'Vanderpump Rules' Is Still an Iconic Bravo Show That New Fans Are Discovering Every Day

Reality TV in the early 2000s and 2010s was something you just had to be there to see. There was Jersey Shore on MTV and, over on Bravo, 2013 brought with it Vanderpump Rules with a cast of real-life friends who happened to be reality TV stars in the making. We just didn't know it at the time. Years later, new viewers picked up the show at different points in the series.

And even now, some new fans want to know what Vanderpump Rules is about. Unlike half of the reality shows on Bravo, it is now a Real Housewives show. Instead, it started out as a series centered around servers and bartenders at the same restaurant. It became a lot more, though, and it does have a certain Real Housewives show to thank for its inception.

Vanderpump Rules is about employees at former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump's restaurant SUR. The wait staff are called SURvers, and then there are the bartenders who have their own form of drama with the SURvers each episode. At first, some of the drama is centered around restaurant culture, like Stassi Schroeder forcing newbie Scheana Shay to fold napkins when she isn't supposed to.

But the beauty of VPR is that the cast and restaurant employees were already friends before the series premiered. They already knew each other, and many had even dated before the camera began following them around. The show was also filmed at a time when social media fame didn't make everyone an automatic influencer worth six figures, so in some ways, the early days of VPR are pretty realistic and true to real life rather than potentially scripted or heavily edited for drama.

When Vanderpump Rules premiered in 2013, it did so on the backend of an episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. During a Season 4 episode, there is more focus on Lisa and her restaurant, and the episode segues into VPR. This episode of RHOBH allows VPR to premiere as a sort of backdoor pilot.

Scheana also got her start on RHOBH because of the affair she had with former RHOBH cast member Brandi Glanville's now ex-husband. Scheana and Brandi's conversation on RHOBH about the affair bleeds into the first episode of VPR, which originally aired after RHOBH on Bravo.

Now that you've watched the entire original 11-season fan of Vanderpump Rules, where do you go from here? Why, to The Valley, of course. It took a little while, but Bravo released The Valley as a spinoff for some of VPR's original cast members like Kristen Doute, Jax Taylor, and Brittany Cartwright. It premiered in 2024, the same year that the original VPR run with the OG cast ended.

Then, ahead of its third season, Bravo announced that other VPR stars would be joining The Valley as cast members. Lala Kent and Tom Schwartz, who had left VPR after its reboot, but who appeared on The Valley briefly, were brought in as full-time cast members. Maybe it will never be what VPR was, but for some longtime fans, it comes pretty close.