Every Season Of Vanderpump Rules, Ranked

This article contains discussion of addiction.

If you're unfamiliar with the Bravo reality show "Vanderpump Rules" and decide to binge it for the very first time, you are so lucky ... and you're in for a treat. A spin-off of "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," this series centers around restaurants owned by former Housewife Lisa Vanderpump — including SUR, or Sexy Unique Restaurant — and the various miscreants who work there and are always fighting, sleeping with each other, and fighting about who's sleeping with whom. The fact that Vanderpump seems to exclusively employ hard-drinking lunatics seems pretty bad for her bottom line, business wise ... but for audiences? It's a gift!

I have, conservatively, watched "Vanderpump Rules" 10 times in its entirety, and it's one of the pop culture properties that I wish I could erase from my brain and experience anew (like some sort of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" situation). Unfortunately, "Vanderpump Rules" as we know it is, for all intents and purposes, over; after a scandal dubbed "Scandoval" rocked the show in season 10 (more on that shortly), season 11 proved that the "group" of "friends" we've all been watching since January 2013 is fractured too badly to ever truly function again. As a direct result of this, every single main cast member still standing was let go, and the show has been fully rebooted. Still, there's something important to consider about this overhaul, which is that no new cast members on "Vanderpump Rules" can possibly ever recapture the "lightning in a bottle" makeup of the original show. With that said, let's turn to the big question: which are the best and worst seasons of "Vanderpump Rules?"

Before Season 9 of "Vanderpump Rules" even started, the world of the show changed when original cast members Brittany Cartwright, Jax Taylor, Kristen Doute, and Stassi Schroeder were all fired from the series (Cartwright wasn't technically fired but followed Taylor when he was let go for being constantly problematic, and Doute and Schroeder targeted a Black coworker in a personal attack). Unfortunately for this dud of a season, the absence of these weirdos is pretty glaring. The biggest "event" in Season 9 of the show is DJ James Kennedy constructing an elaborate Coachella knock-off, "Rachella," to propose to this then-girlfriend, Rachel "Raquel" Leviss — she went by Raquel during her time on the series — only for the two to announce their breakup during the reunion.

Also, this is the season that heavily features Randall Emmett, the now-disgraced producer who was, at the time, in a relationship with Lauren "Lala" Kent; not only is Emmett odious, but for some reason, everybody gets really into pickleball. After years of watching the "VPR" cast members party in Las Vegas and throw drinks on each other, I have to say that watching them play pickleball was an enormous downgrade. Season 9 of "VPR" is easily its worst, but it still has a few entertaining moments, at least.

As hard as it was for fans like me to admit, Season 11 of "Vanderpump Rules" proved that the show was broken beyond repair. After Scandoval's fallout, Ariana Madix, the scorned woman, set clear boundaries: she would not spend time with her ex-boyfriend Tom Sandoval and didn't particularly want to associate with people defending him (like, for example, Sandoval's real soulmate Tom Schwartz). This is, obviously, understandable, but from a practical standpoint, it doesn't make for good TV! Unfortunately for Madix, her "friends" on the show — with the exception of Katie Maloney, a woman who should remarry and divorce her ex-husband Schwartz annually to make her more powerful with each marital collapse — were a little too aware of the fact that they still needed to make a reality TV show.

What does that mean? Well, people like Lala Kent and Scheana Shay, the latter of whom was Madix's self-professed best friend for years, found it in their hearts to sort of forgive Sandoval for his indiscretions, leaving Madix understandably angry and hurt. (The show itself tried to redeem Sandoval as well, which was infuriating to witness.) Even though it's really fun to watch Madix verbally destroy Sandoval, who richly deserves it, whenever she's forced into his presence — and the Season 11 finale features one of the entire show's most bizarre and fascinating fourth wall breaks — Season 11 was the end of "Vanderpump Rules," and we all knew it.

