On reality TV, where is the Line — the point where something goes from being entertaining to uncomfortable to watch? This season of The Valley — Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules spinoff that follows a group of chaotic frenemies “adulting” in L.A. — has been an (un)controlled scientific study to discover just that.
This is largely thanks to one person: Jax Taylor. The Valley’s most controversial cast member is no stranger to reality TV villainy, with the early seasons of Vanderpump Rules chronicling a litany of his cheating scandals, duplicitous lies, drunken brawls, and instantly canon quotes like “I’m the number one guy in the group!” In 2020, Taylor was fired after an eight-season run — only for his reality TV stardom to be resurrected by The Valley four years later, where his abusive and controlling behavior toward his soon-to-be ex-wife, Brittany Cartwright, has become a running story line. In the show’s first season, he constantly belittled Cartwright on-camera — shaming her for drinking alcohol and demeaning her as a mother. The couple had separated by the time the season-one finale aired, and during the first ten episodes of the show’s second season, his behavior has hit disturbing new lows. Now, there is a growing backlash against Taylor — and Bravo, for continuing to platform him.
From the outset, The Valley has been defined by a sense of unvarnished darkness that is reminiscent of 2000s reality TV: life-ruining cheating rumors, drunken arguments that spill into cramped corridors where the camera operators can’t get out of shot, and the type of smirking male villainy we haven’t seen since Spencer Pratt on The Hills. And this season, where the central story lines include multiple divorces, alleged drinking problems, inappropriate touching, and even “hooker” allegations, nothing can compete with the toxicity of Taylor and Cartwright’s relationship.
In the season-two premiere, we learned that, shortly before filming began and after Cartwright had moved out to a nearby Airbnb, Taylor had discovered private sexual messages between her and a friend of his. He flew into a violent rage, tipping a coffee table upside down that collided with Cartwright’s leg, instantly turning it blue, and destroying a kitchen barstool. (Their 4-year-old son, Cruz, who is nonverbal and autistic, was in the next room.) “I lost all control. I saw red. I had an out-of-body experience,” he said in a confessional interview. “But show me a guy that wouldn’t handle the situation the way I handled it.”
Following this incident, Taylor was urged to enter a rehab facility by Cartwright, his sister, and, according to Variety, the show’s producers and Bravo, too. As he packed his bags — conveniently dressed head to toe in merch for his Studio City bar — the couple faced off once again. And this time, Cartwright let him have it. In a jaw-dropping scene, she accused Taylor of having a cocaine addiction — a fact that, frankly, surprised roughly no one watching, but felt like a bulldozer smashing through the fourth wall. (Ahead of the season-two premiere, he appeared on Bravo’s Hot Mic podcast and revealed that, yes, he has been a cocaine addict for around 20 years. On Instagram, he also shared that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD.)
On the show, nothing could prepare anyone for what happened next. In rehab, Taylor became obsessed with Cartwright. Apparently jealous that his co-stars were filming without him, he sent her hundreds of “rage texts” from the facility, including threatening messages like, “trust me i gave my friends your address. they are gonna stop by.” He also used security cameras at their family home to spy on Cartwright, sending creepy texts to indicate he was listening to her private conversations. (Once he left rehab, he refused to log out of the camera system, suggesting he would only do so in return for time with his son, whom Cartwright alleges he had made little effort to see.) Taylor also admitted to not paying any of the bills or mortgage on their shared home for many months, putting it at risk of foreclosure, as revenge for Cartwright sexting his friend.
In the past, Taylor’s villainy made for oddly enthralling TV. On Vanderpump Rules, where his relationship with Cartwright began, fans saw many red flags in their relationship, from his cheating and near-pathological lying to chauvinism. In 2016, when he paid for Cartwright to get her breasts enlarged, he said, “If I’m going to finance this, I want ’em how I want ’em.” The following year, when she didn’t make him — the “breadwinner” — a sandwich on demand, he angrily berated her. These moments, combined with a face that became gradually more crimson and filler-filled, made Taylor someone fans loved to hate, landing him a spot on the E! competition show House of Villains in 2023.
On The Valley, however, something felt off from the start. Taylor had evolved from being an exaggerated, reality-TV-ready version of the biggest asshole in most male friendship groups to something more sinister. In the first season, he volleyed between screaming at Cartwright and putting her down to professing his love for her in public or in confessional interviews. Fans identified a clear cycle of love-bombing — a pattern that psychologists identify as a sign of abuse. After they separated, their co-stars, including Kristen Doute and Zack Wickham, began to share firsthand accounts of Taylor verbally abusing his wife — calling her fat or saying she had no friends — that they’d witnessed in recent months. At this point, his behavior stopped being entertaining. “I don’t think Jax is the fun kind of reality TV evil,” surmised Danny Pellegrino, host of Everything Iconic podcast. “It’s all way too dark-sided.”
During Taylor’s awkward appearance on Watch What Happens Live! last week — where he was accompanied by a hostage-like Tom Schwartz, Bravo’s go-to sidekick for toxic men — host Andy Cohen opened the show by acknowledging that fans (and even Taylor’s co-stars) were angry about him being invited onto the show. Despite Taylor being shown a poll indicating that 0 percent (!) of fans support him, some viewers interpreted his contrite WWHL appearance as a conveniently-timed lifeline — the latest example of Bravo giving its male stars endless opportunities for redemption.
Take #Scandoval, for example. After the seismic cheating scandal engulfed Vanderpump Rules in 2023, it would have been pretty easy for the network to put Tom Sandoval, the archvillain, on pause for a season or two. Fans couldn’t stand him, most of his co-stars weren’t speaking to him, and he was accused by Rachel Leviss of secretly recording an intimate FaceTime call without her consent. Instead of taking a much-needed break, Bravo kept the “most hated man in America” around, and his fumbled attempt at a redemption arc ended up derailing the show.
But Taylor? He makes Sandoval look as harmless as one of Lisa Vanderpump’s fluffy little Chihuahuas. And all season long, fans have called out Bravo for supposedly platforming an abuser. Speaking to Variety, executive producer Alex Baskin responded to this. “Our job is to tell the full story,” he said. “If we didn’t tell the story in its completeness, then we would be covering up something that really happened, and denying Brittany the chance to share what she had been through. I don’t think that’s really ‘platforming an abuser’ as much as that is platforming the story.”
Full story or not, Bravo has definitely given its stars the boot for less. But truthfully, there probably are benefits to showing the dark reality of a controlling relationship on TV — viewers may recognize parts of Taylor and Cartwright in people they know, or even themselves, and feel more empowered to call it out.
Despite the fact that Taylor has been universally condemned — the cast have had Cartwright’s back, and his planned podcast tour was recently canceled after several venues pulled out, citing his behavior — I can’t shake the feeling that he simply gets off on being talked about. In last week’s episode, as he left rehab, you could tell that he was feeding off the cameras and getting a perverse high out of even the most negative attention.
That’s why it’s time to fire Jax Taylor … again. He’s crossed the Line so severely that it’s barely visible, like the lines on his unnervingly reflective forehead. I understand why Bravo wanted to follow his story this season, but moving forward, there comes a point where paying someone hundreds of thousands of dollars to repeat the same abusive behavior patterns stops being defensible — or even entertaining. Bravo’s audience needs to see that there are consequences — even for the “number one guy in the group.”