selling the oc alex hall villain bully

Everyone Agrees That Alex Hall Is The Real Villain On ‘Selling The OC’

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Alex Hall gets a lot of screen time on the first season of Selling The OC, which typically suggests she was supposed to be the hero of the series, like southern sweetheart Chrishell Stause was positioned on the spin-off’s inspiration, Selling Sunset.

Based on episode one, Alex comes across as kind, down-to-earth, honest, and above all, likeable. She shares that she recently got divorced and is now co-parenting her two children with her ex-husband, all while balancing her hectic work commitments as a broker at Orange County’s The Oppenheim Group. She seems great… at first.

However, as the season unfolds another side of Alex emerges, one that seems to dominant every scene she’s in. Alex appears to be the leader of a clique in the office that seeks to alienate and isolate Alexandra Rose, Alexandra Jarvis, and eventually, single mum Kayla Cardona.

Alex also comes across as rather two-faced at times: in one scene she’s empathising with Kayla for something thoughtless Polly Brindle said to her, yet in a following scene with Polly, she throws Kayla under the bus. Speaking of Kayla, in one awkward moment Alex gleefully tells her boss, Jason Oppenheim, that Kayla had been flirting with married coworkers after-hours.

I still have no clue why this is something Jason needed to know about. This agency needs a HR department asap.

Selling Sunset’s format is no stranger to platforming villains like the eternally iconic Christine Quinn. But by comparison, Alex is not all that fun to watch: Christine might have been brutally honest, but she was rarely cruel and mean for no reason — plus she was funny.

Given how much the season focused on Alex, fans are not buying her character as someone we can root for. Nope, she’s actually the villain.

In the office, Alex is the leader of a trio of women who appear to rule the office and dictate how everyone should act. At her side is always Polly, a chaotic British broker who I was charmed by at first, up until the point she made out like her life being single was more stressful that Kayla supporting her child. Brandi Marshall rounds out the trio, a single mum married to former basketball pro, Sean Marshall. Brandi says she doesn’t like drama but somehow ends up in the middle of it each and every episode.

Alex, Poppy, and Brandi regularly team up to take down other agents, whether they’re calling Gio Helou over to their group at the beach so they can simultaneously yell in his face until he flees, or they’re just straight-up ignoring Rose and Jarvis during every office encounter.

But for me, their worst offence was when they all attacked Kayla for flirting with married agent Tyler Stanaland, absolutely crucifying the poor girl in the office over something that is just none of their business. And what made this whole scene even more painful to endure was that it followed scenes where Alex and Poppy had both acted inappropriately with Tyler.

The hypocrisy was almost funny, if they weren’t slut-shaming this single mum on an international streaming platform.

Selling The OC fans are not loving Alex’s clique, branding them as the series’ “mean girls”.

In an attempt to defend her treatment of Rose and Jarvis on the show, Alex told ET Online that she was led to believe that the two agents wouldn’t actually feature on the reality series. “Jarvis and Rose weren’t even original cast on the show. And so a lot of me saying, ‘Why are you here?’ is not to be rude,” the OC broker claimed. “Production… reassured us, ‘They’re not cast. Don’t worry.'”

Reading in between the lines here, Alex seems to be claiming that she didn’t think Rose and Jarvis had been cast on the show and that they just kept showing up during filming to insert themselves into the drama. “They’re very opportunistic,” Alex described her co-stars. I mean, sure! But does any of that excuse how she treated them?

Rose has since confirmed that she and Jarvis were not initially cast on the real estate show, which she claims left the likes of Alex and Poppy acting “superior over,” them both and treating the duo like “chopped liver”.

One thing most fans can agree on is that in the battle of the Alexandras, lawyer boss chick Jarvis reigns supreme.

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Season 1 of Selling The OC can be streamed on Netflix.