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Summer House is my favorite of the Bravo offerings. The Summer House cast is made up of young urban professionals who have found a way to both ensure and monetize a summer vacation. In exchange, they put their interpersonal relationships on display. For Millennial New Yorkers, this is a small price to pay for a house in the Hamptons. There’s been a camera present their entire adult lives, what’s a crew to go with it?

The Summer House cast is the most savvy of the reality TV casts without feeling too conniving. They understand that reality television is about having your moments and making mistakes. They are never too polished nor too crazy. They love the cameras, but they understand how to connect with an audience. When the Housewives deliver their confessionals, they are trying desperately to hide the fact that they love being on camera more than they are mad about whatever slight they are discussing. They can’t help but love being seen and given a rare chance to have power. The Summer House cast sees through the camera and talks directly to the audience, better wielding the power they’ve been given.

The Summer House cast are the only ones who, had things gone a little differently, could be working at Bravo in another capacity. They have a better rapport with the crew than any other franchise, from what we see on camera. Their relationships with Andy feel more natural and lack the wall that he creates with the egomaniacs of his other franchises. They have a shared reality that allows them to connect. It also makes them the most poised to exit the world of Bravo and have success outside of the limitations of Summer House. This is, of course, subtext that is played for drama.

The central conflict of West and Ciara’s relationship this season was not only the fallout of their situationship from last season, but that West was able to say his piece in the New York Times, an opportunity Ciara never got. Of course, on the show, the conflict was the fact that he took it to the press, but it’s obvious that the real issue is that West’s success on the show could take him places, and Ciara’s might not. Not all press is created equal. It makes sense that West, a former Complex employee, could leverage his success on the show to media darling status. It doesn’t matter that he’s hated by the Bravo fan base now for messing around with one of the show’s favorite girls, as long as he can translate that buzz into a larger career in the world of New York Media. A career that is less available to his castmates and not at all available to the middle-aged Housewives outside of major metropolitan centers, or any of the Below Deck people.

The underlying question of Summer House is, can they turn this into something more? Paige can, Hannah did, Lindsey might, West could, Kyle and Carl are trying. The advent of the influencer career makes a post-Summer House life more possible for some of them, but will we care when they’re no longer on the show? Reality Television is a great gateway into the influencer career, and the Summer House cast has made their foray into sponsored Instagram posts, but everyone knows that’s not enough. There are a million influencers who had a brief moment of fame. The Summer House kids could be media personalities.

Reality Television in general has a postmodernism problem. The general public is now aware of what reality television can do for a career, as someone famous. More and more people join shows and pretend to be real, rather than try and ultimately fail to keep their composure in front of the cameras. These problem children halfheartedly appear on whatever show chooses them, with the hope that it skyrockets them to a lucrative influencer career. These people are not fun to watch and lack the charm of their counterparts who are willing to bare it all. It is immediately clear when someone is fame hungry but unable to do the work of debasing themselves on camera. On competition shows like The Bachelor, this has been a problem that solves itself. It is easy to dismiss someone once it is clear to the other contestants that they don’t really want to fall in love. They can be sent home or voted off. On Summer House, as the title would suggest, they’re stuck with these people for the whole summer.

Every year, new people are added to the cast with very few success stories. Summer House has one of the higher turnover rates among the Bravo shows. The men they choose to add often lack the right ratio of Charisma to Confidence, and the women fail to ingratiate themselves with the group. I think this is a natural problem when introducing a single person to a group setting. Everyone is capable of being nice for a weekend, but real chemistry is hard to fake. Not everyone is cut out for Summer House, and those who are tend to easily slip into a role within the group. While there are always outside factors that can influence one’s success with the group, it’s hard to fake a vibe. Especially on the third straight day of filming.

This season’s addition, Lexi Wood, is a model and influencer from Toronto, Canada. She moved to New York with her entire family to pursue her modeling career. Her mother is her manager, and her sister is her assistant. She is more polished, more focused, and more intentional than previous new cast members. Her stint on Summer House is an obvious attempt to boost her influencer career. She could be a more successful influencer if she had exposure to a larger audience. If she has a good storyline, she’s more likely to get headlines rather than fade into the background like the other new girls before her. If I believed Lexi, she just got lucky. She clicked with a guy immediately, he was not thoughtful with her feelings, and at the end of the summer, in the season finale, she gets to tear him down in front of the whole house. She is a woman scorned, and everyone is on her side. A great first season.

