There’s something so nostalgic about a good crossover episode, and here we are lucky enough to have the worlds of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Below Deck Down Under merge as the women set sail. And yes, all of the women — including Bronwyn, who’s arriving late but will still be attending despite all of the rumors and headlines about her old legal woes.
As they all tour the boat, I’m immediately shocked at how easy the bedroom assignments are being given out. Heather takes the primary, Meredith gets her bathtub, all without incident … the OG RHONY girls could never! But then Britani finds out that she has to room with Bronwyn, and I’ve never seen a look of genuine dread overpower Botox so strongly.
And, speak of the devil, Bronwyn arrives at the trip in style, dressed in an insane inflatable-themed outfit and zipping up to the yacht via speedboat like she’s a Bond villain. It’s smart of production to have her travel separately, given that this will now be the first time they’re seeing her (and vice versa) since all the rumors came out. Of course, I’m most excited that we’re finally getting to hear from Lisa, who politically maintains that she doesn’t want to revel in Bronwyn’s bad fortune, but you can still see a glimmer of joy in her eye as she wonders why Bronwyn would come after her so hard when she had skeletons of her own.
When Bronwyn joins her castmates, it’s finally time to address those skeletons, and she repeats what we heard from her last week: One case was from her eviction 20 years ago, and another is a case from ten years ago that involved her work but is now sealed, and thus she can’t go into detail about it. Her main concern is that she thinks someone deliberately leaked these stories, but she’s smart enough not to point fingers. And why bother accusing someone formally when we all know she’s talking about Lisa?
“Nobody would do that here, nobody,” Lisa says quickly — a little too quickly. She so adamantly denies the idea that anybody would leak dirt like that, while in the same breath acknowledging that it happened to her with her own lawsuits. Ultimately, all of this protesting is making her look guilty, whether or not she actually had a role in these stories coming out. It also should be said that the way Bronwyn went about all of this was a masterful bit of Housewifery. She somehow managed to seamlessly shift the conversation from whether she’s a career criminal to whether Lisa is a leak, all without getting her hands dirty.
Now, the other women (in the midst of a day of water sports and drinking) can all consider the question that Bronwyn subtly posed: Who leaked these rumors?
As Heather and Whitney hang out in their room, Whitney points out that anytime Lisa’s mad at someone, information on that person subsequently comes out. Heather (who’s tried to be a friend to Lisa this season) not only agrees but boldly says, “Lisa is smarter and darker than any of us can imagine.” I love when Heather talks about her dear friends like they’re supervillains on the cusp of blowing up an entire city. Feeling confident that Lisa’s behind these rumors, they decide to try to recruit her closest ally, Meredith, to their cause to really seal the deal. Whitney goes to fetch her, but I have to talk about the way in which she leaves to do so. Whitney is sitting on the bed and exits by casually doing a backward tumble off the bed like she’s Willy Wonka. I thought I had imagined it at first … and I’m still not convinced I didn’t.
When Meredith joins them, she’s not so easily convinced — or at least not dumb enough to fall in line. It takes a lot of work to be safely on Lisa’s good side, and she’s not willing to throw that away on a whim, so she simply says that this pattern of stories cropping up about Lisa’s enemies could just be correlation, not causation. So rather than get on the anti-Lisa bandwagon, she decides to just let Lisa speak for herself at dinner.
But before we get to dinner, there are some loose ends that need to be addressed. Firstly, Britani has brought a stuffed unicorn with her on this trip, which, when squeezed, hauntingly plays Jared’s voice telling her he loves her. This is despite the fact that they’re on a 30-day break, which I’d have trouble believing if we didn’t get to see Britani shamelessly flirting with the whole crew — including Captain Jason, whom Heather accidentally claims to have fucked around with. “Did I say that?” she says in shock in her confessional. “You can’t use that.” It might have been a slip of the tongue or a misspeak, but either way, they have chemistry. Also, a through-line of the episode is that one of the stews discovered that someone had packed and brought a cucumber with them, the reason for which remains a mystery. But she left it on the bedside table just in case.
At dinner, which Mary and Angie sadly miss because Angie has been brutally seasick this entire trip, you might have thought the main course was going to be the Lisa confrontation. And it does come, but our amuse-bouche is a curveball fight between Britani and Meredith. After Bronwyn throws Britani to the wolves by bringing up comments she made about Meredith pretending to have “seizures” during conflicts, Meredith flips. “There are people who do have seizures, one of which is my child,” Meredith bellows, throwing her drink on Britani, who quickly tries to return fire. But seemingly by sheer willpower, Meredith holds out her hand, which sends the liquid back in the opposite direction toward Britani. This show is somehow defying the laws of physics.
The table’s attention then turns to the conversation Heather and Whitney had about Lisa, which they tried to rope Meredith into. But naturally, Meredith can see right through this plan and refuses to get dragged into this mess — especially when Lisa is already starting to break down at the thought of Meredith not defending her. Instead, Heather takes it upon herself to just lay it all out there — telling Lisa that she thinks she’s the source of all the dirt and leaks, since Lisa always tends to know the information that inevitably ends up in the press.
“I am the motherfucking Don of Salt Lake City, I guess,” Lisa says, maintaining that she can’t help it if people tell her gossip. “I go and get a Diet Coke and I hear shit,” she yells, adding that that doesn’t mean she takes it to the press. Once again, she feels like she’s on the receiving end of a gang-up and completely breaks down. The woman is exhausted!
Heather, who normally is good at playing this game and tactful while making risky moves like this, seems to have had just enough to drink to lose that tact. First of all, why is she bothering to get involved in this at all? It’s Bronwyn’s battle to fight, but Bronwyn is smart enough to barely even engage in any of this. Heather also bizarrely seems to think she’ll be able to get out of this unscathed and is perplexed as to why it’s such a big deal to be accusing Lisa, as if Lisa will just own up to it and they’ll all move on. Ultimately, Heather just loves solving a mystery, but what she’s forgetting is that there’s another explanation for where these Bronwyn stories are coming from.
The idea that a leak of any kind must be coming from one of the cast members is something that has plagued many a Housewives season. What these women are forgetting is that there’s another possibility at play as to why all of their dirty laundry is routinely aired out: because they’re on a TV show and millions of people are watching them. Many of those viewers have strong opinions and allegiances and are deranged. Lisa Barlow need not leak dirt on her enemies; she has hordes of fans online who will happily do it for her, unasked. Gossip blogs on the Housewives have become an entire cottage industry, and that’s a far more likely explanation as to why this tends to keep happening.
Sure, we know Lisa likes to dig around for dirt, but historically, she likes to be the one to bring it up to shut down her adversary face-to-face (like the necklace revelation at the reunion). Why leak it online anonymously and miss out on all the fun? But the piece of evidence that really works in Lisa’s favor is that the other women’s smoking gun doesn’t hold water. Bronwyn alleges that one of the accounts sharing her legal issues used the nickname “Conwyn,” which she says Lisa called her at Amy’s. But the flashback shows that what Lisa actually called her was “Fraudwyn.” If the nickname doesn’t fit, you must acquit!
Nonetheless, everyone still seems convinced that it was Lisa, who runs off sobbing to John on the phone as Heather tries (and fails) to chase her around the boat. Ultimately, Lisa ends up alone, crying and sitting out by the water, nearly perfectly re-creating that famous photo of Princess Diana on the diving board. This show is art.
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