The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Recap: Rap It Up

After Lisa’s blowout fight with Monica at Whitney’s party, she heads over to Whitney’s house for some wine and charcuterie, where she gets confronted about that display. Lisa is shocked to be in the hot seat since Monica was the one who started the altercation. “Maybe I should be mad at her for having a cash bar and no food,” Lisa shoots back at Whitney in her confessional, which is just as valid of a complaint as the screaming during the sound bath thing, to be fair.

Lisa explains that she was annoyed by Angie hugging Monica, not because she hates Monica, but because the behavior didn’t match what Angie had been saying about her. “The ocular doesn’t match the words,” she says, whipping out a gorgeous turn of phrase. I’m sure that’s true, but I think Lisa also hates Monica. 

Despite this being Mary’s third year on the show, Heather has apparently never been to her house until now, which means we get to experience her interior-design aesthetic, which can only be described as Gizelle Bryant on psychedelics, for the first time again through Heather’s virgin eyes. The famous green carpet, the “Whoville” thrones, and the Breakfast at Tiffany’s–themed kitchen feel like an episode of Trading Spaces where Paige Davis has to console someone. But why is Heather here in the first place?

Mary says they’ve always been connected but is excited to finally have a real conversation with Heather now that she isn’t Jen’s ride-or-die. “And I wanted to talk to her about what she put about me in her book,” she adds in her confessional. But before that, they talk about how Heather is doing in her spiritual journey, and she talks about adjusting to life without the church’s resources and community. It seems like a productive conversation in person until Mary’s confessional, where she says that Heather wants both her church and her “dark side” but has to choose.

When the conversation turns to the book, Mary confirms that she only read the part that mentioned her, or at least that’s the only part she remembers, “because it wasn’t true.” Interestingly, Heather didn’t say anything inflammatory about Mary in the couple of sentences that mentioned her, and Heather proves this by reading it in her confessional. “If anything, I aired on the side of caution,” she says. But apparently, Mary didn’t like that she came off “bougie and poised.”

When their conversation turns to the barbs the pair had exchanged in the past, Mary wonders what she ever said that was so harsh. This is when Heather brings up the inbred comment, asking Mary outright if she thinks she looks inbred. “I do,” Mary quickly responds, almost with pride, before giggling in her confessional like she did a whoopsie. Scientists should be studying Mary M. Cosby. “If that bothered you, let me apologize now,” she finally says, and the use of “if” here is truly astounding.

We need a moratorium on Real Housewives starting podcasts. Enough already. It feels like at least half of every cast has made some attempt to follow in the footsteps of Brandi Glanville, but who ever could? I’m shocked Bravo hasn’t just started their own podcast network at this point to house them all and snag a cut. The latest entry is Meredith and Seth’s podcast on marriage, which we see them record, and we learn that they didn’t have a prenup but got a postnup 15 years into their marriage. Meredith says that at the time, Seth was disconnected, and she was about to move the family to Utah, where divorces are very unfavorable to women. Afraid that she would lose her children and be stuck in Utah of all places, she had a postnup made up that included nothing financial, just custody.

Seth is shocked to hear that she was worried about him leaving and begins to get emotional talking about his regrets as a husband and father. In the midst of comforting Seth during his teary apology, Meredith says, “Uh oh … is this recording?” I take back everything I’ve ever said discouraging these podcasts because that moment alone, in which Meredith forgot to hit record and thus missed Seth’s entire emotional spiel, is worth it all. “You did not not get that shit,” a shocked Seth says, and sure enough, they did not, but luckily Bravo did.

Over at Monica’s house, she and her daughters are putting together prom decorations when a car pulls into the driveway, and the editors insert slasher movie scoring. That can only mean one thing: Linda is here. Since Monica doesn’t want her mother, whose presence is completely unexpected even though she’s mic’d, in the house, she meets her out in the driveway. “I come bearing gifts,” Linda says, referring to the car she stole from her daughter. The last time they spoke was at the dinner, where Linda called guacamole dessert and started talking to a plant, but she doubles down on wanting the two of them to go to therapy. Monica says they’ve tried that plenty of times, and every time, Linda puts on an act for the therapist rather than showing up as herself. I wonder if the same phenomenon is happening with the TV cameras. It feels like Linda is actively trying to make what she thinks will be good television while simultaneously wanting to frame herself as a victim.

It’s not that I think their dysfunction isn’t real, I’m sure it is, but it also feels performed. It’s almost as if the two of them are doing their own little Tennesse Williams play amid this otherwise unrelated reality show. It feels like Linda revels in getting to act shocked when Monica makes her walk home after dropping off the car, as if she’s been practicing it in the mirror beforehand, and texting with Monica about how the audience will eat it up. Or, perhaps more likely, they’re both just absurd.      

Anyway, it’s time for Heather’s book party, and the whole gang is there. Angie looks like an alien who’s trying to blend in with humankind but only studied music videos to get a sense of how people dress, and Monica is taking her feud with Lisa to the bar, where she asks the bartender if they have anything made without Vida. All in all, it was a great start to the event.

Speaking of the Vida maven, Lisa takes the stage to introduce Heather with a performance of her hit single “Away in a Manger,” giving Monica and her minion Angie the opportunity to be snarky in the audience, which Lisa of course catches. Nonetheless, she’s a consummate professional, and the show must go on, so she powers through with a tour de force vocal performance. It’s been a whole year, but this song still isn’t available on Spotify? She’s kind of the Normani of Salt Lake if you think about it. But when Lisa does finally release her album, we can apparently expect more than just singing, because when Heather and her choir join her on stage, they give her a beat and Lisa performs a prepared rap. Let me repeat that, lest you think that was some typo: Lisa Barlow raps.

After Lisa’s rap, Heather takes the stage to read an excerpt from Bad Mormon, and the portion she reads couldn’t be more perfect. In fact, this excerpt is what immediately came to mind when we found out about Jack’s mission trip, and why I was so eager for Heather to be involved in those conversations. It’s about a recent trip that Heather took, during which she ran into a young man at the airport and struck up a conversation with him after realizing that he was a missionary.

“What I really wanted to do at that moment was hug him. I wanted to say, I know you because I was you. And what you hold sacred, I held sacred. And if one day you realize that you want to leave all of this, you can. And you can come find me, and I’ll still know you, and I’ll help you. I don’t want you to ever think that I’m not on your side. Despite everything, when that missionary put on that little black name tag, there was no one in the airport that I wanted to talk to more.”

That excerpt gives so much more depth to Heather’s perspective, in a way far more dimensional than what I imagine Lisa thought it might be. And hearing it seemed to resonate with Lisa, who has a genuine heart-to-heart afterward with Lisa where they both, Good and Bad Mormon alike, seem to understand one another’s perspectives. Lisa understands and validates Heather’s feelings about them being held to different standards by the church, and Heather is open to the idea that there’s more than one way to experience religion.

Across the party, a far less amicable conversation is happening between Angie and Meredith. Angie accuses Meredith of threatening her family, but Meredith clarifies that she only said she could ruin her family but chose not to. “Big difference.” We know confessionals can be shot out of order, but this is a lot of talk about “threats” from Angie, who joked about taking out a hit on Meredith’s family … which is much worse than whatever she thinks Meredith did. But I’m sure we’ll get to that at the reunion, where Angie will certainly be wearing something insane.