A big reason that I don't believe in a "Vanderpump Rules" reboot is that the show sort of tried this in Season 8, and it was pretty stupid. In that season, Max Boyens, Brett Caprioni and Dayna Kathan basically became the main cast after appearing in Season 7 — alongside Stassi Schroeder's future husband Beau Clark and Charli Burnett, who was upgraded to a series regular in Season 9 but debuted in Season 8 — and honestly, they're boring! Kathan is easily the most interesting of them all — and her podcast with Katie Maloney, "Disrespectfully," is delightful — but Boyens and Caprioni are duds, and both of them left the show alongside Kathan after this season. What that all means is that, at the end of the day, Boyens, Caprioni, and Kathan's plotines have no bearing on anything at all.

Thanks to a few standout episodes — like the one that features Schroeder's book party and Sandoval behaving like an absolute baby — and the buildup to Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright's Kentucky wedding (it's held in Versailles, Kentucky, which Cartwright pronounces as "Ver-sales"), Season 8 isn't a complete waste of time, but it never reaches the true heights of other seasons of "Vanderpump Rules." Still, not for nothing? Clark's graveyard proposal to Schroeder is very cute and on-brand for her.

Season 7 opens with Jax Taylor, an unrepentant sociopath who cheats on every single girlfriend he's ever had, proposing to Brittany Cartwright ... but their happy ending is still a ways off. (Also, "spoiler" alert; Taylor and Cartwright went on to appear on the "Vanderpump Rules" spin-off "The Valley" and began their divorce proceedings on camera before Taylor, thankfully, left the show after its second season.) Again, this is the season that brings a bunch of newbies into the mix, which definitely provides mixed results, but Season 7 still has some incredibly classic "VPR" moments when all is said and done.

Take, for example, the girls trip to Solvang, where Kristen Doute drinks approximately five to ten gallons of wine before crashing out and falling down in front of all of her friends. Consider Katie Maloney picking an enormous fight with her then-husband Tom Schwartz when he and Scheana Shay get randomly upgraded to first class seats during a cast trip to Mexico and he won't trade seats with her. (To be massively fair to the oft-maligned Maloney, this fight was less about an airplane seat than Schwartz's constant lack of support and grace for his own wife, but it's still an incredibly funny hill for her to die upon). Also, on a genuine and earnest note, this is the season where Lala Kent begins her sobriety journey. Like many people on "VPR" (and, I guess, reality TV as a whole), Kent's drinking often spiraled out of control, and it is truly admirable that she explored and eventually committed to a sober lifestyle with such a large national spotlight.

Even though new blood didn't work in later seasons of "Vanderpump Rules," that wasn't always the case — because when Lala Kent showed up in Season 4, she actually managed to change the show for the better. Young, beautiful, and volatile, Kent's mere presence sent longtime cast members Scheana Shay and Katie Maloney into a full-on tailspin, and honestly, Kent's total unwillingness to back down from any fight just encouraged problems between the coworkers; I guess I feel bad about the hostile work environment they all experienced, but boy, this mess is fun to watch. Season 4 also marks the end of one of the show's least healthy relationships (which is really saying something) when James Kennedy and Kristen Doute finally split after antagonizing each other throughout their entire misguided love affair, which leaves the door open for Kennedy, a cocksure and erratic DJ whose British accent might trick you into thinking he's sophisticated until you listen to him speak, to pursue Kent.

There's some great stuff in Season 4 — like Ariana Madix's tearful plea for Tom Sandoval to stick around the day after her birthday, only for him to tell her that he needs to go to Las Vegas with his dudes and "crush sh** with bulldozers — but the reason this season isn't perfect is a lack of Stassi Schroeder. After Season 2, Schroeder spent two seasons flitting in and out of the "VPR" orbit, and honestly, the show is always better when she's there to cause a ruckus (preferably about her "f***ing birthday").

