For 11 seasons, Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules” has followed the triumphs, tragedies and tomfooleries of a group of Hollywood 20-something nobodies who became 30-something wannabes as the show became a reality TV juggernaut. Never heard of it? Maybe it’s for the better — but you’ve been missing out on an unlikely morality play about who makes it and who doesn’t in the eternal heartbreak that is Los Angeles. It started as a series about the wait staff at SUR, a loud, overpriced West Hollywood restaurant whose star dish is fried goat cheese balls that aren’t as appetizing as they sound.
The protagonists, only one of them a native Angeleno (if you count West Covina), slung cocktails and delivered dishes while pursuing their entertainment dreams — and each other. “Vanderpump Rules” stuck out above its fellow L.A.
-based reality shows because it created its own version of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County — a self-contained world that saw the rest of the universe through its limited prism. Fans breathlessly followed the marriages, divorces, flings and affairs of the millennial cast on the small screen and debated the plot twists online. In real life, they flocked to businesses that figured in the show — SUR, the since-closed PUMP, TOMTOM, Schwartz & Sandy’s, Vanderpump Dogs — with the fervor of Christian pilgrims on the Via Dolorosa.
Among the faithful? Me. My wife and I have visited most of these sites, and we repeat dialogue from episodes to each .
