This week’s episode of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” takes a deep focus on parenting — a topic that became quite timely last week, after Whitney Rose revealed a health scare involving her daughter, Bobbie.
Whitney posted on her Instagram story Oct. 6 that Bobbie, 14, was hospitalized with “severe asthma exacerbation.” She asked fans for “prayers and good vibes.” Four days later, on Oct. 10, Whitney posted that “Bobbie is out of ICU and recovering at home.”
There’s a sweet moment this week when Whitney and her husband, Justin, are dropping their kids off at soccer practice, and Bobbie asks Whitney about getting a second ear piercing. Whitney tells Bobbie she should set a goal — to do something to earn that piercing.
In her confessional, Whitney says the piercings are a sign that Bobbie is growing up, and that as a mom, she’d like to delay that inevitability.
“The wholesomeness of being a little kid — I want to hang on to that for as long as I can,” Whitney says.
The week also brings the first on-camera sighting of Britani’s ex-boyfriend, Jared Osmond, as well as a zip-line adventure plus mounting evidence that Whitney’s pre-season comment — that Lisa Barlow “is the villain” of the Housewives — may have some validity.
Bronwyn’s big news
(Bravo) Bronwyn Newport's daughter, Gwen, talks to her mom about news that her paternal grandparents — whom Gwen has never seen — might want to meet, in an episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Bronwyn Newport, the newest cast member, meets Lisa at a foot spa, Fika Reflexology Bar in Riverton. While they’re getting their feet massaged, they talk about a bombshell that happened off camera, while the two were changing planes back from the cast’s Milwaukee trip.
As the two recount the moment, Lisa had commented that Bronwyn’s 17-year-old daughter, Gwen, looks like her mother. Bronwyn disagreed, saying that Gwen looks like her father — and then produced a photo, the only one Bronwyn has of her daughter’s dad.
First, some backstory: Bronwyn, both in her confessional and to Lisa, tells of when she got pregnant with Gwen. She was 18, and a second-year student at Brigham Young University. She said she visited her then-boyfriend’s parents, Latter-day Saints in a small Utah town, and “took a fair amount of the blame” from them. She wouldn’t repeat to Lisa the names his parents called her. (The family’s names were redacted for broadcast.)
His parents’ suggestion, Bronwyn said, was that Bronwyn tell people she was going to “study abroad” for a year, then go off to have the baby — and give it up for adoption. Bronwyn instead gave birth to Gwen and raised her by herself, with no involvement from the baby’s father. (The father died when Gwen was 2; Bronwyn said she learned this when she saw a comment on Facebook about his obituary.)
Having Gwen, Bronwyn said in a confessional, “was the best thing I’ve ever done, and so many people thought it was the worst thing I had ever done.”
Here’s the bombshell: When Lisa saw the photo of Gwen’s father, she told Bronwyn that she is friends with his family — with the grandparents Gwen has never met.
During their foot massage, Lisa tells Bronwyn that she had talked to Gwen’s grandmother, and came back with a two-word message: “It’s time.”
Bronwyn tells Lisa, “I’m having a hard time reconciling this wonderful family that you know with the family that has not made time in 18 years to get to know my child.”
Later, Bronwyn and Gwen talk over Crumbl cookies, and the initial “it’s time” attitude seems to have cooled.
“It wasn’t very loving,” Gwen said of her contact with her father’s family. Gwen tells Bronwyn of a text message from her father’s mother, saying they can meet “only if Gwen’s in a place in her life where she’s ready to accept them.”
Bronwyn tells Gwen that she wrestled for years about how to raise Gwen without a father. Raising Gwen, Bronwyn said, “was more than enough for me, and so I felt like, maybe, I could figure out a way to make that enough for you. And I don’t think that was fair for you, Gwen. … Of course, you’re going to feel an absence.”
Gwen admits that she feels conflicted — not wanting to feel pushed into starting a relationship with her father’s family, but also not letting an opportunity to connect pass her by.
Bronwyn, in a confessional, shares what keeps her up at night: “Gwen is the only individual in this scenario who didn’t make any choices. And she is the only one in this scenario who feels the weight of all these choices that everybody else made for her.”
Angie and Lisa on parenting
(Bravo) Lisa Barlow talks to Heather Gay in a "salt cave" in a wellness facility in Pleasant Grove, in an episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
A dispute over parenting skills continues to brew between Lisa and Angie Katsanevas, stemming from an argument at the group’s final dinner in Milwaukee — when Lisa accused Angie of invoking her daughter, Elektra, when she wants to avoid hard conversations.
Angie and Mary Cosby talk about that argument after a dance lesson at Millennium Dance Complex in Trolley Square (where, coincidentally, they run into Heather Gay’s daughter, Georgia). “I’m a committed mother,” Angie says. “I’m home for my daughter. I’m there for my daughter, because my mom wasn’t there for me.”
Meanwhile, Lisa and Heather meet at another spa facility, Purify Wellness Center in Pleasant Grove, to drink tea in a salt cave — a room lined with 16 tons of Himalayan salt, which has “a negative ion healing effect,” their guide tells them.
Heather tells Lisa about the conversation she had with Angie after the Milwaukee dinner. Angie defended her parenting of Elektra, and adds, “I don’t let her sit and [bleeping] game until 2 in the morning” — an apparent dig at Lisa’s relationship with her 12-year-old son, Henry.
Later — when Lisa, Heather, Mary and Britani Bateman go on a zip-line adventure at ZipLine Utah near Deer Creek Reservoir — Lisa is still steaming about Angie. “She insinuated I’m a bad mom,” she says.
Mary has her own parenting moment, a brief conversation with her adult son, Robert Jr., in which he asks her for money. In confessional, Mary says, “I do support him. I also want him to get a job. … Bless him, Lord.”
Britani and Jared, in real life
(Bravo) Jared Osmond sits for dinner and a post-breakup conversation with his ex-girlfriend, Britani Bateman, in a Provo restaurant, in an episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
After four episodes where he’s been mentioned and argued about, viewers finally meet Britani’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jared Osmond.
Before that, Britani tells Whitney and Heather — during a leisurely ski outing at a sports park, Woodward Park City — about the massive flower arrangement Jared sent when the cast got back from Milwaukee. Britani says she wants to see him in person, to make up for breaking up with him (with Lisa’s prompting) over text.
They meet at Block Restaurant in Provo, and Jared says he’s upset that Lisa was reading their private text conversations.
Britani accuses Jared of being unable to commit. She asks a direct question: “Are you willing to make me feel safe? And to do the things that are uncomfortable for you to make me feel safe?” She takes his answer — “I’ve given you everything I can” — as a “no.”
Later, after the zip line, Britani calls out Lisa for interfering. Britani tells Lisa she would like to remain friends with Jared, and “what you did might have ruined it forever.”
Whitney’s detective work
The title of this week’s episode is “Whitney Drew and Her Clues,” and one plot thread follows Whitney as she figures out who’s spreading rumors about her jewelry business.
The first clue is a call from the Milwaukee hotel where the cast stayed. One person left behind the Prism jewelry that Whitney gifted each of the cast members. Whitney figures out it was Lisa.
Later, Whitney talks to a podcaster she knows, who knows the person who posted the rumor that Whitney’s jewelry line was getting products from a cheap vendor.
The poster wouldn’t say who told him the rumor, but did answer the podcaster’s questions: It was not someone with their own jewelry line (which clears Meredith Marks), but it was someone with a liquor brand — so, again, Lisa.
“It means I have a friendship that potentially was never real in the first place,” Whitney says in a confessional.
