‘Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ season 5 premiere recap: Whitney vs. everybody

When last we heard from “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” the women were in Bermuda, toppling apparent traitor Monica Garcia and her reign of rumor-mill terror — with Heather Gay chanting the instantly meme-worthy “Receipts! Proof! Timeline! Screenshots!”

Now the Housewives are back with season 5′s debut episode Wednesday night, which suggests strong feelings are simmering under the seemingly perfect Architectural Digest-photo shoot surface of their televised lives.

Based on this first episode, and clips teasing the rest of the season, it appears that without Monica as a common enemy, they will still find plenty to argue about among themselves — and, perhaps, with new cast members who made their debuts this week.

Prologue: What’s ‘real’?

Instead of a standard “previously on…” montage, the new season starts with a peek behind the reality-show curtain.

Fleetingly, we’re shown the cramped studio where the Housewives’ “confessional” scenes are shot. The women sit on a stool, with a large poster of their respective living rooms as a backdrop — a surprise to some who perhaps thought Bravo crews set up in the women’s actual homes.

Then, we swoop in for aerial shots of those massive homes (largely on the East Bench or in Park City) before dipping inside several to catch the cast — first Heather, followed by Whitney Rose, Angie Katsanevas, Meredith Marks and Lisa Barlow — seemingly living their best lives.

In a voiceover, Angie notes that being one of the Housewives is “a bond and a friendship you can’t explain.”

Whitney adds, “but sometimes, that circle of trust turns on you.”

“So when we disappoint each other,” Heather concludes, “we go back to where we started. We remember what connects us, and pray it won’t happen again.”

The ladies who lunch

The central event of this debut episode is a “Besos” party, organized by Lisa to throw kisses to her female friends on Valentine’s Day — some three months after the season 4 reunion show was shot.

Lisa invites a few dozen women to her shindig at Blue Sky Ranch, an event space at a luxury resort in Coalville. The guest list includes all of this season’s cast — Heather, Whitney, Angie, Meredith, Mary Cosby (returning to full-time status) and the new addition, Bronwyn Newport (more about her later).

Lisa expresses reservations about inviting Whitney, because Whitney had given an interview to former “The Bachelor” star Nick Viall’s ”The Viall Files” podcast two weeks earlier, where she said Lisa “has always been the villain.” Lisa confides in Heather and Angie that she’s none too happy with Whitney for that.

Introducing Bronwyn

Bravo must have high hopes for Bronwyn, because they allow her not one but two flashy entrances.

The first is at Lisa’s party, where she arrives in a heart-shaped fur jacket — a Saint Laurent item that Bronwyn says cost $15,000 (a figure verified in a 2022 Vogue article) and is only one of three of its kind in existence. (Bronwyn says the two others are in a museum and in Rihanna’s possession — and Vogue also verifies the Rihanna part.) Bronwyn’s jacket also sets up one of the episode’s more comical moments, when new “friend” Britani Bateman insults Bronwyn and Mary by calling it a “costume.”

The other entrance is a flashback showing Bronwyn meeting Lisa for lunch five days earlier at Edison House, the three-story, members-only social club in downtown Salt Lake City. Bronwyn is wearing hot pants, a bra top, a puffy bomber jacket and cowboy boots — all in a matching bright yellow leopard print. And, as the onscreen graphic tells us, she’s walking outside in this outfit in February, when it’s 37 degrees outside.

Fashion is a big deal to Bronwyn, and it’s clear winter wasn’t going to get in the way.

“Funny chaos is kind of my brand, my aesthetic,” Bronwyn says in her first confessional. Wearing a wraparound red number that looks like a half-open sleeping bag and likely cost more than an Ikon Pass, she adds, “I am fully dressed right now like a Tim Burton character and I feel amazing — thank you for asking.”

Bronwyn reveals that she was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and, like her siblings, attended Brigham Young University — though she says she got kicked out.

She doesn’t say why in this episode, but Bravo’s publicity material has said it’s because she became pregnant. (The LDS Church-owned university’s Honor Code, a set of guidelines that employees and students are expected to follow, includes abstaining from sex outside marriage.) Bronwyn raised her daughter, Gwen, as a single mom, until she married a finance guy, Todd Bradley, who is 26 years her senior. (Bronwyn isn’t shy about this fact.)

