Devoted Summer House fans are still coming to terms with their new reality.
Photo: Rebecca Jennings
It’s immediately apparent upon entering Carl Radke’s Soft Bar that the Summer House–themed bingo cards are outdated. In between spaces for classic tropes like “Kyle mentions DJing” and “Jesse Solomon hits on new girl” there is a big pink dot labeled “Team Amanda.” Because tonight, nobody is Team Amanda.
For a decade, viewers have cringed at Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke’s rocky relationship, the dénouement of which is currently playing out on season ten of Summer House. When the couple announced their separation in January, it seemed as though Batula would join the reign of hot divorcées currently running Bravo. That was before rumors began circulating on social media that Batula had been hooking up with West Wilson, another cast member who dated Batula’s house bestie, Ciara Miller, in 2023. One of the central narratives of season ten, filmed last summer, is the ongoing flirtation between Wilson and Miller, despite Miller’s residual humiliation at the way he’d dismissed her in the press after their breakup. Cast members (including Batula, Wilson, and Cooke) denied the rumors of them dating for weeks, but on March 31, the Bravoverse emitted a collective shriek when Batula and Wilson simultaneously posted on Instagram that they indeed had a relationship — er, “connection.” If this is Summer House’s Scandoval, it’s Miller, not Batula, who’s the Ariana Madix here, ready to turn her pain into the highest echelon of reality TV (hosting Love Island USA).
March 31 also happened to be an extremely glorious day in New York, the kind of weather that demands a margarita with which to gossip about Bravo drama on a rooftop. Alas, Soft Bar is both indoors and alcohol-free, but if there’s one place Summer House fans were guaranteed to congregate, it was here at Radke’s Greenpoint bar-slash-café, the concept for which his ex-fiancée, Lindsay Hubbard, famously said, “Sorry, I’m gonna have to say no to that one.” The watch party is hosted by comedian Rachel Lander and takes over the back half of the warehouselike space every Tuesday. It is full when I arrive at 7:30 for the 8 p.m. airing, though the vibe is rather subdued. Perhaps the fandom is preparing for a kind of funeral, if not necessarily for the show itself but for what it once was; perhaps because the thing about a sober bar is that it is not exactly the environment for yelling at the TV.
Lander tells me Radke’s absence is emphatically not because he wants to avoid the drama but rather because he is traveling. He comes to the screenings whenever he’s in town, she says, and that a few weeks ago guests were asking about the rumors. “Carl was like, ‘They’re not true!’ Which, I don’t think any of them were until, like, a week ago, but he was like, ‘That’s ridiculous.’” (Like me, Lander believed them from the beginning.)
The menu is Summer House–themed for the occasion; I order the Shoulder Pads on the Beach, an exquisite mocktail of pink champagne, a saffron-y yuzu spirit, and peppercorn, while my friend Megan gets the beer-and-shot combo: a white peach Loverboy and a blend of nonalcoholic citrus spirits. They are $15 and $12, respectively, both of which cost more than the vodka lemonade spritzes we’ve just had at the rooftop happy hour next door, but as the menu notes, every cocktail purchase enters you into a raffle to win a signed copy of Radke’s memoir, Cake Eater. The lovely bartenders Kendra and Sasha tell me they don’t watch Summer House, and therefore have had to tell nosy patrons (including me) that they “have no tea to give,” but were briefed by management not to comment on the news regardless.
From left: The nonalcoholic menu at Radke’s bar. Photo: Rebecca JenningsA dated Bingo card. Photo: Rebecca Jennings
From left: The nonalcoholic menu at Radke’s bar. Photo: Rebecca JenningsA dated Bingo card. Photo: Rebecca Jennings
I am sort of ambiently curious whether anyone in the room is supportive of Batula and Wilson’s relationship connection, but it is clear that basically everyone is on the same page. “I’m so disappointed,” says Nadia, 25, who has prime seats with two friends. “Ciara deserves the world. Like, forget those two, honestly.” “I didn’t want to believe it,” adds Audrey, 28, sitting in the overflow zone with her boyfriend. “But three weeks ago, my friend showed me a video she had taken two weeks prior at a bar, and she said that West and Amanda were very canoodle-y somewhere in downtown Manhattan.” Like many online, Audrey thought it could have been a case of mistaken identity with one of their mutual friends who looks like Wilson (because a solid quarter of the 25-to-35-year-old white men in New York City look like Wilson). But now, she says, “I think it’s so wrong. I don’t think Amanda owes Kyle anything because their relationship deteriorated so much, but I think she owes Ciara a lot from being there for her this summer. West, as a friend to Kyle, owed him decency, and I think he also owed Ciara a lot more decency.” Everyone also agrees on what they hope for in the reunion (receipts, proof, timelines, screenshots), and nobody can quite agree on what should happen to the show. “I personally wouldn’t come back if I were her because it’d just be like, Why do I need to put myself through this continually?” says Nadia.
Only one person I met was still actively in denial. Jordan, 36, tells me that “I think this is all a big April Fools’ joke, particularly because of the photo of Ciara sitting outside, it doesn’t feel like a Ciara move. I’m waiting till tomorrow to make my official judgment,” he adds, as his friend John covers his face with his hands and shakes his head. “I 100 percent think this is real,” says John. “There’s way too many news outlets and way too much information involved for them to just come out and be like, ‘This is a stunt.’” “I may be in denial,” admits Jordan. (Jordan, if you’re reading this on April 1, I’m so sorry.)
A few minutes before 8 p.m., Lander takes the stage. “The rumors are true,” she announces, “Carl’s book is good!” She assures the crowd she’s on the right side of history (“Today I posted, ‘I stand with Ciara’ like she’s a country in the Middle East”). It is at this point that the show begins; what follows is a fairly nothingburger episode in which the loudest noises from the crowd are cheers when Soft Bar is shown or mentioned. There are a few “aws” and an equal number of laughs when Cooke begins to cry in one scene and a couple stray boos when Wilson shows support for Miller buying her grandparents’ house. There are, disappointingly, zero screams of rage as Miller consoles Batula for the zillionth time and tells her to leave her terrible marriage, blissfully unaware of what will happen in just a few months’ time.
Photo: Rebecca Jennings
Within ten minutes of the episode ending, the bar is empty. Everyone is tired and sober and full of delicious, expensive juice. “I’m fatigued,” John tells me. “There’s too much happening. Two new Housewives dropped this week, and there’s this news, and there’s a Jen Shah interview coming out tomorrow via People. It’s just, like, a lot.”
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