Angie’s cast trip to Greece gets off to a fun start with the wives engaging in some good-natured, playful bickering, but the good times come to a swift end.
Photo: Gerald Hazizi/Bravo
Is it really wise for The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to take to the skies again so soon? The dust has barely even settled from what Meredith may have done (probably did) on their last flight, and now they’re taking off yet again — this time to Greece for, you guessed it, Angie’s cast trip. If Elektra won’t let her talk about the homeland anymore, she simply had to find another way to get her fix.
But just as I was about to commend the group for successfully traveling without incident, their first dinner post-landing kicks off with Heather teasing Lisa about a new watch, and I feel like I’m missing something. Sure enough, Heather is referencing a blow-up that happened during their layover, and I simply can’t believe that production didn’t learn from their mistakes last time. These women should never, under any circumstances, be left alone together without a camera rolling. “During our layover, Lisa and Angie got into it over Angie’s Cartier watch, and Lisa accused Angie of copying her,” Heather explains in her confessional. So, after seeing the Cartier store amongst the duty-free shops, Heather thought it would be funny to not only buy herself one, but to get one for Whitney, too.
This is what makes Heather a phenomenal Housewife. She’s willing to drop $6,000 for the bit and to get under Lisa’s skin. And while Lisa tries to play it cool, this was just too perfect an opening for her and Angie to relitigate their fight, so sure enough, they start once again taking barbs at each other over who had their respective watch first. It’s one of the most beautiful pissing contests I’ve ever seen, one that never strays too far from being lighthearted and surface-level, but one that they both are still deathly serious about. They even get into who has the most compelling photo proof, with Angie ultimately presenting a 2016 Facebook photo of her wearing the watch. Finally, when Lisa says that she’s not materialistic, but likes sitting in the bathtub online shopping, Meredith jumps in to point out that the bathtub was really her thing first. It’s so rare that we get to see a whole cast like this genuinely laugh together and have a sense of humor over some playful, surface-level bickering. Granted, it doesn’t always go that way, but moments like this make the show work and remind us that despite the fighting, the whole group is able to have fun together.
The next day, Mary keeps the fun times rolling on the beach, where she takes it upon herself to start commenting on her castmates’ face shapes, deeming Bronwyn and Heather “bucket faces.” But fear not, she assures them that that’s a good thing, saying, “Bucket-faced people are really smart because they take a lot of information in.” Perhaps because buckets inherently take things in? Scientists should be studying Mary Cosby’s brain. She goes on to list the other shapes as oblong face, pie face, and square face, the latter of which she says is a sign of someone being a “dingbat.” And with that, production cuts to Britani, who can’t help but catch strays left and right.
The conversation then turns to Bronwyn’s marriage, but she brushes off their questions, saying that she’s super happy and there’s no drama to report. Heather is confused, given that the last time they heard anything, she and Todd were in a big fight after he was caught sexting another woman on a plane. While Bronwyn was open and honest about that, the women now feel like she’s backpedaling. Once the moment passed, did she regret bringing it up on camera? Maybe so, but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube — especially when it’s televised, as Mary and Meredith both try to explain to her at the table.
As the women head out on a little shopping spree, a few things happen that need to be addressed. First and foremost, Whitney falls to the ground on the street — the sign of a good Housewives cast trip — and needs to be rescued by a hot passerby as she allegedly almost tumbles down a hill. While it didn’t look particularly steep on camera, the women carried on like she was about to fall off a cliff, so I believe them. Angie’s annoyed that Lisa was three hours late and calls her decision to show up in sunglasses “odd,” but let’s be real — Angie, of all people, should cool it with the sunglasses shade. Lastly, as Heather and Meredith’s rift continues to simmer, Mary tries to play peacemaker and encourages Meredith to buy her a necklace as a peace offering.
But will it work? It takes Mary addressing the elephant in the room at dinner for the two of them to actually acknowledge it, but Meredith isn’t eager to hash this out in a group setting. And she’s right to feel that way. But Heather’s a showgirl, and she’s ready to dive right in, accusing Meredith of assassinating her character and degrading their friendship, all because she took Britani’s side during plane-gate. But, as Heather puts it, Meredith is a stone wall of denial. After airing all of her grievances about Meredith calling her a liar and having selective outrage, Meredith stares across the table at her silently until she finally softly says, “I don’t agree with you.” The power that she wields by calmly disengaging is remarkable.
But someone willing to engage with Heather is Lisa, who uses this as an opening to talk about how Heather hurt her at Valter’s. She feels that Heather being needlessly mean to her at that lunch was just collateral damage to show the group that she’s not beholden to alliances. Because ultimately, that seems to be a lot of what this season’s subtext is about: who is loyal to whom, and how that loyalty is measured and valued. In this case, it seems that Heather made an example out of Lisa to show that she’s not blindly loyal to people, but that, in turn, genuinely hurt Lisa’s feelings, so much so that she breaks down in tears, bringing it up.
While Heather quickly admits fault and apologizes, I’m distracted by Whitney’s reaction, who is crying, her hands covering her mouth in shock. After watching this all play out, she finally chimes in to say that all of this drama really comes back to one thing: what Meredith did on the plane. ENOUGH! She can’t keep rehashing this plane saga, especially considering that it simply isn’t her battle to fight. Britani and Meredith already made up and have moved on, as Meredith points out, and she adds that everybody at the table has probably done much worse. With that, she storms out, and Lisa follows. See? An alliance! Whitney points out as much, though not quite as articulately, by making a scissoring gesture with her hands.
