The Moment Summer House Broke Through
Monoculture is dead - we now live in a fragmented cultural landscape where your coworker is obsessed with a podcast you’ve never heard of, your bestie can’t stop talking about some random HULU show, and you've genuinely got no idea who the person is that your teenager worships. We now curate our own celebrities. Which makes it even more remarkable when something breaks through.
One week ago, the names Amanda Batula, Kyle Cooke, West Wilson, and Ciara Miller meant nothing to most people... unless you're a Bravo viewer (and even then, you’re never 100% certain which one is which). They’re the stars of Summer House, an obnoxious reality show where a bunch of largely douchey New Yorkers relocate to a McMansion in the Hamptons each weekend, get drunk and shout at each other. A lot. It’s a show that’s beloved by a devoted fanbase, but totally invisible to everyone else. Then Summer House had its moment.
Ten seasons in, the show has done what only the best reality television can: it's escaped its own audience. The drama currently consuming its cast is so primal, so perfectly constructed, that you don’t need to have watched a single episode to be completely gripped. The New York Times explained the situation to its readers as if filing a dispatch from a foreign country. That’s how you know something lower brow has broken through.
Here’s the lowdown on why we’re all obsessed:Boy A dumps Girl B. Girl B’s best friend, Girl C — freshly separated from Husband D — is secretly dating Boy A. And has been lying about it. That’s it. That’s the story. No famous names required. Swap in any four names, set it in any town, and it hits exactly the same nerve: loneliness, betrayal, the particular sting of being deceived by someone you trusted completely. These are not Summer House themes. These are human themes. It’s modern-day Shakespeare. Reality TV at its most effective is just mythology with better lighting and a Hamptons location budget.
