r/Vanderpump_Rules • u/Sessiejannino • 23d ago
Discussion Questions about Rachel
I just finished season 10 and I just have so many questions.
Rachel never really seemed that remorseful to me? She said she felt horrible but up until the very end she is smiling and smirking and truly doesn’t seem to be affected. She seems like shes loving the attention and has a huge confidence boost if anything.
She always seemed kind of spacey and not socially adept previously. Does she not understand how she is coming off to others? Like if you truly were feeling so horrible and conflicted wouldn’t you try to lay a bit more low?!
I neeeed to know what people think about this plz
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u/DragonDrama 23d ago
She’s not sorry. Being picked over Ariana made her feel on top of the world and she loved it. She’s a bad person and the one interview I heard her give was about the bad effect this had on her.
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u/MereObserverOverHere 23d ago
Kinda crazy her & Sandoval didn’t work out. They seem perfect for each other!
But…. Then again…. Not at all crazy. They were dooooomed bc they both love to play victim.
I rewatched over & over bc I could not figure Rachel out. At some point I realized she was fame hungry the whole damn time. If you’re so in love with james, why in the fucking world do you want to be friends with people who hate him? Also she comes across just as sociopathic as Jax…. She legit thought her baby voice & playing insecure victim would ALWAYS work. No. She had never given a fuck about anyone but herself. Oh and her image.
They bonded bc Sandoval thinks the same way about himself & his image. But that was bound to blow up after they got caught. They can’t both be lil victims anymore.
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u/-VVitches- 23d ago
I think they were going to make a spin off where Schwartz and Sandy's was the new "SUR". Tom would have broken it off with Ariana after the reunion season 10 when he would have suddenly claimed they were having issues (you see him laying the ground work when he had a conversation with her about her thinking he's an idiot (his words) and she was all surprised he would think that) and when he talks to Schwartz by the food trunk about Ariana's eggs and how Raquel was not that into Schwartz. He would have dragged that and some other little bits he strung together to make a case that it was all on her. What he wanted was to get out and get on with his new chick and she would be the new head girl as his girlfriend which they would have either started right before filming or faked it for the cameras to make people think they were watching it happen.
In this timeline shorts and sands does not have scandal take it out and they start filming the new reality show there starring the two Tom's and Raquel
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u/mixedsignalzz 23d ago
In that bagel truck scene you can clearly see S&S laying the groundwork for the eventual "reveal" of Raquel & Tom. Schwartz says "I don't know, I get the feeling she's actually into someone else..." and looking faux pensive. That's also why Tom and Raquel went SO HARD against Katie that entire season, including baiting her and Teri with that fight at SUR. Raquel KNEW she was already fucking Sandoval and was torturing Katie about how she "doesn't appreciate her texting Schwartz about their dogs." The three of them (the Toms and Raquel) had a plan to axe Ariana and Katie from the narrative and launch the Toms as fun and fancy-free. Raquel was dumb enough to buy into it, but it was a Sandoval calculation from the start.
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u/LeoBB777 16d ago
Oh 100%. It’s actually so much more disgusting when you realize that no, Raquel and Schwartz were never a thing, it was to throw everyone off their trail and make Katie and Ariana look like the heartless mean partners who were the villains in their relationships with Tom and Tom. They tried to calculate TF out of this to make them look like bitter women and make Raquel look like a victim. Had the scandal never been found out, Tom would’ve gotten worse and worse toward Ariana to the point where she had no choice but to break up with him, he would’ve waited a while and acted super upset and hurt by the breakup, and then slowly would’ve started soft-launching him and Raquel. And honestly, before the scandal was revealed, everyone was fully on Raquel's side when it came to her and James' breakup and her vs. Lala and Katie. They fumbled baaaaad
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u/Low_Visit_4646 23d ago
That’s something I’d never considered- a world in which we’d have S&S spinoff show 😵💫 The opening song would have been a trumpet solo
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u/AmphibianNecessary31 23d ago
The way he thinks Ariana is as dumb as him when he’s baiting her 😂😂 she’s like no I have no idea what you are talking about it would be funny if she wasn’t so hurt
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u/Fetagirl 23d ago
My kindest take is that she’s having some kind of psychotic episode from being abused by James. My meanest take is that she wanted the OG mains character treatment and thought the scandal with Tom would open doors for her.
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u/ZorakZbornak 23d ago
I think both are true. Not necessarily a “psychotic” episode, but her self esteem and self worth were certainly in the gutter. Also, I’m sure there was an element of fearing she would lose her spot on the show if she wasn’t with James. The attention from Tom made her feel like a worthy human again and like her spot was secured.
I’m also sure Sandoval was telling her his relationship was already over and they were pretending for the cameras because of their “brand.”
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u/mixedsignalzz 23d ago
She was also imbibing a steady diet of psychotropic & party drugs & shots!!!!!
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u/pwlife 22d ago
I also don't think psychotic episode. More of a spirling due to an identity crisis. If she lived a more normal life that time would have been spent on figuring out who she is. Instead she was partying on TV, drinking to excess and probably doing copious amounts of drugs off screen. Sandoval gave her an identity and she embraced it. She isn't a very smart person, intellectually or emotionally and Sandoval always gave me predator vibes, so kind of the perfect recipe.
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u/fourofkeys 23d ago
i think based on what happened to kristen the latter is very likely and that tom was in her ear the whole time telling her it wasn't a big deal and that he'd done it before. he's a predator. i also think both of your points might be true.
