Viewers of The Valley campaigned for Jax Taylor to be faraway from the show’s call sheet last yr after displaying disturbing behavior on and off screen. But now, with the arrival of the series’ junior season, some watchers are singing a distinct tune.
At the middle of season two’s storyline was a domestic incident that occurred between Jax and his wife, Brittany Cartwright. Within the series premiere, the previous couple recounted a moment where Jax got indignant and flipped a coffee table, which bruised Brittany’s knee. At the primary Valley reunion, Brittany alleged Jax broke her Stanley cup, phone, laptop and threw her right into a bush, though he denied her claims.
Then got here the announcement many Bravo viewers were waiting for: Jax was to step away from The Valley, to give attention to his sobriety, mental health and coparenting with Brittany.
Jax’s behavior on season two didn’t make the choice shocking to those watching the show, and it was somewhat paying homage to his firing from Vanderpump Rules back in 2020. Last yr, Valley viewers flooded Reddit and TikTok arguing for his removal from the show for season three. Now this yr, as the most recent installment hit Bravo slightly over a month ago on April 1, The Valley has faced a wave of criticism for its content, and in some instances, the shortage of Jax within the solid.
Brittany’s impending divorce is addressed on The Valley, however it shouldn’t be the show’s center point. As a substitute, the previous Vanderpump star is in her first relationship post-Jax, which has, in real-time, already dissipated.
Zack Wickham and his boyfriend Benji Quach have moved in together. Michelle Saniei and Jesse Lally are still working on getting divorced, and the latter’s partner, Lacy Nicole, has finally agreed to film. Jasmine Goode and Melissa Carelli are planning their wedding. And Lala Kent and Tom Schwartz are there, too.
What’s on the core of season three is the struggles Kristen Doute and Luke Broderick are facing after welcoming their first child. Luke’s comments about his fiancée not wanting to be intimate after recently giving birth and navigating postpartum have particularly resulted in backlash. Nia Sanchez also just had her fourth child, and the fallout from her husband, Daniel Booko’s, intense season two conflict with Janet Caperna, is the underlying tension of The Valley‘s plot.
With Jax gone, Janet assumes the villain role imposed upon her by most of her castmates. Lala often acts as a bridge between Janet and the remainder of their co-stars, though Nia, Danny and Kristen are stubborn in not pursuing any type of relationship with Janet after she said Danny “sexually assaulted” Jasmine Goode’s partner, Melissa Marie, at an event that was not filmed.
Their feud leaves The Valley in a clumsy position, reawakening a trope (or a storyline, one could call it) that has turn into all too common on modern reality television shows; that of castmembers refusing to film with other castmembers.
In return, viewers have deemed season three “boring.” That, coupled with two women who’re being candid of their struggles with postpartum having to navigate criticism from their partners, has left a really sour taste within the mouths of the audience.
Some have pointed back to the shortage of Jax, a known pot-stirrer across his eight seasons on Vanderpump Rules and two-year run on its spinoff, for why season three of The Valley could possibly be missing an added flair.
“I actually tried this season however it’s boring. I literally fell asleep last time while watching,” one Redditor wrote online. “Nothing is occurring. It’s only a bunch of 40 yo individuals with boring lives and youngsters. Like who wants to observe this? And sorry not sorry however it got even worse since Jax left.”
Leslie Ye, a reality TV TikTok creator, argued in a recent video that The Valley doesn’t necessarily need Jax Taylor on its solid, but they need a Jax Taylor figure on the series to maintain it afloat.
“You could have to have someone who’s willing to go there with each and every body on the solid. And unfortunately, nobody really appears to be willing to,” she said. “Whether it’s that they care an excessive amount of about their relationships with the opposite people on the solid, or they’re too fearful of the fans, or they only don’t want the noise, no one really looks as if they’re clocking into work this season.”
Ye continued, “Any individual must step up. Any individual must say, like, I don’t care that there’s all this shit in my backyard; I’m gonna indicate everybody else’s crap, because that’s the job that I signed as much as do. And unless anyone does that soon, this show is either gonna get canceled, or they’re gonna must bring Jax back since it’s not giving Bravo. It’s not even giving TLC, because they’re just giving nothing. They’re doing absolutely nothing with the screentime.”
One other Reddit user echoed Ye’s argument, writing in a thread that Jax “was the straw that stirred the drink,” and that the season three solid lacks “a robust personality or two because the spoke of a wheel, and it doesn’t have that.” (In scripted TV terms, think Sex and the City without Carrie Bradshaw or The Sopranos without Tony Soprano.)
It’s polarizing how quickly the fanbase has shifted their viewpoint on Jax’s merit to The Valley, arguably so because last yr’s fan backlash played a big role in his exit. In a pre-reunion interview with The Hollywood Reporter last spring, executive producer Alex Baskin said that the audience’s concerns about Jax continuing on the show were taken under consideration by his team and Jax himself when deciding if he’d move forward for season three.
“I feel in some cases the response from the audience is thing, and I feel it forces someone to evaluate where they’re and what they may must do. The audience was very clear, understandably, how they felt concerning the situation,” Baskin said. “And positively that’s something that we have in mind, and he took it under consideration. It’s hard to say whether or not he would have made that call on his own but for the influence of the audience.”
A part of The Valley burnout may stem from the stacked lineup of shows Bravo has running in its current programming. Breakout hits like The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, regular gems including Southern Hospitality and, in fact, the scandal of Summer House now dominate the network’s orbiting fan forums and social media pages.
“[The Valley] doesn’t know what it desires to be, or WHY anyone ought to be invested,” one user wrote on Reddit. “It doesn’t have the chaos of Vanderpump, the relationships of Southern Hospitality, the elitism of Real Housewives. So what’s it? Is it 40-somethings with kids? Okay, after which what?”
They continued, “Obviously they’d a show with Jax and Brittany and a couple of of their ‘friends,’ and Jax with the bar etc. I’m not saying that was amazing, but okay it had a direction. Now it’s just flailing with toxic individuals who don’t have real reasons to interact.”
The most effective unstructured reality shows are founded upon the idea of human relationships, and the way the on a regular basis points of a castmember’s life intersect and end in conflict. The Valley is made up of a pool of people who find themselves half-friends, half-coworkers, which is already a leg up from a few of Bravo’s other shows which are clearly solid on no basis of prior connections.
And one lackluster season doesn’t indicate that the series ought to be thrown out, or that a controversial castmember is what it takes to save lots of a show. Though it should function a warning for what could result if the Valley-goers don’t tap into the raw potential that its debut 2024 season leaned into on the coattails of its predecessor, Vanderpump Rules.