Is it or is it not about the pasta? This bizarre question raised (and never really answered) in Season 6 of "Vanderpump Rules" explains exactly why this season is so great. On the precipice of her divorce from Michael Shay, Scheana Shay is dating — and obsessed with — a guy named Rob, who can famously hang a television on the wall "in under seven minutes," so that's her deal, and elsewhere, Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright experience their first huge scandal and split when Taylor cheats on Cartwright with their SUR coworker Faith Stowers. What this leads to is the best, messiest, and most chaotic housewarming party in, I have to assume, all of human history, at which a scorned Cartwright plays an audio recording of Taylor badmouthing her, post-coitally, to Stowers; I can only imagine that the tape, which we never hear, is akin to the tape Werner Herzog listens to in "Grizzly Man" when it comes to sheer horror. (Cartwright screaming "I'm a f***ing sweetheart, motherf**ker!!! at James Kennedy after he chastises her girlfriends for letting her spew profanities is, truly, a series highlight.)

Taylor, by the by, also almost drowns on a trip to Big Bear — which is funny, because he lives and because the whole thing is so absurd — and throughout all of this, Lisa Vanderpump's professional collaboration with Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz, the restaurant TomTom, starts to take shape. Everybody is in peak form during this season of "Vanderpump Rules," truly — except for Stassi Schroeder's horrible boyfriend Patrick, who is an emotional terrorist and disgusting to watch. Speaking of Schroeder, though, don't miss her "murder themed" birthday party complete with a ranch fountain. It's so gross.

In the aftermath of her breakup with long-time boyfriend Tom Sandoval, Kristen Doute is out for blood in Season 3 of "Vanderpump Rules" — and she's not only gunning for Sandoval, but has his new girlfriend Ariana Madix in her crosshairs too. Nobody does it quite like Kristen Doute, a constantly intoxicated chainsmoking powder keg who could explode at literally any moment — yes, this is the season where she tells her manager at SUR to "suck a d**k" and is ultimately fired from her job — and unfortunately for Sandoval and Madix, her genuinely deranged decision to bring a girl who claims Sandoval slept with her from Miami to Los Angeles makes for great television. (Embarrassingly for Madix and Sandoval in retrospect, Sandoval did cheat on Madix with "Miami Girl," which Madix revealed years later, so bizarrely, Doute was right about her ex-boyfriend's indiscretions.)

Season 3 of "Vanderpump Rules" follows one of the show's very best installments, but it's still an absolute and often horrific delight to watch, like when short-lived SUR hostess Vail Bloom goes on the world's worst date with manager Peter Madrigal or when Stassi Schroeder self-implodes and alienates all of her friends over Scheana Shay's wedding. (That wedding features a crop-top wedding dress that has to be seen to be believed, truly.) Season 3 is pretty great, all things considered, even if (or especially because) Shay's wedding goes wonderfully, horribly wrong.

The first season of "Vanderpump Rules" might not be as fun as some of its later installments, but right out of the gate, it was clear that this was going to become an instant classic in reality TV history. For crying out loud, Stassi Schroeder, then dating Jax Taylor, tells Taylor that she's the devil — and advises him not to "forget it" — in the pilot episode. After a backdoor pilot in "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," we enter SUR through the heavily lined eyes of Scheana Shay, the "new girl" who immediately attracts attention and notoriety from girls like Schroeder over her very public affair with actor Eddie Cibrian (who, during their affair, was married to Lisa Vanderpump's "RHOBH" castmate Brandi Glanville). 

Across just ten episodes — including two reunions — the first season of "Vanderpump Rules" sets the stage beautifully for things to come. Schroeder, for the first time on camera, screams that it's her "f***ing birthday," Taylor starts a fistfight in a parking lot during which all of the guys take their shirts off for no reason, and oh, right; Taylor cheats on Schroeder and ends their relationship. Only a truly great TV show would conclude its first season with a doofus like Taylor telling Schroeder she'll never have to see him again, only for him to appear immediately in Season 2.

