A Very Vanderpump Christmas
Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval's cocktail book inspired me to celebrate friendship in unprecedented times. It seemed only right to spend part of the holidays with them.
VANCOUVER – All I really want for Christmas is to crack a couple cold ones, assemble the charcuterie board, and cheers the end of this cursed year with kith and kin. But, for obvious reasons, I can’t. So I opted for the next best thing: joining two reality-TV hotties on a cocktail-fuelled romp, in hopes of finding the true meaning of this socially-distanced holiday season.
Two weeks ago, I cleared my advent calendar and paid a virtual visit to Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix’s five bedroom farmhouse in Los Angeles’ Valley Village, for their Fancy AF Cocktail Party: Holiday Edition. For those living outside the walls of the Bravo TV kingdom, Sandoval and Madix serve as the resident mixologists and moral centre for the network’s wildly popular Vanderpump Rules. In recent years, the couple has bridged their restaurant experience into a bonafide personal brand, releasing their Fancy AF Cocktail Book in 2019, and offering the occasional crash course in boozy beverages. For just $10USD, the couple’s Holiday event promised “exclusive follow-from-home-cocktails,” “interactive games” and a Q&A. It seemed a small price to pay for some face time with two unproblematic faves.
Indeed, Sandoval and Madix have continuously found themselves on the right side of Rules’ increasingly complicated history. In June, the series, which centres on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump’s SUR Restaurant, became a flash point in the broader dialogue about race when a black former cast member, Faith Stowers, revealed stars Kristen Doute and Stassi Schroeder once tried to have her arrested for crimes she didn’t commit. Doute and Schroeder apologized via Instagram, acknowledging their privilege and admitting their ‘prank’ did not account for the serious consequences that could have befallen Stowers. Schroeder had previously acknowledged the pair’s actions on a 2018 podcast without serious blowback, but the recent killing of George Floyd cast the incident in a new light. Within a week, Stassi’s dream of a nationally televised Roman wedding and Kristen’s dream of ever getting off Lisa Vanderpump’s shit list, were officially dashed. They had been fired.
The terminations proved to be the first incision in a nip tuck intended to smooth the show’s increasingly frayed edges. Shortly after Doute and Shroeder’s dismissal, fifth wave cast members Max Boyens and Brett Caprioni, too, were fired for racially insensitive tweets. Fans supported Bravo’s decision, while simultaneously questioning some perceived inconsistencies in the network’s response. In particular, breakout bad boy Jax “I did go to Vegas and have relations with somebody else" Taylor, and his southern belle, Brittany Cartwright, appeared to be skating by despite a litany of similar scandals. Taylor had previously tweeted about Stowers, whom he had sex with while she was working as the care aid to a 95-year-old woman, writing “She’s wanted by the police for grand theft auto and ‘awol’ from military” (Taylor was dating Cartwright at the time of the pair’s tryst; it was a plot point in Season 6). The couple had also ruffled feathers in Season 8, asking an openly homophobic and anti-trans pastor to officiate their wedding. Online some fans wondered – would the couple ever face any consequences?
In December they got their answer, as Taylor and Cartwright announced they would “not be returning” to the show. But while their castmates were dropping like flies near the SUR dumpster, Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix’s stock was on the rise. Seemingly overnight, they had become the elder statesmen of a franchise in turmoil.
It was around this time that I discovered the Vanderpump cinematic universe. A few weeks after British Columbians were told to stay apart and stay home, my partner and I – desperate for distraction and craving the petty drama previously provided by our respective workplaces – decided to binge the entire series. We streamed the show on Hayu until our brains were smoother than Sandoval’s shaved forehead, until everyday felt like Stassi’s birthday, until our lives were definitively about the pasta. Having premiered in 2013, the show felt like a sun-kissed throwback to the false promise of Obama-era capitalism. Everything was trashy and and nothing ever hurt. Perhaps most crucially, there was nary a mention of the pesky pandemic – which has gone on to kill more than 313,000 U.S. citizens and counting.
Nothing this good should be kept a secret. For years, Pump has been celebrated by the bi-coastal elite, including endorsements from Rihanna, Lady Gaga, New Yorker staff writer Naomi Fry, and internet grump Chris Black. Nevertheless, my partner and I pushed the show like it was double tequila shots during WeHo Pride. Eventually, Pump’s lexicon, its reference points and twisted backstories, became a fixture of everyday conversations. Group chats fantasized about post-COVID “exSURsions” to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Puerto Vallarta with the expressed intention of visiting Vanderpump restaurant concepts and shooting locations. In a few short weeks, the show had come to represent a level of freedom that, for anyone following public health protocols, vanished sometime around March 11.
