I really began to think of ‘‘Vanderpump Rules’’ as a true outlier in the reality-show world, though, when it abandoned the conceit that there should be any trajectory — upward or even downward — to the plot of its characters’ lives. Four seasons in, while some strong personalities have been added to the mix (among them James, a cunning busboy and D.J., and Lala, a flirty hostess and lingerie model), most of the original cast is still working at SUR. The plot centers almost exclusively on the staff’s love lives, the twists of which are mostly carried out, near incestuously, among a closed loop of SUR regulars. Matters of the heart are cyclically worried and fought over during breaks in the alley behind the restaurant, not far from the Dumpsters.

The familiar reality-show arc of development has been traded for a ‘‘Simpsons’’-like freezing of time, in which the characters never change or even seem to naturally age. Of course, stasis was a given on television for decades, but in the personal-growth-obsessed universe of reality TV, ‘‘Vanderpump’’ stands apart. The SUR staff members, with their stardom-primed appear­ances — their snugly sheathed gym-toned bodies and smooth Botox-injected brows — have been locked in a state of readiness that hasn’t yet led to ascent.

You would be correct to point out that the characters’ lives have, in fact, developed, and that they’re most likely ambitious and success-oriented in a manner that lies outside the show’s plotted purview, being that they are now reality-show celebrities who make nightclub appearances and hawk protein supplements and teeth-whitening devices on social media. But this has left no mark where it really counts for the viewer. The series remains a near-pure portrait of motionlessness, a still point in the turning world. Watching it is like having my brain stroked to a very low-grade, consequence-free orgasm — a pleasurable sort of noninvolvement. And I never once have to compare myself unfavorably with the people onscreen.

I moved to America more than a decade ago from Israel and found myself half-seduced and half-flummoxed by the very American fixation on growth and improvement. Seduced because it seemed the law of the land to side with the winners, no matter the circumstances or cost; flummoxed because there appeared something unsustainable, and maybe even slightly fascistic, in this unswerving focus on worldly achievement. Over the years, as I’ve nervously jumped my way through a succession of professional and personal hoops, with varying degrees of effort, I’ve thought a lot of a moment in Tama Janowitz’s 1985 short story ‘‘Spells,’’ in which the protagonist, Eleanor, is forced to listen to her boyfriend go on glowingly about his overachieving ex-girlfriend. When he pauses, Eleanor responds: ‘‘I like to rest, myself.’’ Reading it, I remember thinking: Exactly.