SPECIAL EMERGENCY DISPATCH: Inside "Scamanda," The Cheating-Ish Scandal ROCKING THE BRAVO UNIVERSE

We are not okay!!!!

There’s only two types of people on earth right now. A complete binary: People absolutely shook, unwell, lying down on their sick beds, about to pass with shock at the new romantic scandal ABSOLUTELY ROCKING THE BRAVO FANDOM, and people asking “Huh?” We at the Serratore Report are here to demystify the breaking news in the Summer House universe to all of the husbands, women breathlessly awaiting the Testament of Ann Lee to go on streaming, and editors at Catholic literary magazines who make up our core non-Bravo fandom. We were born for this.

What Is Summer House?
“Summer House” is a show about a Summer House. It’s been on since 2017, and it follows the lives of young hot people living in Manhattan who go to the Hamptons to a share house for the summer. The cast has changed and evolved over the years but it has remained a huge hit for Bravo, launching the careers of some big media personalities and influencers like Paige DeSorbo, and keeping relevant by constantly bringing in new cast members, and a variety of juicy scandals and breakups that keep the show fresh and keep viewership very high.

Okay So What Happened?
Tweet length: The most popular girl on Summer House and maybe even Bravo was betrayed by her newly divorced (from another cast member) best friend, who was secretly sleeping with her low-down dirty ex who has been swearing he’s a changed man! But if we want to go deeper on what went down, we need to introduce the players.

Ciara Miller

Ciara Miller is our hero, the wronged party, and the center of this spit chart of tomfoolery. She has been on Summer House since its famed pandemic season (the entire cast had to live together on lockdown for two months and everyone went insane) and her popularity has exploded over the past few years to true It Girl Status. Ciara is an ICU nurse, a Capricorn, and a literal Victoria’s Secret model, and she’s beloved by the fans for being extremely funny, smart, real, and down to earth, and for her seeming lack of interest or awareness that she’s on television. She’s incredibly authentic, doesn’t seem to really notice or care that cameras are running, and even insisted on working as a nurse until LAST YEAR, when her bosses finally said please, enough, go be an influencer!

Ciara has been, however, extremely unlucky in love, publicly dating and getting humiliated by several terrible man children in a row on national TV (we’ll get to that.) The Bravo Fandom has been coming together and rallying SPECIFICALLY behind Ciara to have her romcom moment this year, especially because Ciara is so open about how she can be guarded, her trauma and hurt from her parents’ divorce, etc etc. WHICH BRINGS US TO…..

West Wilson
West Wilson came onto Summer House three years ago and quickly won America’s hearts, despite being the type of man who says words like “Drinkies,” due in no small part to his on-screen romance with Ciara. West is like a Hype-Beast Golem made up of different dumb trucker hats and vintage Tasmanian Devil basketball jerseys. Instead of pursuing commonly sought-after features like “a firm sense of ones values” and “an idea of one’s personal morals and character,” West has chosen to dedicate himself to wearing a little ascot to show that he is sensitive.

West dresses how I imagine they’d style Joe the Camel if they wanted to market cigarettes specifically to sports-hipsters whose greatest dream is to do a sponsored podcast for Polymarket. He also leans VERY hard into the “I’m just a wittle boy!” persona, a huge turnoff for me that somehow seems to do it for a lot of women?

When West came onto Bravo, he played up being funny and chilling with his lesbian great aunt and having a mom who was an OBGYN. He must be a feminist! He and Ciara instantly clicked, and he gained a lot of clout as the ~quirky guy~ who won over the beautiful super model. Ciara was straightforward (this is why we love her!) about how she wanted to take it slow because her heart had been broken AND SHE HAD BEEN EMBARRASSED on national TV before, and West seemed to be understanding of that. We thought they had a true romance! We, the fans, loved it!

West and Ciara continued dating in the shows-off season, only for him to DUMP HER before the show aired because he realized he could probably GET LAID BY A LOT OF WOMEN because of the CLOUT HE GOT FROM BAGGING A BEAUTIFUL SUPER MODEL!!!!! We didn’t surmise this by the way—he admitted it on television! He also did a fair amount of gaslighting, telling her they were never that serious when he brought her TO MEET HIS PARENTS AND TO A WEDDING, and he gave several interviews she wasn’t aware of to try to save his reputation to the New York Times WHILE SHE WAS LOCKED IN A CASTLE IN SCOTLAND WITH NO CELLULAR SERVICE FILMING THE TRAITORS!!!!!

West then spent the next two years getting roasted online for dumping America’s sweetheart, getting drunk and bragging about sleeping with “Brianna Chickenfry” and “The Hawk Tuah Girl,” and repeatedly complaining that he absolutely hated the negative attention he received from playing Ciara on national television. He also got a series of despicable and ponderous haircuts.

Amanda Batula
Amanda Batula is a longtime Summer House cast member who was in an awful marriage with Kyle Cooke, a very stressed-out DJ and hard seltzer entrepreneur. She was also one of Ciara’s best friends, and the three were part of a trio of girls known as “The Bed Bugs,” because they loved to lay in the bed and gossip.

