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 , 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 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 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.
For most of the first two episodes, it was Amanda who was in the hot seat for betraying Ciara Miller, her TV BFF and the person who supported and, in a fan’s purview, gave her the strength to leave her toxic marriage to Kyle Cooke. For her to turn around and then start dating and sleeping with Ciara’s ex, West? That’s wild behavior. Even high schoolers would be like…really?
But in the third part of the reunion, it was West who finally had to speak up for himself. The hot seat was basically an inferno. So West’s emotionless shrug of a response to every question, even as his best friends were openly weeping around him—forget Carl; Jesse’s a mess!—was exasperating, but incredibly compelling TV.
It got to the point that moderator Andy Cohen point-blank had to ask him, what the hell, dude: “No offense, but are you on beta blockers, or what?” Turns out, he was. (While this was entertaining this one time, let’s put a ban on this for the future.)
After watching the whole hour, I think there is a small amount of credit owed to Amanda.