Brock and Sandoval, you can both say less.
37. Suggesting that Ariana, the woman whom he embarrassed on national television, has good taste in men: gross.
38. Introducing himself to Ariana’s new boyfriend, Dan, on camera, and wishing the couple good luck, after spending all season insulting Ariana, on camera.
39. Remember when Sandoval said he was in love with Raquel/Rachel and was saving himself for her? Is this how you treat someone toward whom you once held those feelings?
40. Saying he was “never so attacking” toward other cast members as they were to him. Thank you to the editors for immediately answering this with a supercut of Sandoval attacking Jax, punching a wall, and yelling at Ariana, Scheana, Katie, Kristen, and Lala over the seasons.
41. Making the contradictory complaints that his New York Times Magazine profile wasn’t glowing and also that “nobody read it.” If you would like to read Sandoval compare himself with O.J. Simpson and George Floyd in a shaky attempt to describe the media whirlwind around him, here you go.
42. Is this … a rape joke? A gay joke? A pegging joke? One thing it definitely is not is a good joke.
43. When confronted with a montage of all the times he and Katie have fought with each other, responding that “we’re gonna go bang it out.” James, Lala, and Andy all rolled their eyes at this; let me add my name to that list.
44. Insisting that “This is our job … this is what we do” when Ariana reiterated that she wasn’t emotionally ready to film with him in summer 2023, only three months after the affair became public. Continuously making it seem like Ariana was a disloyal soldier abandoning her post via “Ariana’s rules” rather than someone who did film, just not with him, has at least swayed Lala to Sandoval’s side, but I’m sorry, did a whole season of Vanderpump Rules not still get produced? We all just watched it!
45. When Ann served Something About Her sandwiches to the cast in the reunion’s final moments, Sandoval patting her shoulder with an overly friendly “Ann, you can clean up afterward, right? … Just kidding!” was really the toxic cherry on the melting, covered-with-ants sundae that was his arc this season. Ann, sue this man. That’s a storyline for season 12, you’re welcome.