In early summer, the province started to re-open. We saw friends, but almost always outside. Restaurants and bars were open but still felt needlessly risky. At the same time, there had never been more to celebrate. While none of my friends are particularly big drinkers (my own dry January lasted until March, when the coronavirus called for a glass of wine), I bought Fancy AF Cocktails with the sole purpose of wringing every ounce of joy I could from the dirty sponge that is 2020. A few days later I went to Modern Bartender on East Pender and bought a basic bar set.
It was all happening.
My first attempt at being Fancy AF came over the Canada Day long-weekend, when I made the couple’s ‘Classic Margarita’. Comprised of agave nectar, blanco tequila, cointreau, salt and lime, the recipe is sweet and simple. It’s also strong, something which proved to be a recurring theme for Fancy AF. Every cocktail, from the ‘Iconic Pellegrino’, to the ‘Basic Bitch’, to the ‘Crymax’, seems designed to dull the senses in a couple short sips. As the temperatures climbed, our group of friends began to frequent beaches and parks around Vancouver. Sometimes, I’d pack a Swell bottle full of Fancy cocktail and some plastic cups so we could toast our continued survival. It was a small and silly creature comfort, a rare through line to more precedented times. We wondered aloud if restrictions would return, knowing full well they would.
By November, the COVID caseload once again threatened to overwhelm B.C.’s healthcare system. Officials ordered a two-week lockdown, but rising numbers eventually forced them to extend the order another seven weeks to January 8.
Nobody said the holidays were cancelled, but there seemed few ways to observe them safely. My partner and I had planned on staying in Vancouver since before the pandemic. We hadn’t, however, planned on spending the Christmas season completely alone. To make things a little brighter, we broke our ‘no-decorations-before-December’ rule on November 21, trimming our fake tree to the sounds of Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. As the days dragged on, we decided to test Tom and Ariana’s antithetical yule tide offerings: the ‘Naughty Holiday’ (spicy, dark chocolate) and the ‘Nice Holiday’ (minty, white chocolate). Both drinks kicked harder than a reindeer – but it wasn’t the same. In the summer, cocktails were the star on top of our social Christmas tree. Now, they just felt like a lump of coal.
Both Fancy AF and Vanderpump Rules abide by a simple philosophy: the more extra the better. Wanna hook up with your girlfriend’s best friend? Sounds great. Wanna tattoo that same scorned lover’s name on your bicep in a desperate attempt to win her back? Even better. Extra-ness, though, dies in a vacuum. Outrageous behaviour only seems outrageous because it defies social norms and expectations. If I was ever going to recapture that sense of cocktail magic, I needed a community. I purchased a ticket to the Fancy AF Cocktail Party and said a tiny prayer to Giggy’s ghost.
As the opening notes of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ blared out of my MacBook speakers, I knew the event would more than meet my middling expectations. On paper, the evening was about cocktails, but in practice it was a Vanderpump variety show. Tom and Ariana, bundled in black and red Christmas sweaters, made drinks, played music, read stories and fielded questions from surprise guest (and Fancy AF co-author) Danny Pellegrino. Like most Christmas specials, the evening was saturated with a sense of camp and schmaltz. But it was also carried a subtler feeling of anxiety.
Unlike Vanderpump Rules, the pandemic could be felt in the special’s DNA. The Q&A with Danny Pellegrino was done over a video call, and there were repeated references to the future of the show and its cast. With Los Angeles in the middle of a second lockdown, and still struggling to stymie COVID transmissions, on-site dining is currently off limits. In July, Lisa Vanderpump’s Villablanca restaurant closed for good. The status of her other dining concepts, including SUR and the Sandoval co-owned Tom Tom bar, is uncertain. This, paired with the show’s recent blood-letting, have lead some to wonder if the show is past its expiration date.
As they chatted with Pellegrino, Sandoval and Madix assured fans that Vanderpump is coming back, though they aren’t sure when. “Whenever there is any sort of announcement, we will find out at the same time as everyone else,” said Madix at one point, “We usually don’t get anything ahead of time.” It was the sort of honest answer that makes Tom and Ariana so relatable. After watching them for roughly 70 minutes, I feel confident in saying that the seem normal by reality TV standards. Sure, they have endorsement deals and personal brands to protect. But they love their two dogs, and miss their families on the other side of the country. They say they haven’t seen much of their friends this year and that it would be nice if time could slow down a little bit. They say the pandemic has brought them closer together, and that when it’s safe again, they’d like to go to a music festival or bar hopping with their friends. “[I’m] very grateful for, through out all of this, staying positive, testing negative” said Sandoval.
Like 2020 it’s a bad joke. But really what other option do we have?