The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is TV’s best soap opera, week after week offering twists more shocking than secret twins and characters returning from the dead. That’s because it’s all real, happening in the most haunted suburb in the continental United States.
Where else do two women connect over knowing the long-lost birth father of one’s child? Is there another city where women squabble over body positivity in a parking lot off the side of a snowy mountain? Surely, there’s no other place on Earth where Lisa Barlow could come across anywhere near a voice of reason.
But that all happens here in Salt Lake City. Five episodes in, Season 5 has continued to evolve into the most captivating season in modern Real Housewives history, carried by the ever-changing bonds between our OGs and a team of wonderfully bizarre newbies.
Past the snowy slopes, the soapy reality of Lisa knowing the man who fathered Bronwyn’s daughter Gwen is discussed in a reflexology bar and spa, whatever that means. Back in the Milwaukee airport, the two were discussing Gwen, and Bronwyn innocuously showed Lisa a photo of her dad. There, Lisa realized she knew him. (He passed away 15 years ago.)
Bronwyn breaks down the conversation she had with his family at the age of 19, detailing how coldly she was treated and subsequently dismissed. The conversation is incredibly raw—despite it happening while spa employees rub Lisa and Bronwyn’s feet—and peels back the ever-disturbing layers of Mormonism this show has long made its bread and butter.
Lisa, the sole practicing Mormon left on the full-time cast, has a relationship with the father’s family. She says that Gwen’s grandparents are ready to meet her, but Bronwyn struggles to reconcile their change of tune with the apathetic people she has known.
It’s bold and beautiful. It’s young and restless. And it’s a necessary scene to understand not just Bronwyn’s character, but Lisa’s. Despite being “Mormon 2.0,” Lisa has long danced between the restrictive views of Mormonism and her own image as a progressive, post-patriarchal woman. She’s a needed contrast on this cast full of recovering Mormons, toeing the line between Utah’s disturbing past and its complicated present.
It’s not too surprising, then, that the family sings a different tune to Gwen than they did with Lisa. The Salt Lake City Lisa lives in is not the same as the rest of the ladies. The Mormonism she ignores as archaic is fully prevalent in the rest of their experiences, which further exposes just how unique Lisa’s purview is.
That’s exemplified pretty well in her growing issue with Britani. Britani, Mormon 1.0 in every way, has shown herself to be the brand ambassador for naivete all season, proudly holding up a fictional relationship with a D-list Osmond in the hopes of finding self-worth through romance.
While in Milwaukee, Lisa simply told Britani what’s obvious to everyone else: This man sucks and he’s playing you. Lisa comes from a place of reality, and Britani lives firmly in the land of delusion. She just resigned her lease, too. She can’t move now!
Britani’s one of those people you spend two hours on a phone call with, listening to all her issues with her boyfriend before helping her make a hard, but necessary, decision. The next time you see her, you discover she’s gotten back with him. And you realize it doesn’t matter what you say, she will make the same stupid decision, over and over, and the best thing you can do is stop caring.
Once she returned home, Britani was met with flowers and a bizarre “love” letter from Jared Osmond. In it, Mr. Osmond says he learned from a “credible source that your new “friends” on the show helped come to the decision to dump me. How sad.”
“That’s the price I pay for loving a ‘Real Housewife.’ Our private life isn’t private anymore,” he adds.
Now, a normal person would see this as the manipulative, disturbing note it is. Britani is not a normal person, though. She’s just a girl in love! She can’t be held responsible for her actions. And maybe she’s smarter than we think, since she has become the rare friend-of to get a solo scene (even if Jared’s note makes perfectly clear Britani was filming as full time, before it was cruelly ripped away).
The queen of Salt Lake City meets Jared at one of the five restaurants that allows the Housewives to film, so he can manipulate her into believing she is a disgusting person who no longer deserves his divine love.
“What makes this different than every other break up?” Britani asks him. Just a guess, but it’s probably that this is the one time you initiated it, Brit.
Jared is furious with Britani for allowing Lisa to text him from her phone, and Britani’s pissed that Lisa would jeopardize her amazing relationship. Jared sometimes holds her hand, even if he drops it when they’re around pretty women. And yes, he’s on dating apps—to prove that no one else is as perfect as Britani, I’m sure. Lisa is evil for trying to threaten that.
Later, on the side of t…
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