The ongoing feud between Meredith Marks and Angie Katsanevas results in some startling accusations — although it’s just the latest in a long list of rumors that Meredith has been accused of spreading.
And the author of “Bad Mormon” says her daughters are being bullied by their Latter-day Saint peers.
Toward the end of Oct. 3 episode, Whitney Rose presses Monica Garcia to tell her what the rumor about Angie and her husband is. Monica hesitates a bit before bursting out with it: “Well, to be completely frank with you, people are talking about how her husband [expletives] other men. And that they have an arrangement. And that their marriage is completely fake.”
Whitney acts like she’s shocked (although it’s not an altogether convincing performance). In a confessional, she adds, “It’s like the rumor wasn’t enough that Shawn has allegedly stepped out on Angie. It’s now questioning Shawn’s sexual orientation. And, like, as a strong ally in the community and with her connection to GLAAD, I expected more from Meredith.”
(Meredith has publicly supported the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, despite her own history of homophobia on “RHOSLC.”)
The episode opens with Meredith offering up a not-so-veiled threat aimed at Angie: “There are all these rumors out there about Angie that I have heard. … I just think it’s somewhat ironic that this woman is trying to tear into me, and then thinks that karma is not going to be served to her.”
Bullying ‘Mormons’?
Heather goes skiing with her two younger daughters, high schoolers Georgia and Annabelle, and they have lots of fun. But things turn serious when they talk afterward. Heather tells Annabelle that “every time I send you to school, … I feel a little bit of anxiety. Because of, just, all the bullying.”
Turns out that classmates have posted mean things online and shoulder-bumped the girls in the hallways. One student turned his chair around and refused to face Annabelle while she was giving a class presentation. Both Georgia and Annabelle have been called the “c-word.”
In a confessional, Heather says, “this is a community that’s steeped in Mormonism. So my daughters were already facing scrutiny by me leaving the church, by us not living this cookie-cutter perfect life. But my book [’Bad Mormon’] caused them to have more problems to deal with. I want to write a second book, but I don’t want my children to be judged by my actions.”
Heather asks her daughters if they feel safe at school; they say they do. Annabelle says she’s faced “petty little things.” She goes on to say that the other students now make “silly jokes” that “I honestly laugh at because I think it’s funny.” Georgia adds it is funny “to just realize how obsessed and bothered (the bullies) are when we’ve clearly moved on.”
Heather isn’t buying it, however. “I know that you guys think it’s funny,” she says, tearing up, “but I don’t think it’s funny. I don’t want to send you out there. It pisses me off, and I feel responsible. Like I put a target on your back.”
Lisa is banned from a spray tan
Lisa and Meredith meet at The Mint Facial Bar in Salt Lake City for (you guessed it!) facials. The former BFFs tuned bitter enemies now seem to be getting along swimmingly.
Meredith complains about how “blotchy” her spray tan is, and says she got it at an (unnamed) outlet in Park City. “I’m banned from them,” Lisa says, to Meredith’s surprise.
Turns out Lisa went there 30 minutes before closing time; she demanded they let her tan; and “it escalated” to her yelling “Let me [expletive] tan!” she says, laughing.
She was told to leave, “and then I got an email from corporate that said, ‘We appreciate your eight years of patronage. But we’re canceling your membership.’” Her husband, John, then canceled his membership.
Lisa tells Meredith she is not looking forward to her son, Jack, going on a Latter-day Saint mission. It’s going to be “really hard” because “he could literally be called anywhere. We can’t go see him and he can’t come home. … I, like, cry every day like a baby.”
Meredith, whose three kids are all out of the house, tries to console Lisa: “Seeing them move forward as adults is so rewarding.”
(Presley Ann | Bravo) Whitney Rose and Meredith Marks in "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Whitney warns Monica about Meredith
They meet for lunch at Eight Settlers Distillery in Cottonwood Heights, and Whitney is pleased to hear that Lisa has invited Monica to her upcoming event. “I feel like we’re OK,” Monica says. (She’s wrong, but she doesn’t know that.)
Whitney says it will be an opportunity for Monica to “clear the air” with Lisa; Monica doesn’t think that will be necessary. “Just giving you a fair warning,” Whitney says. “It took me three years to get back into [Lisa’s] good graces.”
Whitney rather gently confronts Monica about her behavior on the girls’ trip, saying, “it just was a little bit of a red flag for me when you were going after Lisa and Angie. I don’t want to, like, invest time in someone that goes for their friends like that.”
Monica defends herself: “If your friend is acting crazy, I think you should call them out. That’s what you’re doing to me right now, right? So that’s the same exact thing I did to Angie.” (Not exactly. Whitney is calm; Monica yelled and cursed.)
