The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Recap: Roll With the Punches

Angie and Monica didn’t leave things on the best note when Monica’s mother interrupted their conversation at Greek Easter, sucking all the oxygen out of the room. That entire familial ordeal distracted us from the issue between the two actual Housewives, so they’re meeting up at a bakery so pink you’d think it was designed by Kameron Westcott (sans the dog food). Angie even brought a peace offering: a book “about loving yourself and asking for help when you need it,” which she thinks Monica’s kids will love.

Monica regrets how the Shawn rumor went down but says that bringing it up was her way of being a friend. Angie still blames Meredith for introducing the concept of “rumors” in the first place but doesn’t like that Monica fueled that fire by saying that Shawn is good in bed (with men). Why is Angie mad about that pointless detail and not about the fact that Monica was the only one who brought up the sleeping-with-men rumor at all? I feel like we’re missing the important part here.

Monica denies saying anything about Shawn’s performance (a flashback says otherwise) and blames Lisa for telling Angie things that aren’t true (again, per the flashback, they were true). Nonetheless, Monica says that she never intended to cause harm, and that’s apparently good enough for Angie. They put the fight aside, and Monica gets emotional, telling her that Greek Easter gave her kids a rare chance to be around other kids in a family setting. After sharing more about her family struggles, Angie tells her that seeing Monica’s relationship with her mom makes her sad since she lost her own mother while she was so young.

After that heart-to-heart, Lisa arrives at Whitney’s house with a car full of tiki torches to help her juggle throwing her daughter’s birthday party and her Prism-jewelry event the same weekend. Everyone’s invited to Bobbie’s party except Mary, which makes sense considering that the last time Mary was around the kids, she scarred them with the story of a parishioner being thrown out of a car … and then did a little dance.

But Whitney did invite Monica and brings up the abusive situation with her mom. “I love when things are conveniently abusive,” Lisa says, adding that Monica being abused doesn’t mean she herself isn’t also abusive. Whitney pushes back, but Lisa thinks that Monica is bringing this upon herself and thinks this story line is just an excuse for how she’s treating Angie. The bottom line is that Lisa just doesn’t like Monica.

Meanwhile, Heather and Meredith get lunch and the conversation turns to Heather’s favorite subject: Jack’s mission. She thinks it’s interesting that Jack will have to go off and preach Mormonism “by the book,” which isn’t the more casual “East Coast” Mormonism that Lisa raised him on. But why is this mission bothering Heather so much? Before we can even finish that question, Heather answers it, saying, “It’s just a hard pill for me to swallow because Lisa gets to be as nuanced as a Mormon as she wants, but I’m invalidated and excluded and just no longer welcome in the community.” It’s a great and very self-aware point. Heather’s life was completely blown up for being a bad Mormon, but Lisa is able to be a bad Mormon with no consequences? What gives?

Heather’s slight infatuation with this subject continues when Angie calls her later in the episode and reveals that Lisa held a brunch that she and Whitney were invited to and during which they announced Jack’s mission location. Heather equates this exclusion with the same rejection she is used to experiencing from the church and finds it funny that Lisa is “loosey-goosey about Mormonism except when it comes down to excluding me, then all of a sudden [she’s] a soldier for the Gospel.” This is where Heather gets lost in the sauce, because I don’t think Lisa’s excluding her to be a good Mormon; I think Lisa’s excluding her because she doesn’t like her. Or, at the very least, she doesn’t like how she has been talking about Jack’s trip.

At Bobbie’s roller-rink birthday party, Angie comes clean to Lisa that she spilled the beans about the brunch. Lisa is clearly annoyed but maintains that Heather shouldn’t be hurt about it. From Lisa’s perspective, Heather made it clear that she didn’t think the mission was a good idea, so why would she invite her? “I need a dirty Diet Coke,” Lisa says and hopes to prevent this non-invite from becoming a thing.

But that should be the least of Lisa’s concerns, because across the party, Heather is stoking the flames of her and Monica’s feud, telling her that “Whitney said Lisa said” that she thinks she’s exaggerating her mother problems for attention. And we can deduce that attention here means “story line.” Right at the perfect moment, as if this show were gorgeously produced or something, Lisa interrupts their conversation.

“It was a snarky comment,” Lisa admits and says that she had a positive opinion of Monica’s mom after Easter. Conversely, Monica compares her mother to Ted Bundy, saying that she has two sides and calling her very abusive. “Why did you bring her to Easter then?” Lisa asks. The back-and-forth heats up, despite taking place at a middle-schooler’s birthday party, and eventually we end up getting a flashback of Linda having a conversation with a plant during her fight with Monica at the restaurant. Will Lisa’s opinion of Linda change after seeing her converse with foliage like she’s Seymour Krelborn? That’s yet to be seen, but for now she thinks Monica is more like her mother than she realizes and roller-skates away from the erratic conversation while sipping a Diet Coke.

Later, Lisa pulls Heather aside and circles back to her initial mission-related mission, telling her that she’s not excluding her from anything but rather trying to balance Heather’s journey with Jack’s. Right on cue, Jack skates over and Heather congratulates him, and Lisa encourages him to tell her where he’s going. “She served her mission in Cannes,” Lisa tells Jack, her world geography informed entirely by film festivals. This is the kind of sweet moment I knew we could achieve, with the two of them coming together over this shared experience despite their different perceptions of it. Lisa explains that she was just trying to be respectful of Heather’s experience, and in turn, Heather explains her own complicated feelings about seeing Lisa get to break all the Mormon rules without consequence.

Wait, is this clear and effective communication we’re seeing? On Bravo, no less? There’s a first time for everything, and it’s so satisfying seeing the two of them work through this seamlessly. If Whitney and Heather are “Weather,” then Lisa and Heather are “Leather,” and I’m here for all of it.

Whitney’s second event of the episode is her Prism-jewelry party, where Angie has to deal with being caught between her two feuding friends, Lisa and Monica. Not just figuratively but literally, as the pair toss jabs and barbs at each other with Angie standing between them — all the while watching Whitney make her speech to the crowd. When Angie finally has enough and says that she doesn’t want to be in the middle, Lisa hilariously says, “You’re not in the middle of anything.” An incredible claim to make while, again, Angie is literally standing in the middle.

As Whitney concludes her speech, she starts a meditative sound bath as the attendees take it in in silence, meaning Lisa and Monica naturally stop yelling at each other. Just kidding — their fight only heats up during the silent sound bath, which prompts a scolding from Whitney at the front of the party. Nevertheless, they persist, with Lisa telling Monica that based on what she saw, she isn’t nice to her mother. But the majority of their fight just consists of one-off jabs getting volleyed back and forth endlessly instead of having a cohesive conversation. As Lisa finally walks away, Monica calls her old, which makes Angie (yes, she’s still here for this entire ordeal) say, “Okay, Monica, that’s fucking low ’cause I’m older than Lisa.” It’s the first organically funny moment from her because she actually sounds like a real person rather than a robot programmed to deliver canned clapbacks. More of this Angie, please!

As their fight boils over, with the two of them starting to get into each other’s faces, Whitney comes over to relocate the fight to an area that better suits her party. After they finally split up, Lisa vents to Whitney that Monica is impossible to talk to because she speaks in petty digs and it’s worse than arguing with a child. It’s a great description of Monica’s argument style, but Whitney doesn’t care. She just wants the two of them to stop ruining her party.