Vanderpump Rules Is Back, and the Plot Lines Are Thicker Than Ever

The Christmas lights are sparkling, there’s a chill in the air, and my mother just sent me a large $14.99 dreidel ornament. Yes—it is time, my good friends, to get back in the saddle for Season 6 of Vanderpump Rules. That’s right, my fellow PumpHeads, there have been six glorious seasons of this awful mess.

If you’re somehow just tuning in, here’s the gist: we’ve got a bunch of cruel, morally compromised servers at West Hollywood’s own SUR Restaurant and Lounge, which stands for Sexy Unique Restaurant Restaurant and Lounge. They work for Lisa Vanderpump, grand doyenne of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. At this point, everyone on the show has been on a popular Bravo reality show for years, and this means: 1) they’re not 24 anymore, and many are now facing challenges that include alcohol bloat, bad fillers, and podcast scandals; 2) none of them technically need to work at a restaurant anymore; 3) but they still do, which is actually a pretty great business model for SUR, a technically subpar restaurant whose customers (disclosure: I have been a customer) are largely Bravo tourists hoping to get a strawberry mojito mixed by Jax himself.

Since Pump Rules has been around the block more than a few times, and exhausted many of the original dramas that punctured this friend group, Season 6 will—if the premiere is any indication—be filled with a series of not-particularly-authentic-seeming plot lines. Which is fine, I guess. As you’ll notice, I’m still watching it.

1. Katie is not invited to Scheana’s masquerade birthday party

Scheana has broken off from the world’s most embarrassing girl gang for the… somethingth… time. What happened, according to Scheana, is that “it got back to Katie that I said she had no friends. I meant it as a compliment, she took it as an insult.” Weird! Katie, who is known on this show for showering her friends and husband with abusive text messages and then never apologizing, texted something mean to Scheana when she heard about this, and now Scheana is no longer friends with Stassi and Katie. It’s unclear how Kristen fits in here, because she had barely any screen time this episode—a huge mistake that I trust Bravo will soon rectify.

Because we’re makin’ good TV here, baby, this means that Scheana, a 32-year-old divorcée, must tell Katie to her face that she is not welcome at her masquerade birthday party.

“One minute I thought she was one of my closest friends, she was a bridesmaid in my wedding for god’s sakes,” Katie intones multiple times during this episode. How will this tragedy resolve itself? Only time will tell.

2. Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz are investing in Lisa’s new restaurant, “Tom Tom”

Ugh, I’m so bored by this one. Lisa is giving the Toms their own restaurant, presumably to set up a future spinoff. Tom Sandoval immediately screws it up by talking shit about the Vanderpumps within their earshot. Will Lisa and Ken kick their new restaurant’s doofy namesakes to the curb? Will Tom Sandoval, who went on a “business trip” to Colorado with his friends to test marijuana products (“I thought they were going to teach us how to put THC into drinks in a way that would be legal, but it turns out you can’t”) be the most obnoxious business partner in the entire world? I’ll just go ahead and say: no and yes.

3. James loudly hints that he is cheating on his girlfriend with a man

DJ James Kennedy, a slurry, demonic gadfly and truly awful DJ, has set up a sweet little plot for himself wherein he develops an ostentatiously sexual friendship with a gay man while juggling Raquel, his long-distance girlfriend whom he definitely loves a lot. It’s all very heavy-handed and weird, with jokes about “cum stains” on the rug and pictures of the two of them in bathrobes together. I don’t know!

4. Scheana sucks (still)

Scheana is totally over her ex-husband Michael “Shay” Shay and is simply waiting for divorce proceedings to finalize so she can marry her rebound Rob, whom she tastefully describes as “bigger and better.” She also has a large portrait of herself hanging in front of her bed. This portrait is taken from her “good side,” the only side from which Scheana allows herself to be photographed.

5. Jax cheated on Brittany

And now, for the main event: Jax cheated on Brittany, his girlfriend of two years who moved to LA from Kentucky to be with him after they met on Instagram. After a rocky time on Jax and Brittany Take Kentucky, an objectively terrible mini-spinoff in which Jax alternated between planning to propose to Brittany and verbally abusing her entire family, Jax allegedly had sex with Faith, a former SUR server, while she was working as a home nurse for a 95-year-old woman. Like, in that woman’s home while she was asleep. Faith then tells DJ James Kennedy that her period is late.

The whole drama comes to light at Scheana’s masquerade birthday party (to which Scheana, unrelatedly, wore a full ballgown). Brittany threatens to leave Jax and “take the dogs.” Here’s Lisa absorbing the news:

And here’s me thinking excitedly about the upcoming season of Vanderpump Rules: