I am a Summer House rookie. In fact, season 10 is my first full season of Summer House ever – similarly to my first viewing of Vanderpump Rules during Scandoval, I’m easily drawn to watching a scandal play out on Bravo. Sue me! Ergo, most of my thoughts will be primarily about Ciara/Amanda/West because I don’t have the #lore of the past ten seasons for everyone else. 

I think I’ve steered clear of Summer House because in the few episodes I’d seen before this season, every single man on the show got under my skin in a crazy way. Listen: I’ve watched a lot of bad men on TV (Jax Taylor on VPR; Ronnie on Jersey Shore; Junior on Mob Wives, pretty much every single dad on Teen Mom) but there was something about the men of Summer House that made them attainably awful to me. I know these men. They’re your friend’s horrible boyfriend that she swears is fun when he’s not drunk but who is, predictably, always drunk. They’re the guy in your polisci tutorial that’s “charming” and therefore gets away with doing absolutely no work on anything the entire year, instead choosing to spend his time emotionally torturing some girl you know from Model UN (again, as previously stated, shoutout QU.)

With that being said, my thoughts on part one of the reunion below.

It’s perhaps because of this “attainably awful” perspective that the West/Amanda of it all really does read as some high school bullshit to me. OH, it’s LOVE? OHHHHHHH! Guys it’s LOVE! No, it isn’t. God, these people are moronic. Like highkey, thank god my mom gave a shit about me and cared if I turned out stupid. Others cannot say the same. My mother once said, “Since you lived in a house with Gran and me, you’re never going to be one of those people that hasn’t been told they’re an idiot.”

“Thank god my mom gave a shit about me and cared if I turned out stupid.”

Amanda and West have never been told they’re idiots. West has that kind of “aw shucks” basset hound thing (Tom Schwartz) that some people find endearing in men but mainly causes me to want him to punch him in the face (like hey, you’re really not going to defend the women you’re intimate with from being called “side bitches” on national television because you’re too busy making yourself look suitably pathetic in the face? Get up, you coward loser.) This TikToker hits the nail on the head for me re: Amanda obviously wanting to crawl inside Ciara’s skin. Amanda is not “cool” and has always wanted to be, so now that she had the opportunity to be with the guy “everyone likes,” she’s shocked that she’s not being supported after her tragic marriage to Kyle. 

RE: Ciara’s “weak figure” comment that everyone was saying was harsh – I say again, did none of you have eloquent moms? Sometimes if you piss off a smart person, they’re going to say something about your character. It’s also just accurate: Amanda IS a weak figure in the context of Summer House, and I think that the disruption of her “girlboss” arc á la Ariana Madix with this scandal, combined with Ciara calling her weak, is the thing she’s actually going to think about at night for a while. These people are influencers first and foremost, and Amanda has officially become the Tom Sandoval of the situation – a joke who’s going to have to shill on anything and everything to become more palatable to the masses again. I’m starting to get really annoyed existentially at the constant use of the term “girls girl” when we’re talking about women in their 30s, but god, watching someone be that male-centered on national tv in the face of a friendship that seemed to be so genuine never gets any easier.

Other cast thoughts in part one: Mia is far and away my favourite of the cast. I think she’s smart and classy and beautiful and I want her to succeed. Lindsay Hubbard really did look gorgeous and also like she was on Dynasty in the 80s. I’m rooting so hard for KJ, who seems like such a down to earth person who I hope is taking care of himself with all of this and his BPD diagnosis. 

Reunion Part Two thoughts:

OOF. OOOOOOF. 

Reiterating my point that these people have never been told they’re idiots – Amanda being more upset that the left side of the couch were “making her feel stupid” instead of even trying to critically reflect on her actions? Wow wow wow. The whole time I just kept on thinking YOU ARE 34!!! YOU ARE THIRTY-FOUR!!!!! How are you unaware that this was your fuck up to own? This is the FIRST TIME you’ve ever had to deal with the repercussions of a situation you caused? Ciara’s “historically she does have low self-esteem” line is yet another piece of criticism I just know Amanda’s going to see on the ceiling before she falls asleep. It was so unfortunate that the moment where she clearly did exhibit some agency (when she explained why the statement ending her marriage came out so abruptly, namely because Kyle sucks) was absolutely overshadowed by her desire to have everyone treat her and West as a legitimate couple. Like, oh my god, take the LOSS! 

Dara is so well-spoken, and I’m so glad she had a moment to gather her thoughts before Amanda came back out to give her a proper top-to-bottom read. And WHAT a read. Thank god she said it! 

West. West West West. This was a real cards-on-the-table moment for him. Reader, the cards were so bad.  Not getting up and following your….(girlfriend? Side chick?) because you want to be able to hear everything that’s said about you by the people on stage? Encouraging her to cry on stage because you know that’s an easy way to deflect a conversation? There’s a really weird pattern of behaviour here with Meija and Ciara and his insistence that those relationships, both with women of colour, were “casual,” but the relationship he kept in the shadows with the yet to be divorced Amanda is Very Serious™. Yeah, this guy really thought he was smarter than reality TV. And you know what? Maybe he could be, but the old wives’ tale thing seems to ring true here: certain men can only think with one head at a time. 

“Yeah, this guy really thought he was smarter than reality TV. And you know what? Maybe he could be, but the old wives’ tale thing seems to ring true here: certain men can only think with one head at a time.”

And finally: I’m not here to defend Kyle Cooke. Period, point blank. In a different time, he and Amanda lasted because both of them give off that same entitled energy, but this marriage evidently sucked and should have been over a while ago. I don’t like a man calling a woman a dumbass bitch, I especially do not like it when it’s the person you claim to be in an equal partnership with. I don’t like a man throwing shit around and pounding on tables when they get mad. I don’t like a man getting drunk and effectively haunting the goddamn Summer House all night, as Kyle was wanting to do. Put simply, I don’t like an adult acting like a child, stamping their feet when they don’t get their way. When the two of them admitted that Summer House was their therapy for all the problems in their marriage, I saw a glimmer of the reason that they both got together in the first place: they’re fucking stupid. Glad he’s saying he’s taking accountability; this sexless marriage being over is a great fresh start, but I’m not going to ignore that weird ass aggressive behaviour. It’s certainly not forgiven just because Amanda is an idiot. Two things can be true at once! 

Reunion Part Three thoughts: 

“You have to stop letting life happen to you.” – Ciara, 2025 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that stupid people believe that everybody else is as stupid as they are. That is truly what is happening with West and Amanda. They can sit there all they want and insist upon the idea that the Instagram posts had nothing to do with what they were doing behind closed doors, or that last summer was not the start of some kind of emotional affair, even though it by all accounts looks like it and frankly makes perfect sense to have started then. These are two people who believe they can get away with anything so long as they just absolutely commit to the bit, but the unfortunate thing is they are too stupid to commit to the bit. Nobody has their story straight. Nobody has the timeline straight; none of this adds up, and instead, we’re just sitting here, in the words of Lindsay Hubbard, with not a lot of clarity.

A good friend of mine once took an Ambien and ended up having a horrible reaction to it in an Italian airport. I’m gonna say that this is exactly what Amanda is experiencing on the reunion stage. She is not processing any of this. She was either on some kind of anti-anxiety med and was going through the motions, or she is just truly a stupid person, and it is 100% going to end up biting her in the ass.

There are moments in life where you really have to critically look at the decisions that you make, and think “am I being a version of myself that I respect?” Amanda sitting here, listening to West effectively get bullied into admitting that he had a girlfriend and had been fucking around with other women, including Ciara, at the start of their beautiful love affair that she thinks cements her as a kind of Charlotte York-believer-in-love wannabe, is one of those moments. I do believe her when she says that she has a lot to think about coming off of this reunion because she does have a lot to think about – namely, what will Buffalo Wild Wings think? Because instead of actually having thought of any of this before walking in to this reunion, she is now having to do all of it after, with information that’s being presented to her by people that wanted to have her back, that instead are not going to care whether or not she is getting fucked around on, except for her ex-husband, who again, kind of sucks ass.

