Open warfare breaks out between two of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” in the Nov. 7 episode, which also features lying, an argument over Mormonism, a high school prom, lots of gossiping and a crazy birthday gift for a 13-year-old.
Monica doesn’t quite tell the truth
Angie and Monica meet at Pink Sweets Cafe in Riverton to get something to eat and to clear the air after the big blow-up on Greek Easter two episodes earlier.
Monica says that when, earlier this season, she told Angie about rumors that her husband, Shawn, was cheating on her with men, that was “my way of being a friend.”
(Presley Ann | Bravo) Angie Katsanevas and Monica Garcia in "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Angie isn’t altogether buying that because “Lisa’s telling me that you are doubling down by saying” that “people are saying he’s good in bed” and “that hurt me.”
Monica denies she said anything like that and essentially calls Lisa a liar. Except Monica is lying. Or perhaps she’s forgotten what she said. The editors helpfully insert a clip of Monica saying, “The rumor is Shawn [expletives] men. … He has, like, boyfriends running around the city bragging about their sex.”
And then Monica complains that Angie believes Lisa and doesn’t believe her, which is “actually very damaging when she’s telling you things that were said that were not said.” Angie seems to accept what Monica is saying — even though it’s a lie — and says she’s “done” fighting with Monica about it and that she feels good about their relationship.
It’s also worth pointing out that, at this point, the only person we’ve seen spreading rumors about Shawn is Monica. Meredith has made threats about spreading rumors, but she’s has not been caught on camera saying anything about Shawn cheating or about his sexuality.
Angie and Monica then share family traumas. Monica says that her mother never came over for holidays until after Monica’s marriage broke up. (As she has revealed multiple times, Monica is getting divorced from her husband for the second time after she had an affair with her brother-in-law — her husband’s sister’s husband.) And, Monica says, her mother’s visits “would usually end in a fight. And after every holiday. I would be, like, ‘Why do I invite her?’”
And then Angie shares info about her family. She previously said that her mother had died when she was just 8 years old; now she shares that her mother was an alcoholic. “She went through … a lot of struggles and self-medicated,” Angie says. “And so my childhood was not perfect. Thank God my dad was solid.”
(Nicole Weinagart | Bravo) Lisa Barlow on "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" reunion.
Lisa and Monica go to war
The Nov. 7 episode is extra long — 75 minutes — so the fighting between Lisa and Monica can play out in all its horrifying glory. It’s long, loud, awkward, mean-spirited and childish.
The build-up • Monica tells Heather that ever since she called Lisa materialistic, the two of them have not gotten along. (Imagine not liking someone who insulted you to your face.)
• While getting ready for the birthday party for Whitney’s 13-year-old daughter, Bobbi, Whitney tells Lisa that Monica is “in a very abusive situation with her mom.” Lisa doesn’t believe Monica’s story: “I love when things are conveniently abusive. … You can be abused and also be abusive. If your mom’s so horrible, [expletive] make changes. I don’t think she’s sincere in anything, so it seems like a convenient time to have this huge issue with her mother.”
• Whitney blabs to Heather about what Lisa said. Heather blabs that info to Monica. “I feel like Lisa’s obsessed with me,” says Monica. ”Like, my name stays in her mouth. Like, choke on it. I mean, I just can’t imagine being middle-aged and so bitter.” (Monica takes multiple shots at Lisa’s age. Lisa is 48; Monica is 40.)
(harles Sykes | Bravo) Monica Garcia on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen."
Round 1 • At the birthday party, Heather brings up what Lisa said about not believing Monica. Lisa says she was just making a “snarky comment.” (Not exactly true.)
• For the second episode in a row, Monica compares her mother to a serial killer: “My mom was very, very charming. And very charismatic. And very nice. And so was Ted Bundy. … My mom has two sides. She is very, very abusive. My kids don’t even want to be around her.” Lisa asks a legitimate question: “Why did you bring her to Easter, then?” Monica replies, “We have a very up-and-down relationship.”
(Charles Sykes | Bravo) Whitney Rose on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen."
• Lisa asks if Monica’s mother has a relationship with her children, and Monica loudly replies, “You want to ask them? Because they’re here.” (She wants Lisa to question young children about family strife?) Lisa declines. Monica says, “you don’t believe anything I say. Maybe you need to hear it from a[n expletive] 5-year-old.”
• Lisa tells Monica she doesn’t want to get into a “raised-voice conversation” with her. Monica denies she’s raising her voice. (She definitely is.)
• Lisa turns her head while talking, and Monica shouts: “Just like my mom!” (It’s weird.) Lisa does not take well to being compared to Monica’s mother, just after Monica compared her mother to Ted Bundy. Lisa says she’s “not interested in having these, like, erratic, crazy conversations” with Monica, and suggests, “Maybe you’re more like your mom than you think you are.” Monica’s big comeback is to call Lisa a “50-year-old wannabe.” Lisa takes offense at that comment, telling Angie, “She wants to be me. She wishes she could have what I have. That’s why she carries fake Chanel.”
