The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Recap: Toothbrush It Off

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
Little Green Leprechaun, Big Dirty Secret
Season 7 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★
Previous Next
Previous Episode
Next Episode

It’s early days, but I think Ashley Quai (not to be confused with RHORI’s Ashley I.) will be a strong addition to this cast, which she already has multiple organic connections to. It’s because of those organic, yet at times conflicting, connections that the returning cast is eager to see what this woman’s deal is and which side of the aisle she’ll land on.

Mary tells Angie that if she’s anything like Britani, they’re gonna have a problem; meanwhile, Bronwyn is trying to decide whether she likes Quai because she’s Whitney’s friend, or doesn’t like her because she’s Lisa’s friend. But it turns out there’s a much better reason to be wary of Quai, though when Whitney asks if she can tell the story, a horrified Quai shuts her down. Luckily, Whitney had already told Angie, who has no problem bringing it up on-camera to Mary. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone with such glee in their eyes. She’s lit up with joy from the inside out as she gets the honor and privilege of telling Mary that Quai once took her husband’s toothbrush and cleaned the toilet with it when she was mad at him. 

Mary gags, and Angie explains that if you use a toothbrush that someone used to “rim” a toilet bowl, as she keeps calling it, you’re basically “eating poop.” Well, yes! And E. coli can result, she goes on to say, leaving no stone unturned. I must reiterate, Angie is radiating with joy through this, so much so that it feels like we’re watching her Make-a-Wish come true. She belabors the point so much, not wanting to have to stop telling the story, that she starts to speculate about what she might do to their toothbrushes if she’s mad at them, and then goes on a whole tangent about angry hotel staff potentially sticking toothbrushes in their butts. But fear not, Angie, if disrespected staff did that, Ramona Singer would have fallen to E. Coli years ago. 

But speaking of Quai not liking people, it turns out that Angie and Heather perhaps should hide their toothbrushes, because so far they’re the two who haven’t made the best first impression with our new friend-of. During the big group fight that erupted during their ski day, Quai says she was annoyed that Angie called her too “aggressive” for a newbie. Hilariously, this beef is largely predicated on Quai mishearing her, because Angie actually said she can’t “address it” because she wasn’t there for what they were talking about. But she also called Heather “diablo” because she angrily pointed at Meredith during their argument, so these initial feuds from Quai aren’t really based on all that much.

Before they all head off to San Francisco for St. Patrick’s Day — a location I wouldn’t have otherwise closely associated with the holiday — we get a handful of solo scenes. Angie tells us that her marriage to Shawn is rocky and it feels like she’s living with a stranger; Meredith fills us in on her new DJ career (though it feels like I’ve known about DJ Meredith Marks for a lifetime); and I’m reminded that Lisa’s dog’s name is Kendle. Out of those three, guess which I’d like to talk about? You’re correct: Kendle. Not Kendall, nor Candle, but a third, even more perplexing name for a dog. Needing answers before I could move on to this cast trip, I did some research, knowing there simply had to be some backstory behind this name. Sure enough, it looks like Kendle is Lisa’s mother’s maiden name. Leave it to Lisa Barlow to combine two security questions (pet name and mother’s maiden name) into one. 

The women get to the airport, largely in their St. Patrick’s Day regalia — even the famously theme-averse Lisa, who says it’s only a precaution she’s taking so she doesn’t get “punched.” Not pinched, but punched, which she maintains was the rule when she was growing up. Was it? Or did they just tell her that because they wanted to punch her? In any case, Britani has the pinching covered. She’s roaming about the airport filming on her phone and approaching elderly women in wheelchairs who aren’t wearing green to pinch them. I’ve never seen something like this. I never thought I would say that airport security is too lenient, but why is it that I have to take off my shoes but Britani Bateman is able to terrorize the elderly for content? 

We also get some great work from Heather this episode, who asked Lisa whether she was going to the Oscars, knowing full well we’d get pure entertainment from that question. It comes up not once but twice, and Lisa insists that she’s always invited but just never goes. Whereas Bronwyn was invited and did go to host E!’s coverage. “I got invited before Housewives; I didn’t need a Housewives title to go,” Lisa says, and I’m sure these invite receipts will be requested for the reunion given that nobody believes her. They all know full well that Lisa Barlow would skip her own wedding to go to the Oscars, so the concept of her simply skipping it because she doesn’t feel like going makes them all laugh.

Speaking of laughing, when they get to the hotel, Angie knocks on the door to the room saying, “FBI, open up!” Heather is absolutely tickled and lets out a cackle, because that little bit surely hits even harder if the FBI has actually busted up one of your cast trips before. The two of them, along with Whitney and Bronwyn, chat some more about where they think Quai is going to land among the group given her social conflicts of interest, and her little gripes with Heather and Angie naturally come up. But in true Housewives fashion, it yet again turns into a game of telephone, with Whitney saying that Quai called Heather “diabolical” when she actually said “diablo.” I don’t know which is worse, so maybe it all evens out.

Angie seizes this moment that she’s clearly been foaming at the mouth for since Quai was cast and brings up the toothbrush story again. Whitney, who told Angie this but also promised Quai that she wouldn’t tell anyone, is giddily horrified, shouting, “NO YOU DIDN’T” and saying, “You’re not supposed to know that.” That second statement basically confirms it as fact to the other women. 

But that’s not the end of that. Angie is on a roll, and when they all hop on the trolley together, she hands out individually wrapped green toothbrushes to the entire group to be safe, since she heard that she and Heather pissed Quai off. Really incredible propwork, and rather than get flustered, Quai stands her ground, saying she 100 percent did it and would do it again. She explains that before they got married, she saw some sketchy messages on her husband’s phone from a friend trying to set him up, so she took to the bathroom. “Before I even kissed him, I got him a new toothbrush,” she says, but I don’t know how I’d ever be able to kiss someone again if I knew their toothbrush had ever been in a toilet…let alone marry them. 

They then get into the beef that brought out the toothbrushes in the first place, which really is just a big jumble of semantics and words being misheard. Angie said address it, Quai heard aggressive, Bronwyn had backed Quai up previously but now is saying she never heard her say aggressive. In turn, Heather says that Quai called her “diabolical,” when Quai actually said “diablo,” which she defends by saying, “It’s a Taco Bell sauce, and it’s not that spicy.” It’s like a performance of “Who’s on First?,” and Whitney, who helped facilitate this game of telephone, is now second-guessing herself.

Despite it seeming like Quai has a tough skin and the ability to just brush things off (toilets and all), when they get to the bar (where Bronwyn steals a woman’s last cigarette), Quai peels off with Lisa and Meredith to cry over her first gang-up. “They’ve done that to me for years,” Lisa says, while Meredith warns her that if they see that they’re getting to her, they’ll just go harder. These social dynamics are being navigated like warfare, and from all ends, too, because inside they claim that Lisa is in the midst of grooming Quai against them. Then again, maybe that was more so the doing of the toothbrush stunt?