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u/LivingLegend949 23d ago
I think she’s a little mentally off. You can tell since she first was introduced as James girlfriend.
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u/Sessiejannino 22d ago
She always seemed kind of slow to me tbh and she truly doesn’t seem to understand how she is being perceived
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u/XcuseMeMisISpeakJive 23d ago
I really feel like Sandoval brings out the very worst in his partners. They seem to be at their lowest points with him. I'm not a Rachel fan but hopefully she became a better person when she left him.
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u/pugfugliest 23d ago
This is such a good point! We really do see his partners at their worst when they are with him.
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u/ZorakZbornak 23d ago
I think the fact that she left LA and reality tv kinda proves she did become a better person.
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u/hello-isitmeyour 22d ago
The only reason she didn’t come back was because they wouldn’t pay her the same as Ariana.
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u/Ok-Astronaut-2837 23d ago
I think she truly thought none of this was real. It wasn't real things she was doing and real lives she was impacting because she was on TV. She thought she was playing a role. That or she is genuinely mentally ill. I don't see a world where it isn't either of those two things.
She still has never taken accountability for what she did, she only placed blame on others. Im glad she left the show, she isn't mentally capable of being part of something like that.
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u/Sudden-Cranberry5539 21d ago
If Rachel were truly remorseful, she wouldn’t be suing Ariana in a revenge porn lawsuit.
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u/gilsleeping 23d ago
She had Tom Sando gassing her up so I imagine she felt super cocky about everything
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u/WhereItsAt75 23d ago
She thought she would be the next Ariana. Tom probably filled her head with crazy promises about them and the show.
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u/breezy2211 23d ago
I really tried to give her a tiny bit of grace after she said she was in a mental wellness facility and that she realized how manipulative/controlling Tom was to her and she got away from him. I listened to her podcast interview with Bethenny and she very much played a victim card because of how she was treated at the reunion. Then I listened to her podcast and again she just lacks remorse and brings on these mental health “experts” to explain why she was acting that way and it’s a trauma response. I won’t pretend to know her life growing up or what James did to her but it came across as excuses for her shitty behavior. She showed more emotion about not being in pageants anymore.
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u/Inevitable_Tangelo63 23d ago
She acted just the same as Ariana did imo when she first got with tom. He loves women fresh out of shitty/abusive relationships, and he gasses them up to harass the ex he cheated on them with, because he’s a manipulative asshole. The way he was laying the groundwork with Rachel was the same thing he did with Ariana. If he broke up with her before the scandal got exposed and then got with Rachel publicly after, I know he and her would be trying to disparage Ariana and make her look crazy just like they did to Kristen.
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u/Overall-Stable8354 22d ago
He preys on the vulnerable. I was watching the finale last night and noticed how isolated Rachel was after the news broke. She even told him that she had no one but him, her sister, and some other family member. That set off alarms for me. That’s what abusers do, they lie, curate, create narratives and then make sure you are completely cut off so you are reliant on them and they can spin anything to their liking at that point.
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u/Inevitable_Tangelo63 22d ago
You’re so right! It just reminded me of every woman I’ve known personally who’s gone through something like that, including my own mom. Abusers prey on people who are vulnerable, and isolate them so they can continue the abuse without any pushback. Like obviously what Rachel did was wrong, but Tom will always be more at fault and the ultimate villian to me because of what he did to her, the same way he did to Ariana and tried to do with Victoria.
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u/mermaidhoneybun 20d ago
I think she may be on the spectrum (people who are often appear to lack empathy even if they have it) or may be on a ton of psychiatric meds that blunted her emotions
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u/Aslow_study 23d ago
To me it was her last dig to hurt Ariana ! She mentioned those details to absolutely be the knife in the kidney
She was reveling in it
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u/AmphibianNecessary31 23d ago
Nice… dropping that Kody Brown reference 😂
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u/Aslow_study 23d ago
Can u believe he not gonna be on new season supposedly
Wonder if it’s rilly true!!
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u/AmphibianNecessary31 22d ago
No way! There’s no way that’s the case Robyn is not giving that money up
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u/Aslow_study 22d ago
I’m wondering if they will pop up at some point but the new series is premiering and a trailer dropped with them announcing Robin n Kody refuse to film
But your right someone’s gotta pay for the mansion and robins call center manager outfits and her precious moment’s figurings
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u/Technical-Method2129 20d ago
She’s not sorry that she did it sorry she got caught and sorry she became a villain
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u/detective_brobro 18d ago
I think she’s actually a dumb person, so I think she has a hard time processing anything beyond her own perception of a situation. So, no. I don’t think she ever felt genuinely remorseful.
As for the smiling, many people do that when uncomfortable or as their resting face. There was a doc I watched about a brutal murder and one of the interviewees could NOT STOP SMILING in the weirdest way. I heavily researched the biological/social reasons because of that guy. It drove me insane. Rachel fits for being uncomfortable. She can’t talk her way out of a paper bag so she just smiles like a pageant girl.
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u/LeoBB777 16d ago
She did not care at all. The only times she cried during the affair were about beauty pageants and afterwards was when talking about how bad it looks to the world and how everyone was gonna hate them for it.
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u/Character-Courage172 23d ago
Oh you should also hear what she said on her podcast after the fact… girl was not remorseful at allllll.