When Summer House aired on Bravo in 2017, via a memorable backdoor pilot attached to an episode of Vanderpump Rules, it was sold very plainly as a show about friendship.
It was also a show about the stress of work and millennial social-climbing. The remedy for which, according to this particular group of WASP-y Upper East Siders, was renting a house in Montauk for consecutive weekends in the summer and getting balls-to-the-wall drunk.
Seven seasons later, Summer House has strayed from its founding premise, as happens with most long-running reality shows. Vanderpump Rules suffered a similar fate when its cast could no longer pretend they were waiting tables for less than minimum wage. (Now, thanks to a miraculous and devastating turn of events, it’s become television’s Number 1 docusoap.)