CULTURE

Khloé Kardashian Begs for “Understanding” From the Public in New Keeping Up With the Kardashians Promo

Featuring Khloé screaming into her speakerphone—twice.

March 27, 2019

It hasn’t even been four months since the final episode of the most recent season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians aired, but the first family of reality TV has apparently already stirred up a whole new season’s worth of drama. Season 16 will cover everything from Khloé Kardashian’s reaction to Tristan Thompson’s latest cheating scandal, to the effects of that scandal on Kylie Jenner’s relationship with her best friend Jordyn Woods, to Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s ongoing tug-of-war on the subject of uprooting their growing family and moving from Calabasas to Chicago. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As seen in the latest season 16 promo, each member of the family is involved in multiple dramatic storylines, amounting to a 90-second clip filled with more drama than most KUWTK viewers will experience in their entire lives.

The promo repeatedly circles back to Khloé’s response to Thompson’s infidelity, as is to be expected when E!‘s producers have this gold mine of footage on their hands. Throughout the clip, Khloé is shown having multiple anguished phone calls, presumably either with or about Thompson, all ending with her screaming into the phone. “My family was ruined!” she yells during one such instance; “LIARRRR!” she screeches in another. In contrast, in her first-person interviews, she’s much more subdued, tearfully musing on the implications of living her life so publicly. “I’m not just a TV show—like, this is my life,” she says (on the TV show about her life). “Sometimes, the world forgets just to be kind, and that we’re all going through something. Maybe just be a little more understanding, ’cause it fucking sucks.”

Kylie, meanwhile, is nearly as troubled by the situation, forced to choose between her best friend—with whom she’d only recently launched a makeup collection, as seen in the clip—and her sister. “I just hope that there’s a light at the end of this tunnel,” she says. “But I don’t see it right now.”

The entire trailer is given the soap opera treatment. During happier moments, the family is bathed in a golden glow, but as drama arises, a red tinge creeps in, the ominous music hits a crescendo, and the Kardashian-Jenners’ already high-pitched yelling is edited to reach inhuman levels of shrill. Hey, at least the KUWTK producers are still finding ways to have fun 16 seasons in.

Unfortunately for those hoping to get an inside look at how the Khloé-Tristan-Jordyn(-Kylie) drama really unfolded as soon as possible, it appears that, much like how Thompson’s first cheating scandal was handled on the previous season of KUWTK, this scandal won’t arise until the back half of season 16, with many more teasing promos of those inevitable episodes still to come. The first two episodes of this season, which premieres on March 31, are titled “Chicago Loyalty” and “Kourtney’s Choice,” and you can bet that when Khloé’s much-awaited storyline takes center stage in an episode, the title will say so.