The wives are back, and showcasing an unfathomable level of honesty.
Photo: Bravo
After putting Sprinter vans on the map, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City has decided to up the ante by going even bigger and kicking off the season with a full-blown camper van. And who’s behind the wheel of this massive RV? You guessed it, Angie K., wearing a perfectly tailored tan business suit for some reason. “Why are you dressed like we’re going to the office?” Mary asks as she hops aboard — because even more shockingly, Mary is co-hosting this camping trip with Angie.
That’s right: We’re launching directly into the first cast trip, not even bothering to waste time with boring filler scenes of them putzing around their kitchen islands or making small talk with their children. But the twist is that Angie and Mary are the only ones who know what this mystery trip entails. All of the other women, who are waiting outside Beauty Lab + Laser (which apparently now doubles as a mass-transit stop), have no idea where they’re heading but were told it’s somewhere luxurious. So imagine their shock when an RV rolls up. Britani even showed up in a bikini as if a whole pool were about to pull up to the curb.
Better yet, as they’re loading onto the RV, the cops pull up, much like they did on that fateful day Jen Shah was arrested, but fear not — Whitney just hired strippers to re-create that iconic moment and kick off the trip. But if they knew where they were heading, I think some of these women would have opted for jail.
Heather, a masterful narrator, provides a rundown of where everyone stands with one another heading into this new season, which is something more shows should do. Have Steve Kornacki cut in before every premiere with his little chart to break it all down. Heather has beef with Bronwyn, Meredith hates Britani, nobody ever knows where Mary stands with anyone, and Angie, Whitney, and Bronwyn are not happy with Lisa, who, lucky for them but unlucky for us, isn’t on this cast trip. This is particularly disappointing because I think she’d have the best reaction to seeing the RV pull up. I imagine she’d call at least three different lawyers, try to call an Uber Black instead, and rip her microphone off while tearfully yelling at a producer. Eventually, someone would toss a bag of KitKats into the RV to trick her into getting in.
But in all seriousness, where is she? Was she still negotiating her contract? Maybe, but according to her, she (1) doesn’t want to go on a trip with Bronwyn and (2) has a work thing. Naturally, she doesn’t want to name-drop about this fancy work event, so all she says is that she’ll be with Blake Lively and Ben Affleck. But when they all get to talking on the RV, Whitney doubts that she’s really working, and Britani ends up coming to Lisa’s defense. She says that Whitney has a lot of nerve making digs about Lisa’s business when her own is getting dragged through the mud in the press with people comparing it to an MLM. “How do you make money — sucking dick?” Whitney fires back at her, and this is all before we’ve even got real cameras rolling. Thank God for the mounted RV cams! There’s just something about being on a highway that makes these women ready to fight.
When they first pull up to their destination, there’s some concern that they have been brought to some kind of junkyard, but they eventually find their little plot of nature at this campsite. What a gorgeous setting to talk about Lisa Barlow some more! Over lunch, Bronwyn suggests that she’s not there because of the five lawsuits filed against her that have been all over the press. But Heather, who’s finally on Lisa’s good side and doesn’t want any part of this conversation, acts as if she doesn’t know anything about this. “For you to pretend you didn’t see it … I think Stevie Wonder saw it,” Angie says in her confessional, but that’s not all she has to say on the matter. “One might say it’s similar to what Jen Shah did,” she adds during lunch before immediately walking it back as a bad joke once it makes the table erupt. But sure enough, that’ll get back to Lisa.
Amid all of this, somehow, the saga surrounding Bronwyn’s necklace (which she lied about buying last season) comes up. Bronwyn often comes across like someone who has hired a media trainer to get her through every single scene she’s in, which at times can be very interesting to watch — and in this instance, she has had a whole hiatus to prepare for this moment. How will she address the lie she got caught in at the reunion? Well, she does something that a Housewife rarely does: She just owns it. While her words were all chosen very carefully, she essentially says she acted immaturely just to be cool, which (so far, at least) effectively takes all of the air out of the entire subject.
We then cut to Britani sitting at this lunch, and it’s as if I’m watching her in slow motion. I see her raise her bottle in one hand and a knife in another, and I’m on the edge of my seat. I’ve seen this move before, but could it be? She taps her bottle with the knife and then says those four magic words that made her a star. “I have an announcement.” At first, I wonder if she’s just doing a self-referential bit, and in a way she is, but then sure enough, she actually does have an announcement. “Jared and I got engaged,” she says, and before I can even react, she goes on to say, “and we got unengaged two weeks after that.” I don’t know a better person, but the ladies, understandably, are exhausted. She explains that the kids weren’t onboard, so they called it off, but they’re still dating and she doesn’t think he’s dating other people. But that’s not what Whitney hears, and she says she has seen him on dates at the gym. “Is it considered a date if you’re at the Life Time café?” Heather wonders. But hey, at least it’s not Blink.
As for the day’s activity, Whitney tricks Heather and Bronwyn into sharing a kayak, and you wouldn’t even know that they were just at each other’s throats. That’s what makes them great Housewives: their ability to snap in and out of these fights depending on what the moment calls for. Meanwhile, everyone else suffers through fly-fishing, during which Mary details how you’re supposed to give CPR to a fish before you throw it back.
It is such a gift to have Mary back on our television screens. When Angie tells them that they all have to cook their own dinners around the campfire, Mary just straight up boos her. Keep in mind that she supposedly co-planned this trip, too. “To cook my food on a stick … on some open fire … this is actually wrong,” Mary says, speaking for the women as a whole, especially since Angie admitted to forgetting most of the key ingredients. She might have forgotten buns and condiments for the hot dogs, but she did remember to bring a massive bag of asparagus, which they have no way to cook.
Somehow (if you could believe it), the conversation once again turns back to Lisa Barlow, just as all of my conversations tend to do. They’re talking about the status of Whitney and Lisa’s friendship post-reunion, but Britani uses this as an opportunity to circle back to what Whitney said earlier about her sucking dick for money. Ultimately, Whitney is pissed about Britani coming after her business and does something extremely rare, if not unheard of, for The Real Housewives: Whitney admits that her business failed. “Justin went all in with me, and now we have nothing,” she reveals in an incredibly vulnerable moment. It’s masterful because of how honest and authentic it is (something the audience always connects with) and because it immediately stops what could have been a season of attacks from the other women in its tracks. Even Britani apologizes right away, and the other women console her, saying that they’ve all had failures but people don’t talk about those. It’s a sweet moment of sisterhood punctuated hilariously by Britani slipping in with “Well, I still want an apology for the dick-sucking comment.” She’s one of the funniest people on the planet, God bless her.
And speaking of God, Heather has been teasing a spooky urban legend all episode about a Mormon fundamentalist who, rumor has it, disappeared into the valley to basically hunt good-time girls. So, using the camcorders that Britani gifted them (as a fun nod to last year’s recording scandal), they trek out into the wilderness, resulting in some truly gorgeous Blair Witch–style footage of them all freaking out. One can only dream, but wouldn’t this be the perfect moment for Lisa Barlow to show up and scare the shit out of them?
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