Kyle and Amanda’s marriage was an enormous dumpster fire and EVERYONE in America was rooting for them to divorce before they even got married! Her dad literally made him sign a contract saying he’d reimburse him for the cost of their wedding if he backed out of their engagement. Mostly Amanda smokes weed and says “KYYYLEEEEE” and Kyle, who is terrible, complains that Amanda is lazy and calls her a bitch. All of America REJOICED when Kyle and Amanda finally divorced this winter, because despite the negative things I just said about her, we all thought Amanda was funny and cool and deserved better. WE WANTED HER TO HAVE HER HOT GIRL SUMMER! No one provided more support to Amanda than Ciara, who gassed her up and listened to her complain and cry about her marriage for YEARS, only to get about two months of a fun friend before the whole thing blew up in her own face. IN AMANDA’S OWN WORDS:

OH AND BY THE WAY-when West was terrible, Amanda was there for Ciara while she cried and validating that he was an awful fuckboy!

Let’s Cut to the Present Day:
Summer House’s new season began a few weeks ago, and West’s ENTIRE ARC is that he is trying to win Ciara back!!! Personally, because I am ALSO a Capricorn and never forgive and NEVER forget, I was very suspicious of West’s change of heart: while Ciara is of course extremely wonderful and hot and anyone would want to be with her, I felt like it was more likely that he was sick of getting shit on by fans and wants everyone to love him again like the did before his Heel Turn. This is the true dream of all Wittle Boys! On the show, Ciara has been surprisingly willing to entertain West’s advances, but not without nor without hesitation that turned out to be VERY WISE:

But meanwhile, as this all airs, weirdly persistent rumors start that the newly divorced Amanda (AS OF LIKE THREE MONTHS AGO FOR REAL!) has been secretly hooking up with West for the past few months. Rumors of videos start flying, Summer House cast mates start vague-posting, fans in denial claim that she’s just dating one of West’s friends….but after SEVERAL public denials, rumors reached a fever pitch and today West and Amanda released a joint statement confirming its all real!!!!

What’s EVEN WORSE—apparently as of a few weeks ago, West and Ciara were casually dating and trying to make things work between them! So he was seeing them at the same time and Amanda knew! EVERYONE IN AMERICA is Team Ciara right now. She’s AMERICA’S SINGLE BESTIE and WE WILL RIDE FOR HER!!!! There probably is not a woman on earth who hasn’t been gaslit by a guy she’s dating that they were “nothing serious,” and it feels very personal. And by the way, nobody cares about Amanda’s ex Kyle, who actually is a good friend of West’s but deserves to have his friend sleep with his wife: if another woman wasn’t harmed in all of this, we’d actually be rooting for Amanda and this would be classified as “feminist reparations.”

And a final note in the category “Why Are Men?” It’s absolutely wild to me that West Wilson betrayed a woman on national TV, openly admitted that he did not like the smoke he got for betraying said woman and that he wanted to make things right so that everyone would be nice to him again, and then when everyone started being nice to him again….he immediately betrayed the SAME woman in a WORSE way to receive a historic level of smoke? The only explanation I have is that West is one of those dudes who played D1 sports and had to stop after college and now acts weirdly traumatized that they have no purpose or identity…to which I say: I am Armenian AND Jewish!!!! My relatives survived two separate and unrelated genocides. Your trauma feels like a warm breeze kissing my face. GET A LIFE. He also seems enormously hurt that he is being perceived as short on television, when he is in fact 5’11. I don’t even know what to say about this.

ANGELA HERE! I want to begin by saying: can we all take a moment to appreciate how good Emalie’s report is? We’re blessed!!!!

And now, my thoughts.

I feel aggrieved because West…I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU!!!! Not in the way I root for Ciara but in this way: I think West and Ciara were never actually a good match. He seemed to recognize that and I thought, OK, this man treated her badly but maybe he can acknowledge that and they can get to a place of peace while she lives her life as the star she is and he has sex with a rotating cast of influencers in the bathroom at the Magician, though actually I think this set is more of a 169 Bar crowd. I mean, can’t you just see West holding court here in one of his little scarves?

AND THEN HE GOES AND DOES THIS!

As far as Amanda, of course I’m not surprised! She’s a mean sorority girl from New Jersey, and I think since Season 3 when Paige and Hannah appeared on the scene there’s been a little voice in her head saying “that should be you.” She wanted to be the hot one, the center Loverboy or whatever they’d make them hold if this were a Housewives franchise, the one asked to model for Victoria’s Secret. Why would Ciara’s feelings matter to Amanda? Amanda’s feelings don’t even matter to Amanda, because she doesn’t know what a feeling is unless it’s tied to a man!

I will say, and I got into this a little on Instagram (go follow us there, please!), that I am very curious to see what lessons Bravo and this cast has learned from Scandoval:

• There are rumors floating around that the network has told West and Amanda that they will date long enough for cameras to capture them as a couple, because of course we never got to see that with Tom and Raquel.

• Will Ciara be pushed to film with them the way Ariana was pushed to film with Tom by her castmates?

• If she refuses as Ariana mostly did will any of the castmates say, “hey, sorry this happened to you but I need my money?”

• I’m also already seeing social media posts starting to do the “OK but they didn’t do anything THAT bad” dance—will West and Amanda and their teams be able to nurture that sentiment into broader support?

• Most of In The City is already in the can: will cameras go up to reconfigure that show at all?

I do think a key difference is that by the time the Vanderpump Rules Season 10 reunion aired—only a month or so after the story broke!—we already knew most of the sordid details from social media and and we knew that Tom and Raquel were obviously lying about the affair’s timeline. Stories are starting to trickle out alleging that Ciara and West had rekindled their romance while he was hooking up with Amanda (again: West and Amanda are terrible people!!!!!!!!)—will we get confirmation of that now, or will the network keep a lid on things until they can get everyone on the couches?

Much to consider! Obviously stay tuned as we will be on this beat and ready to share breaking news as it happens.