The first impression is that Bronwyn is going to be a lot of fun — and may challenge Whitney as the Housewives’ resident agitator.

The undercard: Meredith vs. Angie

Out on the cocktail deck, Whitney makes her entrance and carefully avoids Lisa — which Lisa, as hostess, finds tacky.

Whitney can’t avoid Meredith, who picks an argument about their respective product lines. Meredith is unhappy that Whitney is introducing a line of bath bombs, after Meredith spoke of doing the same at the reunion. Whitney counters that she’s had bath bombs as part of her brand for years.

(Bathtubs are a recurring theme with Meredith. She took umbrage at previous Whitney comments about the cleanliness of her bath, and whined about getting the only room without a tub on their season 4 trip to Bermuda.)

Angie cuts in to have a moment with Meredith. Angie is still upset over Meredith’s comments about Angie’s businesses (such as Lunatic Fringe, the local hair salon chain that she and her husband, Shawn Trujillo founded in 1999). A quick flashback clip reminds fans that Meredith was quite receptive to rumors Monica spread last season about Angie’s alleged ties to the “Greek mafia.”

Angie, possibly mistaking Valentine’s Day for Festivus, produces a scroll with a list of grievances against Meredith. The scroll (which Angie brought along to a recent Bravo watch party at Flanker Kitchen + Sporting Club in downtown Salt Lake City) unfurls to about four feet long, and both Heather and Mary commented about what an impressive arts-and-crafts project it was.

A few loose ends

• In the off-season, Mary — who last season avoided taking part in group activities in Palm Springs, and also argued with Whitney and Heather — became fast friends with Angie. The catalyst, we’re told, was at the reunion, when Angie quietly told Mary she had lipstick on her teeth.

• Heather enters the party in a red latex dress, bragging that she lost 25 pounds. “Ozempic, baby,” Heather declares.

• When we meet Britani, one of this season’s two new “friends,” she’s just coming off a breakup with her boyfriend, Jared Osmond — a nephew of Donny & Marie. “In Mormon culture, that’s the equivalent of dating Prince Harry,” Heather says.

• Lisa talks excitedly about her son, Jack, who’s in Bogota, Colombia, serving his Latter-day Saint mission. Lisa remarks that Jack has found some cool coffee shops there and a few “Michelin-starred” restaurants. Bronwyn jokes, “this is not the Mormonism that I was raised in.” (The Word of Wisdom, a guide to living revealed to LDS Church founder Joseph Smith and considered canon, declares that “hot drinks are not for the body or belly,” but surveys have shown younger members of the Latter-day Saint faith are less likely to consider abstaining from coffee or tea as being essential to being “a good Mormon.”)

The (inevitable) Whitney vs. Lisa showdown

Finally, it’s time for lunch, and Whitney is ready for Lisa’s anger — which, for a brief moment, is redirected at Angie for tipping Whitney off to what Lisa said in what she thought was a private conversation.

Whitney confronts Lisa about the podcast, repeating what she said then: that Lisa is “self-absorbed.”

Whitney asks Lisa, “what did I lie about?” — and we flash back to two years ago, when Whitney repeated an unfounded rumor about Lisa exchanging sexual favors for Utah Jazz tickets. Whitney doubles down and says “I have never lied,” which opens a floodgate of yelling from Lisa, Heather and Meredith.

Finally, after Lisa has shouted down Whitney, and thrown a drink on the floor, Whitney has had enough. Whitney raises her hand, flips a well-manicured bird, says “F--- you, Lisa Barlow,” and angrily walks out.

A personal note

I’ve inherited the task of recapping “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” from The Tribune’s TV critic — and my friend — Scott D. Pierce, who died in May. I know he had fun watching and writing about this show, and it’s my hope that I can share that same sense of fun in these recaps. Let me know how I’m doing at spmeans@sltrib.com.

Next week’s episode is scheduled to air on Bravo on Wednesday, Sept. 25, at 9 p.m. Eastern time — and airs at 7 p.m. Mountain time on DirecTV and Dish, as well as at 10 p.m. Mountain time on Xfinity. (The show streams the next day on Peacock.)