The 'Vanderpump Rules' Reboot is a Perfect Mix of Sex and Chaos

I have been amongst the Vanderpump Rules reboot's most vocal skeptics. I was terribly wrong.

After Scandoval left an Ariana Madix sized crater in the network's scheduling lineup, I questioned if there was anything left to mine from Sexy Unique Restaurant, the WeHo hellhole that Lisa Vanderpump presided over as a brothel madam for 30 years. The mystique had worn as thin as the table clothes, with the restaurant not drawing in the same crowds as in the show's heyday, when patrons would fly from all over the Midwest to watch cast members stumble over the appetizer menu and sling musty goat cheese balls.

They'd be lucky to see anyone working there at all, sans the b-team they hid from cameras when the show was in production.

I was deeply wrong, which is humiliating. The new show has the secret alchemical mixture of desperation and bisexual confusion and undiagnosed personality disorders that made its predecessor so compelling. Their clothes are cheap and their apartments are shitty, and they all seem eager to destroy their friendships and lives in the pursuit for fame. I'm happy to let them!

Shall we talk about what they wore for their big debut?

Vanderpump Rules

Venus as a boy! Oh, how the dreams of Bjork have manifested in this Botticellian icon of beauty and grace and dressing like the villainess in a movie about teen spies. This crimped blowout with the leather gloves sent me into hysterics, both from sheer lunacy and how I do actually believe Venus shows up places dressed like this in real life. He's like an angel you meet outside the afters, unsure in the morning if the figure in a leather trench was ever really there at all.

Then there's the boy drag, which includes a necklace with Venus' angel numbers. It's yet another sign of his impending takeover of the millennial Bravosphere, should I have my way with things.

Outside the confessional booth, Venus plays the role of pot-stirring gay best friend in a muscle tank with an indeterminable agenda. It almost borders on stereotype, except Venus is a real person and I've decided I love him. Even if he has to sit on the couch of a woman trapped in heterosexual hell every episode and hurry along the impending death of her relationship.

There really are Kristen Doute's everywhere for those with the eyes to see. Just like Kristen, Natalie can't dress either, but god does her hair look good! This firebrand is obsessed with sending her friends' boyfriends photos of her feet and screaming at her job, two things that pair well with slip dresses and chipped red nail polish. She's also Italian, and name dropped Ariana Grande in her first twenty minutes onscreen. I have high hopes for this diva!

Her daytime drag served as a funny foil to Venus this episode. She's the dark and stormy demon to his angelic light — here she is with basically the same hair and t-shirt as Venus when he sat on Kim's couch, except in all black. The nameplate necklace instead of the angel numbers and loose hair tie really sell the contrast.

Demy's fashions were probably the worst of the episode, which means I will protect her with my life. The fit of this faux-Romy high school reunion dress is about as troubling as Natalie's untreated anger issues. The pink number was a reprieve, and quite the color on her! I give her a season to figure out the glam before I address it directly, which feels just and fair for a woman I will probably devote untold chunks of time singing the praises of.

Side note: I immediately clocked the Nike Dunk Lows she changed into for their afterparty at The Belmont. A pair of Nike Dunk Lows is more instructive than the results of any psychoanalytical test or whatever research they're doing down in the Large Hadron Collider. I know this woman, I love this woman and I fear this woman — specifically her pleather pants.

Audrey Lingle

Audrey Lingle's one dream in life is to be a scream queen in a horror movie about college girls that get axe murdered by a demonic entity possessing the girl they bullied in middle school. Fitting, then, that her on-camera introduction was this racy top with an entire nipple out. The Utah curls add a welcome bit of grit to the look, considering their cultural connotations as both conservative and suburban. She's like if one of the girls in a Maxim magazine back in the day had been frozen in a block of ice outside Salt Lake City. With climate change raising temperatures, she defrosted 30 years later and wandered into JZ Styles, where that lady on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives installed fourteen pounds of hair and explained what a balayage really is.

Jason Cohen is a guy who does OnlyFans with his half-cousin, once worked as a stripper and now dreams of growing up to be Ben Affleck. He's a real renaissance man and has the eyebrows to prove it! Curious, I perused his Instagram, and he has that gay-for-pay look that actual gay guys spend exorbitant amounts of money chasing on subscription apps that give them access to videos where men like Jason take showers in milk, or something.

None of this is criticism against Jason, to be clear, who knows how to make a bag and dress to boot. This red is a great color on him and he's figured out the right tussle-to-eyebrow ration for his face. I expect big things — and big mess — from him!

Kim Suarez

Kim reminds me of so many women I knew growing up, when I'd party with kids from the high school two towns over. By that I mean she was meant to land somewhere in a Bay Area suburban enclave with a high school sweetheart that works in recruiting and 2.5 kids she sends to Catholic prep academy. Instead, she found herself doomed to wander through the doors of SUR, where they quickly saddled her with an alcoholic boyfriend she hates and a reality television show.

Welcome back to the stage, Katie Maloney! She even has the striking beauty and requisite smoky-eye-to-cleavage ratio.

Chris Hahn

Here's the other half-cousin and former stripper turned OnlyFans creator and aspiring actor. Unlike Jason, he wants to be Matt Damon instead, and says his one dream in life is to play Flynn Rider in the live action version of Tangled. Not if I have anything to do about it! No, he's meant to be sitting in this chair with his shirt unbuttoned down to his happy trail. Hopefully next time he picks something other than this pale green. Something more see-through, perhaps?

Marcus Johnson

Marcus, being the villain, was the only man brave enough to wear a suit in his confessional. It signals that he is deeply aware of the television show he is creating and has also studied what came before him. I don't believe his act, but neither do producers or Lisa Vanderpump either. Like Tom Sandoval and Jax Taylor before him, he thinks he'll outsmart this production crew with his staged acts of rebellion and smooth-talking. Look how that turned out buddy!

Marcus might have studied the material, but I don't think he'll ace this test. I eagerly anticipate watching him fail his way to the bottom!

Images courtesy of NBC Universal/Bravo