I hate when people talk out of both sides of their mouth. On one side you have Amanda being so insistent on making herself look like a wide-eyed ingenue this whole time (THIRTY FOUR!!) saying that all of this was happening so fast that she just didn’t have time to think about anything other than the feelings – it really is “Oh guys it’s love!” On the other hand, you have West sitting there talking about how this was a really weighted decision that they had to think about. It just doesn’t click. It just does not add up. Is this something that was incredibly passionate, romantic, and therefore you had to just surrender to it, or is this something that you genuinely thought about and considered? I just don’t believe both can be true at the same time, even with the knowledge that this was shot weeks after the statement. 

In conclusion, Ciara really is a Cassandra to these people – she’s seen the demise of this relationship because she’s been there. She knows how West is because she’s seen it for herself. She calls Amanda what she is: a weak person who lets life happen to her. We’ve all know an Amanda, a woman who centres her life around the thoughts and feelings and sexual attraction of men instead of her own thoughts feelings and life. She doesn’t care about this “incredible friendship” she fucked up because she’s got her man her man her man. Who cares that this man is a fuckin loser! She did it before, she can do it again! When West is crashing at his fans’ houses and partying all night, if they even make it past this year, she’ll look back at her marriage and think, it was all prep for this. Arrivederci.

---

Cate’s #thoughts

First off, ditto everything Trish said. I’m going to try and avoid repeating too much of what’s already been said, but who knows if that will actually happen. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Wowza! The way this scandal has been living rent-free in my mind since the moment The Statement dropped. Unlike Trish, I am a Summer House veteran. Summer House was my gateway drug to the Bravoverse. I was there for the Wirkus Watermelon, when Lindsay asked a very important sandwich question, every iconic Paige DeSorbo one-liner, and all the moments in between. So yeah, I’m a big fan of the show. But I’m also a fan of a lot of reality TV shows, so this isn’t my first scandal rodeo. However, never have I been so consumed by a situation involving a group of people I do not know at all and that does not impact me or my life in the slightest.

I think, as Trish said, part of it is the relatability or attainability of this group of people. A lot of other reality shows are captivating because they’re a spectacle: the people and their lives feel foreign. They’re unlike anyone we’ve encountered in our lives–whether that’s because they’re super rich, super religious, or just young and stupid and horny in Fiji (welcome back, Love Island!) But the cast of Summer House has always felt more ordinary and relatable. I know people like them. (Obviously minus the brand deals and the fame they’ve gained from the show.) And I think this is why this whole ordeal is so captivating to me. It’s a shocking and upsetting betrayal, but one that feels regular. Like the type of gossip your old roommate would tell you about a friend of a friend from college who you still follow on social media for some reason. hat’s the way a lot of my friends and I have talked about this over the past few weeks. 

“It’s a shocking and upsetting betrayal, but one that feels regular. Like the type of gossip your old roommate would tell you about a friend of a friend from college who you still follow on social media for some reason.”

There are two big things about this whole situation that make it basically impossible to empathize with Amanda at all: 

The first is that my relationships with my closest friends’ significant others are perhaps the most platonic in my life. Yeah, many of the aforementioned significant others have become friends, but I know them because they’re my friends’ partners. It’s different from the friendships I have with my other guy friends because my connection with my friends’ partners exists as a result of their relationship with my friend. (Take a shot every time I say “friend.”) If I could equate it to any other male relationship in my life, it would be an uncle. My best friends’ partners are basically my uncles.

Obviously, there are instances here and there where I’ve been friends with two people individually for a long time and then they start dating later. But that doesn’t matter here because that’s not the case. Amanda has known West basically exactly as long as Ciara has known West, and in that time West was either a.) involved with Ciara or b.) the enemy because of how he treated Ciara. Which brings me to my second point…

The people who dislike my ex the most in this world are the women closest to me. And I think this is very common in female friendships. If someone wrongs me–yeah, it sucks and hurts and I’ll get through it. If someone wrongs one of my girls, it’s absolutely unacceptable and I will seek vengeance until the day I die. My best friends’ shitty exes are my op forever and always. One time my best friend rolled down her car window and started yelling at a man on the street because she thought it was my ex. 

“If someone wrongs one of my girls, it’s absolutely unacceptable and I will seek vengeance until the day I die.”

