The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Recap: Mountains and Molehills

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
Après-Ski with Lisa B
Season 7 Episode 2
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Sometimes when I’m so comfortable with an established group of women, especially a group that’s been with us for so long, a new cast member appearing on my screen without warning feels like walking in on a home intruder. Who are you and what are you doing in my house? But given that RHOSLC’s new “Friend Of,” Ashley Quai, is immediately given the Lisa Barlow seal of approval, I’m inclined to give her a chance. She has a massive, unfinished house on a mountainside, she’s bizarrely obsessed with her husband’s nipples, and she is unsure of what he does for a living. Who could ask for more?

“I love everything about Quai except that she’s friends with Whitney,” Lisa says, which positions Quai in an even more ideal spot for a newbie to be — caught between two feuding Housewives. We find out that Whitney’s late best friend Shari was actually Quai’s sister-in-law, which is how she originally became friends with Whitney. Still naïve and bushy-tailed, Quai hopes that peace can be found between her two friends, but Lisa says this about the road to rebuilding her relationship with Whitney: “This is like a Miley Cyrus song, like, it’s like, ‘Ain’t no mountain,’ like, I mean, there’s a couple. ‘Ain’t no mountain high enough.’” Let’s dig into this. Lisa, per usual, began the sentence before she knew exactly what it was she was going to say. What she was searching for was likely the Miley Cyrus song “The Climb” and the lyric “Always gonna be another mountain.” Unable to remember exactly, her brain short-circuited and threw out any song lyric involving a mountain, so she credited Miley Cyrus as the artist behind the iconic Marvin Gaye song. And despite seeing in her eye that she knew that couldn’t be right, she doubled down. I love her mind.

As it turns out, Whitney has bigger mountains to deal with — hers is one of the many marriages falling apart this season. She has a teary sit-down with Justin where she tells him that she’s going to move into the guest room. And while I know this isn’t the point, all I can think about is how much easier divorces must be with a guest room. She says the split is hard to articulate because they’re good in many ways and, granted, from a viewer’s perspective, this does feel more out of left field than we’re used to. Normally, the audience knows when these women should be filing for divorce long before they do. But this is a unique instance where we need an explanation, and Whitney says that essentially, their failed business venture was the first domino to fall. Luckily, the kids have no idea that there’s trouble, so much so that the only time they even remember seeing their parents fight was when Justin gave them a coupon to go to Del Taco and Whitney didn’t use it. To invoke the words “Del Taco” during a sit-down about the impending dissolution of one’s marriage is why this show is perfect television. 

We then flip to the totally opposite side of the relationship coin with a scene of Bronwyn and her “boyfriend” Brandon on a date together, so at least she’s getting her money’s worth. And that’s not even me casting judgment; she fully admits to getting him a hotel in Salt Lake. If I were to cast judgment, I’d say that I think their relationship is fake and that he’s a boyfriend for hire, but luckily for all involved, I’m not one to cast judgment. 

They go on an ice-skating date, which reveals that he doesn’t know who Tonya Harding is. Instant red flag. I’ve walked out of dates halfway through for less. “I wasn’t even born yet,” he says, and apart from the fact that he absolutely was born at the time, he was also fully grown and conscious by the time the hit film I, Tonya came out. The good news is that if he’s not aware of everything surrounding Allison Janney winning her first and only Oscar in 2018, he’s definitely straight. So that’s a solid win to file away for later since we know that historically, the gay accusations eventually come for anybody dating a Real Housewife, not just male models.

But I’m not the only one who thinks something is off about Bronwyn’s very public relationship with this man. Over at Britani’s house (THANK GOD THE QUEEN OF SLC IS BACK), Heather and Whitney also seem suspicious of the whole situation. Whitney says she ran into them at Sundance, where she was sworn to secrecy and told that the relationship wasn’t public. Cut to a week later, and they put out a press release about it, apparently because the paparazzi were going to leak it? Even if the relationship isn’t fake, something about Bronwyn’s newfound fame (or, rather, adjacency to fame by way of Lisa Barlow) may have altered her brain chemistry into thinking this is a normal way to navigate and present a new relationship. 

The big group event of the episode is a ski day with all of the ladies (sans Mary), hosted by Lisa, despite the fact that I can only picture her racing down a mountain if someone told her Ben Affleck was at the bottom. Meredith is there but naturally is sitting out of the excitement on account of her new face-lift. “I love that Meredith is telling us that she got a face-lift and is wearing a wig; that’s badass,” Whitney starts to say in her confessional before a producer cuts her off to clarify that Meredith never admitted to wearing a wig. Oops. I need to know more about this wig, though. Is it to cover scars? Did they have to shave her head to yank back her face or something? Is she one of the witches from The Witches? In any case, it’s for the best that she’s not skiing because that thing would go flying.

You know who else can’t ski? Angie and Lisa, though they did give it a shot. After barely making it up to the top of the mountain, Lisa takes one look around and says, “I’m not doing this. I like myself. I’m gonna take the ski lift down.” Seven-year-old me at the top of a waterslide has never felt more seen. 

After the run that Lisa couldn’t complete, Whitney tracks her down at the bottom of the mountain to officially apologize for her drunken tirade against her at that drag brunch, and against all odds, Lisa is fully ready to hear her out. Lisa says she’s loyal and doesn’t throw friendships away easily, even though Whitney keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Nonetheless, they have a soft spot for each other, so they end things in a good place. 

The good times keep rolling for Lisa when Heather also apologizes to her in the Sprinter van — a vehicle seeing a positive exchange for the first time in RHOSLC history (if you don’t count the love shared between Mary Cosby and her McDonald’s). Heather admits she violated an unspoken code by getting into it with Lisa on Ultimate Girls Trip, giving us some closure that I think was important to achieve before really diving in headfirst on this new season. Lisa was in such a bad place during Ultimate Girls Trip and so clearly miserable among her own cast that I was genuinely worried about how she and the rest of this cast could move forward. So this, according to Lisa, is a day full of miracles. “I love that I’m not the problem, case closed,” she adds.

Whitney doesn’t have quite as much luck when she tries to apologize to Meredith at their après-ski dinner (which is decorated with little photos of Lisa literally everywhere, which in hindsight explains why she’s in such a good mood). Whitney tells her that she hates the way she behaved and asks to move forward. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” Meredith quickly replies, shutting down the apology as “fiction.” While the rest of the table is encouraging growth and forgiveness, Meredith is refusing to budge, completely stonewalling this apology and completely willing to die on this hill. 

But if she’s willing to die on that hill, Heather says that two can play at that game and brings up Meredith calling her a pill popper and a homophobe. The pill popping I remember, but I needed to be reminded about the homophobia, which Meredith says involved Heather teasing Bronwyn about making out with a woman. Bronwyn says that that wasn’t Meredith’s place, even though she fancies herself to be the gay police. Next thing you know, a cacophony has erupted, and the whole table is talking over each other, yanking this forward-minded day right back into the past. Even Quai tries to butt in to make peace, but she’s in way over her head. Lisa finding peace was a good start to a fresh start, but clearly there’s more work to be done.