Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Recap, Season 3 Episode 3

The episode picks up where we left off last week at dinner in Scottsdale, where Whitney is telling the other women about her childhood abuse. She explains a little about how repressed memories like this are recovered, and how she learned that it was a generational pattern that she’s now breaking. The revelation hits Heather particularly hard, but all the ladies are supportive and commend her for being so vulnerable.

In a truly magnificent transition, Whitney says it’s easy for her to be vulnerable but she knows that it’s not as easy for others, ie Lisa and Meredith. “Whitney’s like, ‘Pass the conch,’” Lisa says, and pass the conch we do. Meredith says that she was vulnerable last year, and immediately got knocked down by the tirade — which Lisa apologizes for yet again, calling the whole thing hyperbolic. Meredith says she never trusted Lisa enough to confide in her in the first place, so everything in the rant was made up.

“So did you make up what you said in the rant?” a producer asks Lisa in a confessional. “No,” she responds firmly without missing a beat. Never in history has a person been more qualified for a job than Lisa Barlow is for being a Real Housewife.

Seeing that we’re losing the thread here, Heather jumps into trying to guide Lisa as an apology translator of sorts. And honestly, Lisa should just have Heather do this whole apology tour for her à la Billy Flynn and Roxie singing “We Both Reached for the Gun” because this is the closest we’ve come to escaping this infinite apology loop.

Lamenting having to go through said apology loop, Lisa says, “I’m not going to slit my wrists for anybody,” because she never met a situation that she couldn’t accidentally make worse. Meredith has a strong reaction to this analogy, because as Jen whispers to Lisa, she had a family member attempt suicide. Lisa had no idea and is instantly horrified, and Whitney clarifies in a confessional that this is just the way Lisa talks — having made the same unfortunate analogy earlier that day.

Jen thankfully jolts us out of this hellish argument carousel by being like, Hello, remember me? Arrested, likely going to jail, etc, which helps put things into perspective and wrap up this conversation… for now.

The next morning, we’re awoken by the soothing sounds of notorious prop comic Jen Shah using a megaphone. Just imagine Jen back in Utah, between lawyer calls and mock trials, thinking to herself, you know what I should pack for this cast trip? my megaphone; that’ll be fun. And speaking of fun, following the model of Ultimate Girls Trip, each of the women have planned an event for the trip with Jen’s being a boozy bike-trolley ride.

Now, this might sound severe, but I think it’s time that Bravo bans glam squads. The novelty has worn off, and this has gotten completely out of control. Yes, I think our Real Housewives should be afforded a certain level of freedom — but there are three things on which we must draw some kind of line: Roaring ’20s parties, Teddi Mellencamp, and glam squads. Enough!

But until this ban on glam, we have to see Jen get a “sophista-ratchet” look and watch the continuity nightmare that is Heather having a conversation with Meredith as she gets her glam done. During this chat Heather continues to try to broker peace in the war-torn house. She argues that if Meredith can have the grace to forgive Jen, she needs to not be so superior and give some grace to Lisa as well.

But first things first, it’s all aboard the Jen Shah Express as the ladies load onto their bike trolley and crack open some drinks, which is necessary to make a bike tour of Scottsdale fun. Whitney spots a stripper pole, which is really just an architectural support beam on the trolley, and leaps into the middle where she starts swinging from the ceiling. A giddy Jen and Heather start pouring their drinks on her, as she suddenly flips around to suspend herself upside down in the trolley — allowing Jen to pour her entire boxed wine up her skirt (or technically down her skirt?).

With the maniacal glinting in her eye of a toddler testing their boundaries, Jen then says, “Is this a wet T-shirt contest?” and pours her entire drink out on Lisa. Lisa pours it back and suddenly the entire trolley is gleefully emptying their White Claws and boxed wine all over each other, not a care in the world. The entire thing is absolute madness, and the craziest part is that it isn’t like they’re going home to shower afterwards — they have somewhere else to be!

So, covered in wine, they arrive at the rodeo. This is the event that Lisa planned because horses calm her, and more importantly because the performers walked in the Dior show. After watching the synchronized performance, the women take a turn riding the horses and wearing rodeo outfits—thus changing out of what I’m sure is their disgustingly sticky bicycle wear. When the group splits up to change, Whitney tells Meredith that it’s hypocritical to hold Lisa’s gaucho-boot-clad feet to the fire when Meredith has now been spreading rumors about Lisa — a charge that Meredith rejects. But we’ll get to this all later; what’s important right now is that Lisa saw a ribbon on Jen’s outfit and said, “This looks like ribbon candy.” I love how her mind works.