The joint bachelor and bachelorette party in New Orleans ahead of Tom Schwartz and Katie Maloney's ill-fated wedding gets Season 5 of "Vanderpump Rules" into the top 3 alone; for my money, there's no better moment in reality TV history than Tom Sandoval, in broken-down drag, screaming that Schwartz is "like a battered wife" before kicking a door open to show a ghoulishly grinning Schwartz, who appears to be on the toilet. Even without that, though, this season is a total all-timer. 

Lala Kent, incredibly drunk and egged on by an equally intoxicated James Kennedy, starts off the season by cruelly telling Maloney and Stassi Schroeder that they clearly haven't been "working on their summer bodies," and Season 5 doesn't let up from there for even a minute. After Schwartz proposes to an increasingly desperate Maloney, most of the season revolves around their nuptials — during which an emotional Sandoval uses the couple's dog as a tissue and, later, brings a trumpet to the reception and pisses off the live band — and characteristically, the messy weirdos on "VPR" get into constant fights as the wedding approaches, including the "happy" couple themselves. Everyone is operating at a high and crazy frequency during Season 5 of "VPR," and it's impossible to look away, especially when you get to Scheana Shay's final act reveal that her eventual ex-husband Michael Shay has an addiction to painkillers and stole her money to support his habit.

The fact that Season 10 of "Vanderpump Rules" is as great as it is — after dismal outings in Seasons 8 and 9 — is all thanks to Tom Sandoval and his months-long affair with Raquel Leviss. (I'd say this is unfortunate for Ariana Madix, and it definitely is in the immediate fallout, but that woman has become so powerful since this breakup that it's a wonder to behold.) Even with a slow start which mostly focuses on the sorely needed divorce between Katie Maloney and Tom Schwartz — while Sandoval quietly seems to set the stage for a future split with Madix before he gets caught — Season 10 brings back the insanity and drama of the earliest days of "VPR."

The best thing about Season 10 as it pertains to Scandoval is two-fold. First, because news of Leviss and Sandoval's affair broke while it was airing, fans were glued to each new episode hunting for clues about Sandoval's indiscretions. Second, the show picked up cameras after wrapping for the unexpected finale, "Scandoval," which features one of the most raw and radically feminist moments I've ever seen on television courtesy of Madix. Between that and her unfettered rage during the three-part reunion, Madix, despite experiencing immense heartbreak, ran away with this season of "VPR" — and managed to help the show dig its way out of a massive rut. Plus, thanks to some unbelievably beautiful editing, the show eventually earned its first Emmy nominations.

The season where Stassi Schroeder backhands her best friend Kristen Doute across the face is the best season of "Vanderpump Rules" by a mile. After grappling with Jax Taylor's betrayal in Season 1, Stassi Schroeder becomes understandably suspicious when she hears a rumor that Doute, her longtime bestie, slept with Taylor; this would be bad enough, but during this season, Doute is dating and living with Tom Sandoval, Taylor's best friend. As she tries to get to the bottom of everything, everyone else acts beautifully and wonderfully insane. In a desperate and utterly misguided attempt to win Schroeder back, Taylor gets her signature tattooed on his arm only to get it covered up later (he does this multiple times with multiple women, by the way). Scheana Shay finds herself at odds with all of the girls, especially Katie Maloney, whose decision to dye her hair an appalling shade of orange-blonde remains one of the great mysteries of "VPR." (The hairstyle is not improved when, during an argument in Mexico, Tom Schwartz dumps a full drink on his girlfriend Maloney's head.) 

The reveal that Doute and Taylor did hook up — at Sandoval's house, while he was sleeping, while watching the Ryan Gosling movie "Drive" — is both expected and explosive, culminating in said backhand and a physical altercation between Taylor and Sandoval. (Taylor, with blood on his forehead, staring directly into the camera after an attack from Sandoval remains one of the show's most enduring images.) If you want to watch a perfect season of TV, try Season 2 of "Vanderpump Rules."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).