• On her way out of the birthday party, Lisa hugs Whitney and Angie and ignores Monica, who is standing right there. Angie bemoans being caught in the middle and tells Monica, “You have got to take the time to fix this.” Monica does not appear at all interested in fixing anything.
Round 2 • Whitney’s jewelry event is chiefly notable for the loud arguing between Lisa and Monica, who make no attempt to hide the fact that they loathe one another. It’s rude. It’s nasty. It’s disruptive. There’s so much arguing and talking/yelling over each other, it’s impossible to make complete sense of it all, but here are a few moments that stood out:
• Angie greets Monica with a hug; Lisa turns and walks away with a disgusted look on her face.
• Angie tells Monica she feels caught between her and Lisa. Monica says, “but that’s on Lisa.”
• Lisa tells Monica to “chill the [expletive] out.” Monica replies, “You are so bothered by me. I love it.” Lisa replies, “I’m not interested. You bore me.”
• Lisa says, “Based on my assessment, you don’t treat your mother nicely.” (It’s true that Monica treated her mother very badly at the Greek Easter brunch.) Monica isn’t wrong when she tells Lisa, “You do not know about that situation” between her and her mother, but that doesn’t change the fact that Monica treated her mother very badly.
• 48n a confessional, Monica says, “Wow. You’re pretty [expletive] disgusting to talk about how my own mother doesn’t want me. And I am absolutely at my tipping point right now.” In a confessional of her own, Lisa says, “Monica is this little vampire who’s fueled 100% off of, like, negative energy. … She is, like, horrible.”
• Well-meaning Angie makes a huge mistake. Lisa starts to leave, and Angie convinces her to stay. Lisa tells Angie she can’t support her friendship with Monica.
• Lisa tells Monica, “Well, based on what I saw, you’re not nice to your mother.” Monica shoots back, “Based on what I see, you like your minions. And you’re threatened by people trying to take them. And stop putting Angie in the middle.”
• Monica raises her voice. Lisa raises her voice. Whitney shushes Lisa. She does not shush Monica.
• Lisa tells Monica to be quiet so she can “enjoy the sound bowl” performance. Monica replies, “Yes, go ahead. Old people need it.” Angie isn’t happy about that: “OK, Monica. That’s [expletive] low, ‘cause I’m older than Lisa.”
• The argument ramps up, getting louder and louder. Whitney wonders aloud if she needs to tell them to leave.
• Lisa snaps at Monica: “Please stop talking to me!” she says loudly. Monica, still sounding like a 12-year-old, says, “You don’t get to tell me what to do!” Keeping with her juvenile theme, she mockingly repeats what Lisa says.
• In a confessional, Lisa references Monica’s meager finances: “Maybe you would be in a better mood if you didn’t have to pay for drinks.” To Lisa’s face, Monica says, “You’re like a little tramp stamp. You beg for attention everywhere you go.” She tries hard to sound intelligent, but devolves into calling Lisa a bitch.
• Lisa has also had it with Angie. She points out that she came to Angie’s defense when Monica was spreading rumors about Angie’s husband, and she cannot understand how Angie is now acting friendly with Monica. And Monica screeches at Angie for agreeing with Lisa.
The argument seems endless, and it’s endlessly annoying. Except to Monica, it seems. In a confessional, she says, “I actually like fighting in this environment. I fought in parking lots. In grocery stores. OK? This is a classy place to fight.”
The editors drop the boom on Monica. When she tells Angie not to let Lisa tell her to shut up, they insert a clip, from two minutes earlier, of Monica telling Angie to shut up.
The real victim here is Whitney, whose event has been disrupted by the fight and she is “so irritated” when Lisa complains to her about Monica. “This is unbelievable,” Whitney says in a confessional. “Can Lisa just table Lisa for one minute?”
‘Mormons’ and the prom
Heather helps her daughter get ready for the prom. And, she says in a confessional, she was worried that 17-year-old Georgia might not be going at all “because the Mormons all go together with other Mormons. But then Adi came into the picture.”
Georgia has been dating Adi, a “great kid” who is the son of Muslim immigrants from Bosnia, for “a couple of months. ... And he’s not a part of that Mormon scene,” Heather says. “And I’m so grateful that they have each other.”
Heather goes on to say, “This is Georgia’s first boyfriend without the constraints of the purity culture that she was raised in.” Heather recalls that when she was a teenager, she had a boyfriend for a year “and we didn’t make out lying down for, like, nine months.” When they did, “He called me the next morning and he said, ‘We’re never doing that again.’ So, like, I’m kind of hoping that Georgia can have a much more normalized version of a relationship at her age.”
(Charles Sykes | Bravo) Mary Cosby on a recent episode of "Watch What Happens Live."