“I stand by what I said 100%,” Monica says, adding that she believed “Meredith needed someone [to have] her back.” They manage to stay on seemingly good terms. “I’m glad that you came to me,” Monica tells Whitney.
In return, Whitney offers Monica a warning. “Be careful with Meredith.” She says that, on the trip to Palm Springs, Meredith told her she has “all this dirt on Angie. ... This is what she always does. She’s done it to every single one of us. And she will do it to you, too.”
In a confessional, Whitney says, “every time Meredith feels wronged, it’s like, all of a sudden a rumor gets wings.” And we see clips from past episodes of Meredith’s mean gossiping. Whitney adds, “I just am so sick of his [expletive], toxic behavior from Meredith. Like, it needs to stop.”
Monica says they’ve all “heard stuff” about the other Housewives. Whitney replies, “that doesn’t make it true.” Monica haltingly says, “Well … sure.” The insinuation seems to be that the gossip about Angie is true.
“I do think Angie and Meredith have something way deeper than any of us understand,” Monica says, “and I think it’s going to blow up.”
(Fred Hayes | Bravo) Shawn Trujillo, Elektra Katsanevas and Angie Katsanevas on "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
At home with Angie
Angie, her husband, Shawn, and their 12-year-old daughter, Elektra, are playing cards — a seemingly happy family.
In a confessional, Angie says that she and Shawn “had been a team from the day we met. We were together 24/7. ... It was always just the two of us.” Until their daughter was born and “our relationship changed and Elektra basically gets all of our love and attention.”
Angie admits that she is “so focused on my daughter that sometimes I forget that I’m a wife. I know my husband feels neglected” and “would love more intimacy.”
(Presley Ann | Bravo) Lisa Barlow in the Sept. 19 episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Lisa’s party
Lisa invites Meredith, Heather, Whitney, Angie, Mary (and a bunch of other women) to an event at Bower Lodge in Eden, a 50-mile drive northeast of Salt Lake City, just north of Pineview Reservoir. She even invites Monica, with whom she bitterly battled in Palm Springs.
“I’m still irritated with Monica,” Lisa says in a confessional. “But there’s no winning. If I don’t invite her, she’ll come up with some new accusations like, ‘Oh, I’m not part of your 1%.’ It’s so much easier to just say, ‘I’m having a party. Come.’”
And she’s not making any excuses for what she’s spending on it (although she doesn’t specify how much it costs). “Listen, I work hard,” she says in a confessional. “I can afford the things I have. That’s why I have them. And this party is celebrating the fact that I’m a smart, successful woman. There’s a byproduct to working hard, and that’s called money. I appreciate nice things, and thank God somebody does or Dolce and Gabbana wouldn’t have any customers.”
Meredith politely greets Angie, but it’s a facade. “Look, I know I can’t avoid Angie,” she says. “And it’s simple to say hello to someone that you do know, even if they do behave like a dog. But perhaps you could be kept on a leash somewhere far away from me.”
Loud and inconsequential
Monica arrives at Lisa’s event, and, initially, it seems like they’re going to get along. But that doesn’t last long.
“I was a little bugged that you called me materialistic” in the previous episode, Lisa tells Monica. And, moments later, they’re arguing, yelling over and insulting each other. It’s loud, obnoxious and totally inconsequential to anyone other than the two of them.
(Is Lisa materialistic? Of course. And she admits it. Is Monica way too touchy about this because she has far less money than Lisa? Absolutely.)
(Brett Colvin | Bravo) Monica Garcia and Meredith Marks on "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Things get weird when Monica accuses Lisa of once claiming she was going to get on a private plane with Snoop Dogg. Lisa calls Monica a liar.
In a confessional, Monica says it happened when she was “running through the airport to give Lisa something for Jen.” (Wait — in last week’s episode, Monica denied she was ever Jen Shah’s assistant. Huh.) “That’s Lisa, in a nutshell,” Monica says. “She’s crying over private jets and Snoop Dogg. … By the way, bitch, Snoop Dogg doesn’t want to hang out with you. I can guarantee you that right now.”
In a confessional of her own, Lisa says, “if I wanted to hang out with Snoop Dogg, trust me, I’d be hanging out with Snoop Dogg.”
As the argument continues, Heather interjects, “I’ve partied with Snoop Dogg.” And she’s got a picture of him hugging her back in 2015, five years before “RHOSLC” premiered.
There’s more loud arguing before Lisa and Monica seem to calm down and make up, but it’s a false truce. In a confessional, Lisa says, “the bottom line is, calling me materialistic is stupid. Like, we have different interests. And my interests are more expensive than yours.”
In her own confessional, Monica says, “I am just done talking about this and I’m over it. But we all know she’s still materialistic AF.”
