Last week was the premiere of Season 9 of Vanderpump Rules and it was... fine. For the past 10 years or so, it has been one of Bravo's popular shows, making fans of Lady Gaga, John Legend, and Jennifer Lawrence, just to a name a few. In 2018, it saw some of the network's highest ratings, with 1.4 million people tuning in. At 2019's BravoCon, seeing the cast was one of the biggest events of the entire weekend and watching the Season 8 premiere with a room full of hundreds of Bravo fans, followed by a party thrown by the cast, was huge.

It seemed as a Bravo Nation we were addicted to watching these bartenders lie, cheat, and steal, and none of us saw it ending any time soon. Or at least, not like this.

In 2020 there were a lot of changes in the Pump Rules universe; four main cast members – Stassi Schroeder, Kristen Doute, Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright – were fired. It was a cleaning of house I haven't seen since the Great Exodus of 2012 with the Real Housewives of New York City, when Bravo axed half the cast.

Now of course these firings were a little different than your normal cast shake-up. Stassi and Kristen were fired due to past racial remarks, and as for Jax and Brit Brit they, like many Bravolebs, made it seem like they made the decision to leave the show, but their sad spon-con Instagram ads tell me they'd much rather be getting that Bravo check.