When Summer House aired on Bravo in 2017, via a memorable backdoor pilot attached to an episode of Vanderpump Rules, it was sold very plainly as a show about friendship.
It was also a show about the stress of work and millennial social-climbing. The remedy for which, according to this particular group of WASP-y Upper East Siders, was renting a house in Montauk for consecutive weekends in the summer and getting balls-to-the-wall drunk.
Seven seasons later, Summer House has strayed from its founding premise, as happens with most long-running reality shows. Vanderpump Rules suffered a similar fate when its cast could no longer pretend they were waiting tables for less than minimum wage. (Now, thanks to a miraculous and devastating turn of events, it’s become television’s No. 1 docusoap.)
However, Summer House still hasn't figured out how to handle its growing pains. On one hand, the chaotic, borderline concerning level of partying has declined as certain cast members have aged—which, in my opinion, is perfectly fine. I take issue, though, with an obvious lack of group chemistry. The familial bond that grounded the show is gone, as the producers introduce somewhat ill-fitting new cast members (including a dude named Chris that no one seems to know.) Out of all these changes, though, the show has become increasingly and unbearingly nasty.
It’s one thing to be a dysfunctional family with recurring friction. However, it’s another thing to dislike your colleagues so much that you want to obliterate them from television. The latter is the only way I can describe the unfolding dynamics and, dare I say, politics on the current season of Summer House, which have all revolved around a seemingly orchestrated takedown of one Lindsay Hubbard—which reached an outlandish level in Monday night’s episode.
Hubbard, one of Summer House’s few original cast members, has been one of the series’ most compelling characters and arguably one of the reasons the formerly slept-on show has lasted this long. Yet, over the past two seasons and the last season of Winter House, she’s become the No. 1 enemy amongst her castmates (minus her fiancé Carl Radke), for reasons that are less than legitimate and hardly legible.
Last season of Summer House saw the world’s most debasing love triangle between Hubbard, Ciara Miller, and Southern Charm’s Austen Kroll. While Kroll was the obvious culprit in the situation, Miller’s ire was largely aimed at Hubbard in a classically immature fashion. (Other castmates joined in on the finger-pointing.) In the same season, Hubbard revealed she had a miscarriage during her brief fling with Winter House’s Jason Cameron. And cast members, Kyle Cooke, Paige DeSorbo and Amanda Batula, used this sensitive information to pathologize her active sex life. The same group also entertained a rumor on the last season of Winter House that she tried to sleep with Kroll before she got with Radke.
Now, Hubbard, fresh off the slut-shaming, is being attacked by her co-stars for—drum roll please—being in a committed relationship.
Reality stars are often full of contradictions. But as someone with a functioning brain, this is one I refuse to accept! In general, the reactions to Radke and Hubbard’s new-ish relationship, which they announced last January, have been extremely odd. The cast can’t seem to digest the idea of two long-term friends wanting to date. The fact that they moved in together relatively quickly has also drawn criticism. Largely, there seems to be a narrative amongst the much of the cast that Hubbard is negatively influencing Radke, that’s, again, sexist but also just mind-numbingly stupid to observe.
In fact, hearing everyone express their concern over Radke, a 38-year-old man, and his relationship has made me slightly dumber with each episode. In one moment, his best friend Cooke is blaming Hubbard for Radke not wanting to work for his alcohol brand anymore (even though he’s been in a public battle with his sobriety over the past three years!) And in another episode, the women, including Hubbard’s former BFF Danielle Olivera, are interrogating Hubbard about curbing her drinking and partying out of respect for her sober partner.
Every single episode, so far, has depicted either Batula, Cooke, DeSorbo, Miller, Olivera, or Mya Allen gossiping about the pair’s relationship, peeking out of windows to watch them converse and not-so-subtly praying for their downfall. The most shocking of the peanut gallery is Olivera, who’s been handling her former-best friend’s new relationship in a somewhat childish manner—criticizing the pair’s financial choices and Hubbard’s newly sober-ish lifestyle in front of cast members who clearly hate her.
What’s worse is that Olivera is seemingly being used by DeSorbo, Miller, and Batula as some sort of pawn in their weird anti-Hubbard agenda. In Monday’s episode, the cameras even caught DeSorbo and Miller rejoicing that they got Olivera to talk shit about Hubbard while she was drunk to prove that she’s a problem.
As obnoxious as this sound bite was, it at least clarified something for me as a befuddled viewer. It’s clear that these women (and Cooke) are primarily combating social media, which has been largely pro-Hubbard, and not whatever terror Hubbard’s allegedly committing around the Hamptons. Cooke also suggested this earlier in the season when he lamented that his wife, Batula, was being called a “mean girl” instead of Hubbard.
This is my main complaint and why I hate how much Twitter informs reality TV, currently. If Hubbard is, in fact, an actual villain, then I need to see her doing villain shit on the show. Otherwise, I don’t need my reality TV stars attempting (albeit sloppily) to manipulate my impression of other people. Editing already does that, and somehow they still haven’t made Hubbard look like a total asshole, even if she hasn’t been exactly perfect. Instead, she comes off as an assertive, sexually liberated woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t have time for bullshit. On Summer House, this apparently makes you a bitch or a literal succubus.
To put it simply, Summer House is in dire straits. (I personally blame the Southern Charm crew infiltrating the franchise through Winter House and the loss of hilarious chaos agent Jordan Verroi.) And I’m not sure there’s an easy way to fix it. However, I do know that cliques and gang-ups make bad TV. Just ask the cast of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Keep obsessing! Sign up for the Daily Beast’s Obsessed newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
