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.