The 'Summer House' Reunion Finale Was Incredible Reality TV

This might have been the most intense–and most human—Bravo episode I've ever seen.

Courtesy of Bravo

If there’s one thing that Bravo is gonna do, it’s expose how awful straight men are.

In the final episode of the three-part Summer House reunion, West Wilson is the poster boy representative for all those awful guys your friend dated, and you had to bite your tongue until it was bleeding.

Gloriously, the hit Bravo series’ cast is letting those tongues loose, eviscerating reality TV’s current biggest villain for dating Amanda Batula, the best friend of his ex and the currently separated wife of one of his own best friends. (Every time I type that, it feels crazier and crazier.)

The reunion episodes of Summer House rank among the most dramatic, explosive, and cathartic that Bravo has produced. At least from a viewer’s standpoint—lord knows that screaming, crying, and frustrated cast doesn’t feel any sort of closure. The catharsis is always suspecting that West and Amanda were a bunch of emotionally neutered, self-sabotagingly narcissistic dips--ts, and having that confirmed.

But what was most impressive about the reunion episodes, especially the final installment, was the clarity and nuance with which Bravo telegraphed how uncomfortable and traumatic this situation is for the parties involved. Watching, you get a visceral sense of how close this cast of people are—real friends who consider themselves family—and how unmooring this scandal has been.

What’s been “fun” for us to consume in tabloids has been truly painful and confusing for them. Moreover, in the ways in which West and Amanda are unable to defend themselves, you realize, to their own naivete, how unintentionally massive this all has been for them, two people who made a betraying decision and now have to justify that to the people they’re closest to in life, but on a public, televised stage.