A version of this article first appeared on the Obsessed by Kevin Fallon Substack. Subscribe here for more.
Another Scandoval has made impact.
Scientists (conspiracy-minded Bravo fans) are still calculating the size of the crater it might leave in the culture.
Two stars of Bravo’s Summer House, Amanda Batula and West Wilson, confirmed reports that they are dating. It is seismic news to people who watch the show, so much so that even non-reality-TV aficionados (addicts) are having their timelines flooded with updates and reactions to it.
And I am here to explain what it all means, and why you should care. Because, like it or not, you’re going to be forced to care.
I have a very carefully curated social media algorithm, so that the posts I see are almost exclusively Real Housewives memes, celebrity thirst traps, and funny posters from the No Kings rally. The Bravo aspect of that formula meant that, over the last several days, my timelines were flooded with gossip about the stars of Summer House.
The news is meteoric if you happen to be a fan of the series, in which a group of attractive millennials travels to the Hamptons every weekend to bond, hook up, and generally make me jealous. If you haven’t watched, the goal here is to make you understand what is happening, just in case this bombshell blows up to Scandoval proportions. Because I know what it’s like to be left out.
I wasn’t watching Vanderpump Rules when the Scandoval took over the nation’s consciousness like some kind of hivemind virus.
I barely understood who the players were. I certainly didn’t grasp the gravity of why everyone cared. Yet every conversation when I’d meet up with friends and family would begin with someone demanding a breathless download on the latest headlines. Every group text chain I was in was messaging about it at a rate I didn’t think was biologically feasible for human thumbs to achieve.
It was so lonely. I felt like a little boy holding a sad balloon standing outside the party that he wasn’t invited to.
But luckily, I am up to date on Summer House. I have been force-fed all the drama and gossip, like X, Instagram, and Threads were Italian aunties who thought I was looking too thin.
There are four major players in this that you need to be familiar with.
Summer House stars Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke got married in 2021 and officially announced their separation in January. The fracturing of their relationship plays out across this currently airing season of the show, and is painful—yet quite juicy—to watch.
Their housemates, Ciara Miller and West Wilson, dated after meeting on the show, but had an incredibly messy breakup that has taken two seasons of Summer House to recover from. In the most recent episodes, the pair is flirty and contemplating whether it would be healthy to get back together again.
Amanda and Ciara have long proclaimed themselves “besties,” and Amanda has credited Ciara with helping her through her rough breakup with Kyle.
The juicy stuff is that Amanda and West, for weeks before confirming their “connection,” had been spotted out together, looking romantic, as if they were dating and/or hooking up. It seemed like a pretty wild betrayal, on both of their parts, of Ciara. Rumors were that Amanda and Ciara were “feuding” over the whole thing. Which, like…yeah!
The sources for all this were the usual suspects: Deuxmoi, Page Six, Bravo fan accounts, and Instagram. So, originally, I took it all with a Costco-sized package of salt. But turns out the gossip mill is sometimes correct.
The rumors of Amanda and West dating were exacerbated by several members of the Summer House cast and other Bravolebs posting cryptic memes of themselves looking variations of surprised, shocked, or disgusted. Unsurprisingly, Bravo fans are taking these reactions as pseudo-confirmations of the scandalous fling.
Things started to feel real when People ran with the rumors, which legitimized things. The way I grew up, what People says was considered Bible.
As for the four people involved in this web, so tangled that an expert seaman will be needed to untie the knots, they didn’t help at all in putting the rumors to bed.
West was directly asked about the rumors on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live last week, and didn’t exactly deny them.
“She’s single now, and it’s happened with other people that she’s hung out with,” he said. “We’re just hanging out in New York. She’s single. I kinda gotta show her the streets, you know?”
And when pressed further: “If it’s not clear, that’s a very important person to me, and I, like, care about her a lot.” I’m sure.
Earlier this month on the Bravo talk series, Kyle said, “It would certainly catch me by surprise and feel a little reckless. And I think I’d probably be the last person people would be worried about. I think Ciara would probably have something to say. But if it made Amanda happy, I think I just would have to vote ‘yay.’”
Then there’s Batula and Miller. Fans noticed that the BFFs hadn’t been liking each other’s social media posts, which, having spent two decades watching Bravo, is akin to leaving a horse’s head in the other’s bed. They were also supposed to give a joint presentation for Amazon, but they ended up giving it separately.
But now there’s no need to whisper about whether or not this is true, or how the cast feels about it.
Amanda and West made things loud and clear when they released a joint statement, saying, “We’ve shown up for each other as friends over the years, through all the highs and lows, and what’s developed recently was the last thing either of us expected. Our connection grew out of a genuine, long-standing friendship, which made it especially important for us to approach this with care.”
It’s a wild statement for several reasons. Imagine hooking up with a friend and then, because you’re on reality TV, being forced to escalate it into a full-blown relationship, complete with a public statement, because everyone in the media is gossiping about it.
But also...it’s not a very good statement. Chiefly, it’s noticeable that they don’t apologize to anyone who may have been hurt by their secret dating. West is one of Kyle’s—again, Amanda’s ex-husband—best friends. And Ciara is Amanda’s. Anyone with even the lowest moral standards would find this messy: The ex of one best friend dating the ex of another’s. Are there no longer “codes” we abide by?
As for Ciara, she was photographed shortly after the news broke. She was apparently crying, sitting on the sidewalk outside of a Hermes store in New York City. Honestly, that is incredibly chic.
I remember when Scandoval was all anyone talked about for months. If this Summer House controversy reaches that level, well...hopefully at least now you know what in the world is going on.
