The 'Summer House' Reunion Was Never Equipped to Actually Unpack Amanda's Friendship Betrayal

When Amanda Batula and West Wilson stepped onto the stage at the Summer House season 10 reunion, it soon became clear that the reality TV special would disappoint fans. Over three weeks, there was no real reckoning for Amanda and West’s controversial romance, as the pair’s emotionless affect and perceived lack of remorse meant there was no resolution, especially regarding Amanda’s betrayal of her “most loving, loyal friend,” Ciara Miller. But really, I should have known that Summer House was never going to dissect the duplicity to the extent that Ciara deserves.

Like most non-watchers who binged the Bravo hit after Amanda and West went public, I spent the past two-plus months rooting for Ciara to get her moment of retribution. For the past five seasons of Summer House, Ciara has been one of Amanda’s biggest supporters; she defended Amanda in arguments with her ex-husband Kyle Cooke and held Amanda’s hand through everything from identity crises to fertility issues. Ciara’s place in “Scamanda” also hit me, and countless other Black women, on a deeper level: We immediately understood the added layer of Amanda being white and Ciara being Black. While the average non-Black Bravo fan is experienced in sidestepping issues of race, Black women have kept their feet on necks since March 31, in hopes that the reunion would actually significantly address the elephant in the room.

But we were inevitably disappointed. Race seldom came up throughout the three-part reunion, and only when brought up by Ciara, Mia Calabrese, and KJ Dillard, the Black members of the cast. Early in part 2, host Andy Cohen asked Ciara to reflect on her discussion of the blowback she’s faced for publicly dating white men, in episode 7 of season 10. Ciara responded by astutely putting words to several dynamics Black women experience in interracial relationships: the mental toll of having your reaction to microaggressions be met with “it’s not that deep;” the patronizing insult of friends using therapy talk to placate instead of actually hearing you; the soul-need for your friends to acknowledge and empathize with your full humanity as someone experiencing racial prejudice.

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But Cohen didn’t ask her any follow-up questions. After he turned to Amanda and West with a weak “Any response?” race was dropped, and the focus returned to Amanda’s self-victimization.

Summer House has had conversations about race before. While they’ve been rare, they’ve also been impactful: Ciara having Mya Allen’s back about experiencing microaggressions in the house in season 6; Mya and Gabby Prescod’s season 8 discussion about racial prejudice in dating; and Ciara, Mia, and KJ’s many intra-cultural talks in season 10. But as Ciara pointed out during the reunion, the non-Black cast members can pretend to be engaged, while mentally detaching from what’s being said. The purpose of reunions is to reflect on the show’s pivotal moments, when the cast can (ideally) employ distance, hindsight, and new information. Not only did Ciara have little distance from the betrayal she experienced in her friendship, but she was also tasked with demanding accountability from Amanda in the right way: not too spirited, not too harsh, not harping on the “race card.”

Since the reunion, Ciara opened up to Harper’s Bazaar about how “fucking tired” she is of having to be “strategic” in anticipating others’ reactions to her pain. “I have to maintain face, like, ‘Oh, this hurt my feelings, but I can’t even really express why it hurt my feelings, because people think that I’m going to bring up the race card, and everyone’s going to get all freaked out and then immediately not hear what I have to say.’”

Ciara has exhausted herself bringing these much-needed conversations to reality TV, and it shouldn’t be all on her, or Mia, or KJ, or future Black Summer House stars to keep them going. The season 10 reunion was a clear example of what happens when non-Black people don’t do their part in continuing the discussion. When Ciara is too heated or too emotional to tiptoe around white people’s feelings, that doesn’t mean that the subject of race should be dropped. It means that everyone else needs to be the support system that they claim to be, by putting aside their knee-jerk deflection when faced with racial discomfort, and actively listening when their Black friends ask for what they need. Ciara, her Black costars, and the Black Bravo fandom have been fighting for deeper conversations about race—now it’s time for the network to full send it.