My point is, aside from it just being insanely shitty for Amanda to date West, I also just can’t comprehend 1.) dating one of my “best friends’” (Amanda’s words!) exes regardless of the circumstances surrounding their split because they’re my uncles and 2.) dating someone who really hurt someone I supposedly care about. 

With all that in mind, here are some key things/moments that stood out to me at the reunion. 

• As difficult as I’m sure this whole situation has been, I am, first and foremost, glad that Ciara had the opportunity to say what she needed to say face-to-face. And she looked so hot while doing it. 
• I’m not dissing her looks because I’m pissed about her behavior. Even if she was the hero of the season I’d still say this: Amanda!!!! That’s a dumbass fuckass bun!
• There’s been a lot of talk about West and Amanda’s overall demeanor, so much so that Andy actually asked if they had taken beta blockers before filming. But as Ciara so kindly pointed out in a post on Threads, beta blockers help with the physical symptoms of anxiety. You can’t get high on them, and they’re certainly not going to make you appear apathetic. My personal opinion (based only on vibes and absolutely zero concrete facts) is that there was benzos or something comparable in the mix. Which maybe helped with the anxiety, but certainly did not help them come off sympathetic in the slightest.
• West is just the worst. His silence was infuriating. At least Amanda actually spoke up, even if most of what she said was just the absolute wrong thing to say. The cowardly evasiveness!!!! Like just pick a lane, dude. You can’t be both committed and uncommitted and in a relationship and not a relationship and sorry and not sorry. In his pursuit to be likable, he’s managed to make himself even more unlikable by having absolutely no backbone. 
• The extent of the lying was absolutely wild. In the words of Jesse Solomon, “not only did you lie to us, you made us feel crazy for thinking it could be true.” These were not lies of omission; Amanda and West were doubling down on this stuff. It’s like they sat down and went “hmm how can we handle this in the worst possible way and burn bridges with everyone in this circle of friends in the process?” If that was the intent, great work!!! You succeeded.
• On the note of lying…the Instagram baiting. Amanda could say that wasn’t intentional until she’s blue in the face and I’ll never believe it. 
• The receipts!!! Again, the lying is crazy. Ciara gave Amanda every opportunity to come clean and to admit to even the slightest hint of anything romantic with West, and Amanda doubled down.
• The history of lies paired with either their actual apathy towards the situation or potential benzo use that made West & Amanda appear completely apathetic made any moments of attempted “sincerity” just completely unbelievable. They really dug their own grave there. 
• The fact that there was anything other than apologies coming out of Amanda’s and West’s mouths is inexcusable. The circumstances that led them here don’t matter. The point is, they made a decision and now they need to sit in it. Nothing they say will undo the hurt and damage they’ve caused. Watching season 10 knowing what we know now is tough because Ciara was truly such a good friend to Amanda. Just an absolute ride or die girl’s girl. Amanda is going through a tough divorce and is clearly sorting through some stuff. And as any woman who has ever gone through anything difficult in their life can tell you, that’s when you need your girls the most. To give that up for a mid dude who can’t even commit and has a clear history of lying? Unthinkable. You made some wrong turns, sis.

• On the note of going through a divorce, I am not here for the Kyle Cooke redemption tour. HOWEVER, two things can be true at once: he was a terrible partner to Amanda and he’s the victim of a really horrendous betrayal. When he was talking about texting West about Amanda while West was on a date with Amanda…OOOF. 
• It’s also clear that Kyle obviously still cares a lot about Amanda. I think that was very apparent during part three of the reunion. I didn’t see a lot of anger from him. Mostly just sadness and hurt, and a lot of concern for both his former partner and his friends. 
• Lastly, there is truly nothing more beautiful than two women coming together after being wronged by the same man. The Ciara and Mejia love story is just beginning. 

Other notable moments/hot takes:

• Other notable moments/hot takes:
• Love you Mia love you KJ. 
• Bailey’s read of Ben. Truthfully, I’d believe anything Bailey told me. As someone I don’t know at all, I find her trustworthy. 
• Dara’s read of West.
• Lindsay calling West a “pathy”
• Jesse Solomon is a child of divorce
• This Carl moment
• This Lindsay moment