Except something is off. Lexi made the bet that the female viewership would side with her over Jesse because he committed the cardinal sin of cheating. It’s not a bad bet. It would be a great thing to pull off if it weren’t obvious that’s exactly what she was trying to do. Watching her currently try to turn Jesse’s slights into something they’re not and assign more harm than they actually caused, is making me less sympathetic to her constructed plight. Partially because it’s revealing that her plight is constructed.

A main draw of Summer House is watching people negotiate their boundaries and figure out what they actually want and are ok with when it comes to hooking up with someone, especially someone “in the house”. The ambiguous nature of these relationships leads to conflict. If Lexi had allowed for ambiguity in the relationship, she would be better off now. We would see her falter and learn and go against her better instincts. Instead, Lexi insists on exclusivity with Jesse before embarking on any kind of relationship with him. This reveals their incompatibility too quickly. Instead of a season with ambiguity about feelings, it’s a storyline with a ticking clock until Jesse commits an infraction, which we all know he will. Lexi sets herself up to be heartbroken, which is all a part of the plan. Except, the less time it takes him to commit said infraction, the clearer it is that they shouldn’t be together, and makes the whole scenario feel less convincing.

Lexi’s mistake in my mind is not for insisting on exclusivity but for wanting Jesse to be her boyfriend even after it was clear he was not capable of it. There’s no reason to stay with a man who doesn’t respect you after less than one month together. Unless you want to craft a narrative. That’s where Lexi loses me. At a certain point this season, it became clear that Lexi and Jessi should no longer be together, except that would mean Lexi had to face the house on her own without the safety of a storyline.

Summer House is a show about hook-ups and situationships, and most importantly, having to see the person next week in the house. It is designed to exploit the moments where one is unsure about another person or what the next move for a relationship is, knowing that both have consequences. This plays out in front of the Greek chorus of the other housemates. Were Lexi and Jesse to break up earlier, Lexi could have perhaps built relationships with the girls and used the rest of the summer to secure a place in the viewer’s hearts. She could have perhaps shown us the heartbreak she was claiming to experience.

Lexi devotes more time to saving the relationship than the time they were ever happy in the relationship. Eventually, all her problems with Jesse exist off-camera, and the ammo she uses against him is based on things we haven’t seen and have no footage of. It’s he said she said but as long as she breaks up with him, she’s the winner. Or so she thinks. She expertly crafts a reality show narrative that would work on another show, but forgets the charm of Summer House is the hungover Sundays. By the final day of the weekend, the cast is broken and the glam squad is nowhere to be seen. All the longstanding cast members find a way to shine in these moments. Lexi made the mistake of never endearing herself to the audience. We never got a natural moment from her. This could be the job of the editors, making sure we never see one, but I highly doubt there were a lot of opportunities to see that girl without her lipliner.

It will be interesting to see how the Lexi situation plays out. If she does return next season, it will be interesting to see if she can maintain a storyline. Is she even interested in returning now that she’s upped her Instagram followers and made connections with podcast hosts? Can she return from her biggest mistake, making Ciara her enemy? Is she interesting to watch when there’s no foolhardy relationship to pursue? Is she the future of Summer House?

Next week, or even the week after, there is some kind of shocking announcement from a cast member at the reunion. It certainly feels like an ending of some kind. Things can’t be this good forever. How long can one devote every weekend of the summer to filming a reality show? The chemistry of the major players of the current cast is so good, but as people get older and more successful, it makes less and less sense for them to be there. The new crop of castmates will be children of the world of reality television. People who know how to appear on camera too well, a quality that makes them afraid to be stripped down. The window might be closing on good reality TV participants. From now on, we will be subjected to people trying so hard to come off well and doing so successfully, with the caveat that we all know how hard they are trying. Whatever happens to the Summer House cast next, we have lost something.