Mary is not invited
Early in the episode, Whitney is freaking out because she has “two large events back to back” — Bobbi’s 13th birthday party, and a pop-up shop introduction of her new jewelry line, Prism. Lisa is helping out with the birthday party. In a confessional, Whitney says, “Thank God for good skin care, Botox and a friend who’s a party planner. Because without them, I’d look as bad as I feel.”
Whitney seems to think she has to justify not inviting Mary to the birthday party. In reality, anyone who saw how awful Mary was to Whitney in last week’s episode would wonder why she would even consider inviting Mary.
“I just don’t want to, like, open her up to, like, saying mean things around my kids,” Whitney tells Lisa. In a confessional, Whitney points out that “the last time Mary was around my kids, it wasn’t the best visit.” That was when Mary told young Bobbi and Brooks about the horrific car crash that killed a member of her church — one of the most awkward and inappropriate things Mary has done on the show (and there have been many such instances). “I think my kids are still scarred,” Whitney says.
(Mary does not appear in this episode.)
Heather questions Lisa’s Mormonism
Heather meets Meredith Marks at Franklin Ave. Cocktails & Kitchen in Salt Lake City for drinks, and Meredith reveals how little she knows about Latter-day Saint missions. “I didn’t realize that it was, like, literally seven days a week, 365 days a year,” she says.
Heather expresses concern for “poor Jack Barlow” who’s “got to go out there and preach … Mormonism by the book, and I don’t think that’s what he’s been raised in.” And, once again, Heather questions whether Lisa is really Mormon. “She just says she has a cool bishop, so she can wear strapless dresses and she can sell tequila.”
In a confessional, Heather says, “You always cover your shoulders, or you aren’t worthy to enter the temple. Lisa’s brand of Mormonism doesn’t exist. It’s like someone’s taken a bag and hot glue-gunned … two interlocking C’s and called it Chanel.“
(Nicole Weinagart | Bravo) Heather Gay and Lisa Barlow on "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" reunion.
In that confessional, Heather explains why she’s so put out by this. “It’s just a hard pill for me to swallow,” she says, “because Lisa gets to be as nuanced of a Mormon as she wants, but I’m invalidated and excluded and just no longer welcome in the community.” (Heather, author of the best-selling autobiography “Bad Mormon,” has left the church.)
Heather’s feelings are hurt
In a video chat, Angie tells Heather that Jack Barlow got his mission call to Bogota, Colombia. And that Lisa threw a “little brunch” to tell Whitney and her family and Angie and her family — a brunch to which Heather was not invited.
“This just feels like more of the same rejection I’ve been experiencing,” Heather says in a confessional. “But it seems especially more coming from Lisa because you’re loosey-goosey about Mormonism, except when it comes down to excluding me. And then all of a sudden … you’re a soldier for the gospel.”
At Bobbi Rose’s birthday party, Angie tells Lisa that she spilled the beans and that Heather “felt hurt” that she wasn’t invited to the brunch. Lisa is surprised. In a confessional, she says, “Inviting Heather to Jack’s mission brunch didn’t make sense to me. She made it very clear … that she doesn’t think it’s a good idea that Jack’s going on a mission. So I’m, like, shocked that she feels hurt. " (Hard to argue with that.)
At the birthday party, Lisa tells Heather, “I’m not excluding you from anything” — that she didn’t invite her “because you’re on your own journey.” Heather says not being invited was because of “the great divide that exists in Utah … when people leave the church. … It’s more the Mormon stuff that triggers me, not Jack. … Like not being included at the brunch.”
And then they disagree about whether Lisa is really LDS. Heather is annoyed that Lisa “is not a Mormon, but you get to wear the title.” When Lisa insists that she is Mormon, Heather says, “You’re not. You’re the least Mormon person on the planet.” Lisa replies, “I’m 100% Mormon. That’s why my kid’s serving the Lord.” Heather bursts out laughing.
But this doesn’t seem to be them reverting back to fighting with each other. “We fought a lot,” Heather says in a confessional. “But we also have a lot in common, and being able to talk to Lisa openly feels like a huge breakthrough for our friendship. I can be supportive of her as a mother. I can be supportive of her children, even though I disagree … with the concept of Jack going on a mission.”
(Fred Hayes | Bravo) Justin and Whitney Rose in "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
A golf cart for a 13-year-old?
If you’re wondering if Whitney and her husband, Justin, spoil their children, wonder no more. They give Bobbi a golf cart for her birthday.
“Giving Bobbi this golf cart was a huge debate between Justin and I,” Whitney says in a confessional. “A 13-year-old flying around on a golf cart? There’s no doors, There’s no seat belts. There’s no airbags.” (What could go wrong?) “But on the flip side, she can help me get Brooks to and from school. She can run errands, and she can be my personal Uber.” (An unlicensed, underage driver in an unlicensed vehicle. What could go wrong?)
They also rent a party bus to take Bobbi and her friends to the party at Classic Fun Center, which seems more reasonable. (There are lots of people there — all the Housewives and their families, but no Mary.)
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