After the joyful experience of watching these women try to mount horses in dresses and stilettos, we arrive back at the house for the Garbage Trash Whore Lingerie Party — but “party” is a strong word. They’re really just gathered in the kitchen to cook dinner in their underwear. Well, technically Lisa’s just wearing full-length pajamas like she’s on board the Polar Express. But for her part, Meredith steps up by throwing on an “I Love New York” hat as a nod to being the original “garbage whore” who “fucked half of New York.” They don’t even have a chef to cook dinner; they must have blown the episode budget on all those wasted boxes of wine.

Outside by the grill, Whitney is getting her ducks in a row with Jen and Meredith in preparation to air out the Lisa rumors — figuring out exactly who said what and when. She feels like she’s been put in the middle and is sick of being the show’s Nancy Drew, expected to play messenger for everybody’s gossip. Meredith doesn’t understand this because Whitney had more gossip to spread than she did, and we flash back to Whitney saying that according to last season’s Friend Of, Angie Harrington, Lisa slept with someone for Utah Jazz tickets. Apparently Whitney is so sick of being the messenger, that she … decides to be the messenger?

She storms back into the house, a level of drunk that doesn’t correspond with how much we actually saw her drink. We can only assume that the boxed rosé entered her bloodstream through her vagina, amplifying its effects. Because of this, she lays it all out on the table (the gossip, not her vagina). She tells Lisa that Meredith has been spreading rumors. “Retaliation is a fucking bitch,” Lisa exclaims. Whitney tells her about the Jazz tickets, and chaos erupts. Whoever’s Jazz tickets these were, the thought of sleeping with him is horrific to Lisa, who erupts at the thought, saying that it’s disgusting because he’s like a father to her. It didn’t stop Mary M. Cosby.

In the midst of this, we check in with Heather’s confessional for commentary: “Blowies for Jazz tickets? I mean, that’s a stretch, it’s not like you were courtside for the Lakers. Courtside at the Jazz … you don’t have to get on your knees for that.” They should let Heather do confessionals on all Bravo shows, not just the ones she’s on.

There’s a complete lack of clarity on who said what, everybody’s yelling, and it’s a drunken cacophony of accusations. Lisa implodes, feeling that she always gets the brunt of everything, when all she did was go on one measly teensy-weensy little tirade, and says that all she has in the world is John, Jack, and Henry — which sounds like a folk band — before sprinting away into her room through sobs.

Meredith follows her to clean up Whitney’s mess, and luckily being the lawyer she is, she’s able to perfectly recount the details of her shit-stirring as if there were a stenographer present. For as inefficient and messy of a communicator as Drunk Whitney is, Meredith is the polar opposite — a true wordsmith who’s able to calm Lisa down, even apologizing for the role she did play. Meredith then sends her off to cool down: “I’m coming to check on you in four minutes … Don’t know why I said four.” Five would obviously be too many, three too few!

Whitney then employs the most generous use of air quotes I’ve ever seen, which I will recount using real quotes in hopes that it makes more sense that way: You’re the one who said that “you” “have” “heard” that she is in fact a “whore.” Nope, doesn’t make sense written out either. But Heather chimes in to say, so what if Lisa is a whore? Then what? “I’d give a blowjob for a burger, my bar’s pretty low,” Heather adds, making great points all around.

In the aftermath of the blowup, Whitney, Meredith, and Heather try to dissect this mismanaged game of telephone to figure out what exactly went wrong. Whitney doesn’t understand why Heather is playing dumb because according to her, Heather was there when Angie told them about the Jazz tickets. Heather has no memory of this, and I can relate because I also do not pay attention at sports games, but Whitney is adamant. “If I knew I would say it, don’t you think I would love to have that information on her?” Heather says. “I didn’t hear that fucking nugget,” she screams. “If I had I would have fucked him too because I love sitting courtside!”

The episode ends with a beautiful exchange. “Fuck you!” Heather yells at Whitney for calling her a liar. “I love to be fucked,” Whitney responds.

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