(Presley Ann | Bravo) Angie Katsanevas, Monica Garcia and Whitney Rose in "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Angie is warned about Meredith
Monica questions her supposed friend’s behavior: “Like, what the freak is really going on, Angie? Because you are lashing out.”
In a confessional, Whitney says she sees things differently: “Meredith is relentlessly coming for Angie. And it’s clear that she’s not going to stop. So who is going to end this?”
Whitney appoints herself. She pulls Monica aside, says she “doesn’t really want anything to do with this” (uh, huh), but adds, “if this was going on behind my back, I’d want somebody to tell me.” Monica agrees.
Whitney and Monica pull Angie aside and warn her that Meredith is coming for her, armed with vicious gossip. Whitny tells her Meredith “threatened that you should be careful because she knows [expletive] about you. Stuff about your marriage and your husband.”
Hilariously, Whitney says they are “nipping it in the butt.” Monica says (correctly) the correct expression is “nipping it in the bud,” and they digress before Angie insists they get back on topic.
Monica crudely gets to the point: “The rumor is that Shawn likes to [expletive] other men.” Angie is appalled and angry: “Are you [expletive] kidding me? She is crazy. ... Meredith lives to lie about other people’s marriages, and the only one that’s spreading their legs outside their marriage is Meredith.”
It may be worth pointing out that viewers have seen Meredith make threats, but they have not seen or heard Meredith spreading this rumor. They have only Monica’s word on that.
According to Monica, Meredith is saying that Shawn’s “boyfriends need to be quiet because they’re out here in the streets of Salt Lake City talking about [expletive] your husband.” In the closing seconds of the episode, Angie calls Meredith a “sick bitch” and marches over to confront her.
(Photo courtesy of Bravo) Mary Cosby in "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Mary is mean and rude
Unprompted by anything, Mary asks Heather, “what made you wear that necklace?” Heather says she loves the necklace, and Mary says, “you do?” — sounding surprised. As Heather explains why she wore it, Mary shakes her head, a sour look on her face. “You totally missed it on that one,” she says.
Later — also unprompted — Mary says, “I don’t know about Whitney. Whitney looks cheap.”
(It’s worth mentioning that, although Meredith compliments what Mary wears to Lisa’s event, her outfit is weird and — no matter what she paid for it — it’s ill-fitting and looks cheap.)
A bit later, Mary expresses her displeasure with what Lisa is serving at her event — made-to-order crepes. She’s highly critical of Monica for eating a raspberry chocolate crepe.
“You like to eat,” Mary tells Monica. “Every time I see you, you’re eating.” Monica does not take offense. “I love food,” she says. Mary replies, “but you don’t care what you eat? Do you, like, eat vegetables?”
(In last week’s episode, hypocritical Mary made the shuttle bus take her to McDonald’s so she could chow down.)
Monica’s attitude toward Mary is amazing: “I love that Mary is unapologetically herself,” she says in a confessional. “At this point, it’s my mission to make her like me. I’m just going to live in my delusion that Mary and I are besties.”
(Charles Sykes | Bravo) Whitney and Justin Rose on the "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" Season 3 reunion.
Whitney argues with her husband
A year after Justin Rose was fired by LifeVantage — allegedly because he and Whitney got (mostly) naked, painted each other and rolled around on a canvas in an episode of “RHOSLC” — he’s going back to work. (According to his Linkedin.com profile, Justin has been the president of Awakend, LLC, a direct sales company, since March.)
Whitney tells the couple’s children — Brooks, 10, and Bobbie, 13 — that things are going to change with both parents working full time. Justin says he can still take them to school, but he “probably” won’t be able to pick them up. Whitney sends the kids out of the room when she starts to argue with Justin about who will pick them up from school. “You go back to work, and now everything’s on my head again?” she says. “Like laundry, cleaning, kids? You’re expecting me to just be able to, like, take it all on again?”
Justin says that’s not the case. They’ll have to make school pick-up arrangements, but he didn’t say Whitney would have to do that or anything else. Whitney, however, accuses him of “going back to the male-dominant role again.” Justin says he’s “a little bit lost. You knew I was going back to work.”
‘Real’ moments
Angie got a nose job • Lisa says, “you would have never got a nose job if you grew up where I grew up” — New York City. But, Angie says, “when you grow up in Salt Lake City, everyone’s, like beautiful. Looks like Whitney.”
She learned that where? • Heather says she learned to pop the cork on champagne bottles when she was a Latter-day Saint missionary “in the south of France.”
Mary is crass • Monica comments on Mary’s fingernails, which look nice and are quite long. “They’re good nose pickers,” Mary says.
They called her “Lefty” • Heather says that, when she was in high school, that’s what people nicknamed her. “I thought it was because they thought I shoplifted something,” she says, “but it was because my left boob was bigger.” (Shoplifted something? What?)
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