Southern Hospitality recently entered its third season, and if there’s a Vanderpump Rules-shaped hole in your heart, you’ve got to be watching this show. It’s a spin-off of Southern Charm, and if that particular part of the Bravosphere isn’t for you, look, I get it. Southern Charm has featured some of the most heinous men in Bravo history, and that’s really saying something! Also, remember when Bravo performatively fired a bunch of reality stars for racist tweets and other incidents but continued to employ people who own literal plantations on Southern Charm? Because I sure do! But I digress. Southern Hospitality is a much more palatable show than Southern Charm, and it evokes the early seasons of Vanderpump Rules but with more gays, which I think we can all agree is an improvement. It centers on a group of young hotties who work at a club/bar on bustling King Street in Charleston. Service industry friend groups and gay friend groups are breeding grounds for drama, so when you have GAY restaurant workers thrown together on reality television? Oh yes, that’s that good shit.
One of the most deranged Pride traditions my wife and I have is rewatching all of the Pride episodes of Vanderpump Rules, which are extremely cringe and, somehow, extremely straight — at least until Ariana eventually comes out as bisexual, but that takes several seasons! Imagine our surprise when we watched Southern Hospitality and a Pride episode actually featured drama between gay people. Progress! After its first season, Southern Hospitality even received a GLAAD Award nomination. That first season included Mikel, a Black gay man struggling to square his sexuality with his religious upbringing. It also introduced TJ, who has been open about the struggles of dating as a gay man in a small Southern city like Charleston throughout the series.
In season three, TJ remains a main character and even bigger focus of the series, his friendship fallout with main cast member Joe Bradley a central storyline. That storyline is complicated by the fact that TJ feels Joe used to send him mixed signals and TJ’s confession of feelings for Joe, who maintains he’s straight, but their dynamic seems complicated to say the least (and will be explored more directly in the episode airing later this week). This season, TJ is also embroiled in a complicated situationship with newcomer Michols, a Black gay man who no longer has a close relationship with his mother after coming out. TJ was one of Michols’ first gay friends, so Michols feels hurt and confused in the wake of a kiss with TJ, feelings amplified by the fact that Michols is hesitant to purse anything with TJ since TJ hasn’t typically dated people of color. That conversation was intensely vulnerable, Michols sharing that his friends have become his chosen family. TJ definitely falls into that chosen family group, so of course it’s complicated that things got briefly romantic. This feels so real and like a common experience for a lot of young queer people who are just coming out. Close friendship and queer “mentorship” can sometimes lead to confusion or blurred boundaries.
In last week’s episode, it was revealed there’s another queer newcomer to the cast. Lake, a 22-year-old art school grad, has joined the Republic team as a VIP host. While on a date with fellow Republic employee Brad, she shares: “I’m a lover girl. Male, female, nonbinary, I don’t care.” She elaborates in testimonial: “I realized I’m on the fluid side when I was really young, and then I started having crushes on girls. But it wasn’t like ‘mom and dad, I’m gonna sit you down.’ Like, no, it wasn’t like that. Girlfriends, boyfriends, flings, whoever! I identify as for the people.”
Lake’s situation and relationship to her sexuality is definitely distinct from some of the other Southern Hospitality cast members’. Mikel — who did not return after season two — TJ, and Michols have all struggled with coming out as gay in the South and have talked about strained relationships with family members. I love that we’re not only getting one monolithic narrative about queerness in the South on the show. Michols and Mikel both have talked about queerness in relationship to their Blackness, and now we also have a queer Black woman who grew up in the South and who has been comfortably out as pan or bi (I’m not totally sure which labels she uses, if any) since she was young.
I could use a lot more of Lake, Michols, and TJ this season and a lot less of whatever is going on with Emmy and Will. I’m sure there’s a longer, deeper thinkpiece in me about this (that nobody asked for), but I feel like Scandoval cast such a huge shadow on the Bravosphere, and viewers are so hungry for a similar group-shattering cheating scandal, which thereby makes the people on the show desperate to provide the same level of drama. I can’t tell how much of Emmy’s behaviors are genuine denial and delusion about the state of her relationship and how much is an attempt to self-produce her way into an Ariana-like arc. That sounds cynical on my part, but I do wonder!
I also feel like I have a lot more thoughts on the TJ/Joe situation, and I hope they can at least both be honest about it all. Joe seems to have a tenuous relationship with the truth in general; he blatantly lied in last season’s reunion by saying he didn’t sleep with Luann. In any case, even if something did happen between TJ and Joe (Joe maintains he just drunkenly snuggled with TJ after a late night out), TJ should not be going around outing Joe, which he maybe seemingly tried to do in the past. It’s all very messy! But messy friendships are exactly the stuff Southern Hospitality traffics in.
Will we get a Pride episode this season? I sure hope so!