The Scandoval Comes to An Explosive End

There is so much to say.

Wow. What a 3 months it’s been, friends. I’m so sad to see our time in the sun come to an end but I’m thrilled with all the content, community and memes this scandal has brought us.

It still feels unreal that Tom Sandoval and Raquel decided to blow up their entire lives for a 7 month affair that concluded with their live executions, Ariana being on the cover of Glamour Magazine (!!!!) and the return of Jax & Brittany to our TVs which feels inevitable at this point.

I’m not going to recap the reunion and I want to do a deeper dive into why this is a big deal, how it took over the world, and what this means for the state of reality television next, because that’s the part of pop culture I love the most… but for now, let’s just talk about our thoughts and opinions.

First up, Tom Sandoval proved himself once again to be one of the most disgusting people on the face of the planet. At his worse, I don’t even think Jax Taylor would make the comments he has made on that stage. Last week was the IUD comment and this week, which Andy said was going to make every woman in America angry, was about Ariana leaving her t-shirt on during sex.

Tom is a true narcissist and at first I didn’t agree with Lala calling him dangerous but now I definitely see what she means

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He could not just sit there and take his lashings. He had to keep butting in, he had to keep fighting, to try to explain away his sins and it wasn’t going to work. Lala, James and Ariana wouldn’t allow it.

Which brings me to my next point…

James and Lala were out of control but as a smart reality TV viewer I know that they were just trying to put on a good performance. There’s also this thing called editing— clearly the producers wanted us to see James & Lala being out of pocket otherwise they wouldn’t have chosen this edit.

I do think it went a little overboard at times and caused the other cast members to not be able to get a word in edgewise but I think we need to remember that this was 3 weeks after the scandal broke, everyone was lied to for months, and it was still very fresh. The Pump Rules cast is built different; they have been in the trenches with each other for a decade and I think they all are genuinely close, so to have a betrayal like that in your own backyard, even for someone like Lala who hated Tom and Raquel way before this, it stings.

Lala is brash, aggressive and too much but I think she also is very smart and emotionally intelligent. She doesn’t conduct herself that way and is projecting her situation with Randall onto Tom and Raquel, but I think with good reason.

Tom has been horrible to her for years and tried to make her out to be a bad person, made comments about her daughter’s birth, and uses her past against her, just to justify his present actions.

I’m choosing to believe Lala when she says she didn’t know Randall was still actually married; the man is horrible (if you watched the Randall Scandal on Hulu you’ll know) and the fact that she has a relationship with Amber Childers after everything that happened, I do believe that Randall was manipulating them both.

Now, let’s get to Raquel.

The woman is a sociopath. I’m convinced. She got on that stage and robotically said her lines that Tom Sandoval gave to her and felt not an ounce of remorse. Ariana sat there in tears, Tom started crying, and she had nothing to give.

Then, she had the audacity to go into the green room and start laughing with Tom about how they are actually liars and that Ally is actually an upgrade from her. That James comment was the only thing that stuck in that spaceless head of hers because it came from a man.

I don’t think Raquel is sorry. I don’t think she knows what she did was wrong. I don’t know if I can believe that the type of person she is exists in the real world; the way she lied to Ariana’s face over and over again, the way she slept in their house, cried in Ariana’s arms, all while fucking her boyfriend? It truly is subhuman and diabolical.

Finally, we come to the big reveal which I think we all knew wasn’t going to be that big. I don’t even think it was overhyped by the producer; I think Alex Baskin made a rogue comment and the Bravo community ran with it.

As we got closer to the reunion it was obvious that the reveal had to do with the timeline. I really believed it was going to be that Raquel broke off the engagement with James for Tom but that is not what it was.

While Tom kept insisting that the affair started as a one night stand and they didn’t sleep together again (and the affair really began) until Septemberish, we should’ve known he was lying through his gap teeth.

Raquel, in a one-on-one interview with a producer 6 days after the reunion, reveals that they slept together while in Mexico at Scheana’s wedding, they slept together the night of the hot tub party while Ariana was at her GRANDMOTHER’S FUNERAL, and she did go to St. Louis at Christmas (though, that’s questionable because she was still lying about that and the producer had to coax it out of her).

*I don’t understand why she would go along with his lies in the first place. She made the choice to lie on that reunion stage so for her to find a conscience all of a sudden is weird.

**The throuple comment was out of pocket!!! I couldn’t believe my ears.

For the first time since this started, Raquel Leviss showed emotion. She started crying in that confessional but I’m sorry, it’s a little too late. She might have come to her realizations after Tom left her for dead to go back on tour but she is not getting sympathy from me.

She was a 28 year old woman, sneaking around and getting her rocks off with her best friend’s boyfriend of 9 years. Sure, Tom is a manipulative narcissist but he wasn’t forcing her. As unbelievable as it is, Raquel does have a brain so she knew what she was doing was wrong and she continued to do it over and over again.

She didn’t show an ounce of remorse to Ariana’s face and instead spent time laughing and giggling in the trailer and with her partner in crime. It is gross.

The way Raquel laughed at Scheana’s tears last week showed her true colors. That was someone who cared, who loved her and treated her so well and Raquel could not muster up one single sign of emotion. That’s terrifying.

Raquel is to blame just as much as Tom.

I don’t know where the show goes from here; there are tons of rumors out there but I just don’t know how anyone films with Tom and Raquel again. I don’t think Raquel is built for this and for the sake of her mental health and life, she should just not come back.

Tom on the other hand is in too deep for him and is too much of a narcissist to leave.

What did you think? Was the cast too hard on Raquel? What do you think is going to happen next year?