The first of three reunion shows for Season 5 of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” landed this week — an hour of fan questions, cross-talk and shouting.
I recently learned — from Rosanna Hicken, a Salt Lake County resident who hosts the “Salty Housewife” podcast — that there’s a rule with reunion shows. The castmates seated closest to host and “Real Housewives” creator Andy Cohen are the two with the season’s biggest beef. So Hicken wasn’t surprised that Lisa Barlow was on Andy’s left, but she was surprised that Angie Katsanevas was on his right.
On Angie’s side are two other people with whom Lisa had arguments this season: Whitney Rose and newcomer Bronwyn Newport (with Mary Cosby sandwiched between Bronwyn and Angie). Heather Gay and Meredith Marks sit by Lisa, and don’t have a lot to say for the hour.
Andy opens by asking the cast members “to set an intention for the day.”
Bronwyn speaks first. “I know more now than I did when we filmed,” she says. “So there are a lot of things. I’m willing to start with my own apologies today, and hopefully get some.”
Whitney says her goal for the reunion is “to be able to have a conversation with Lisa. I’d like to get to the bottom and the root of where the problems lie. And I’d like to get a word in.”
(Bravo) Lisa Barlow, Meredith Marks and Whitney Rose, from left, at lunch in Puerto Vallarta, in an episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Lisa vs. Whitney
The tension between Lisa and Whitney traces back, in part, to an accusation that Whitney’s Prism jewelry line was selling pieces bought from a cheap Chinese online retailer. Whitney explains off the bat that the Prism website posted a photo from the Chinese retailer for 48 hours, as a placeholder, until photos of her actual jewelry designs were posted.
The reason this became a flashpoint is that Whitney accused Lisa of propagating the rumor that Prism was reselling cheap Chinese merchandise. Lisa threatened to sue Whitney over that accusation.
“I lost my mind when she accused me of doing something I didn’t do,” Lisa tells Andy. “I go, ‘Show me the proof.’ [Whitney] said, ‘I have proof, I have proof, I have proof.’ … And she never gave me the proof.” This dispute is not resolved, and Andy moves on.
(Joshua Applegate | Bravo) Angie Katsanevas, center, confronts Lisa Barlow, while Whitney Rose, left, and Meili Workman look on, at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, in a scene from "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Lisa vs. Angie
Angie, in an early episode, commented to Heather about how she is a good mother to her daughter, Elektra — and added that “I don’t let her sit and f---ing game until 2 in the morning.” This was perceived as a dig at Lisa and her younger son, Henry. Heather repeated this to Lisa, though slightly reworded: “‘My daughter needs me,’ like, ‘she’s just not in the room playing video games.’”
Angie took Heather to task for repeating what she said to Lisa. “I know Heather loves me,” Angie tells Andy. “She’s championed me, but that did make me, at the time, question where I stood with her. Heather twisted my words, and I didn’t appreciate that. I didn’t ever say [Lisa is] a bad mom.”
Lisa jumps in to defend herself, leading to several seconds of overlapping talk between Lisa and Angie — so much so that Andy invokes the safe words he established with the two at the start. (Lisa’s is “besos,” referencing her Valentine’s party at the start of the season; Angie’s, true to her Greek heritage, is “Opa!”)
After things calm down a bit, Heather comments about Lisa and Angie’s friendship.
“Angie, I know you, and I know your relationship with Lisa, and it felt like a shift,” Heather said. “I was trying to navigate this new loyalty and deep appreciation I had for Lisa.”
Then the conversation gets sidetracked by an argument between Angie and Meredith — who is still nursing hurt feelings over the scroll of grievances Angie presented to Meredith in the season’s first episode.
Meredith posted something about a TikTok video in which Angie appeared with two now-disgraced former Housewives, Jen Shah and Monica Garcia, and Meredith referred to Angie as “Jen Shah’s backup dancer.” This is technically accurate, in that Angie was dancing in the background behind Jen — but Angie reads into that comment a deeper meaning about Angie’s place among the Housewives. ”I’ve been solo since I was 6 years old, and I’m nobody’s backup dancer,” Angie tells Meredith.
(Bravo) Bronwyn Newport, left, complains to Lisa Barlow about the room assignments — and what they say about Lisa and Bronwyn's friendship — in Puerto Vallarta, in an episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Lisa vs. Bronwyn, part I
The downward shift of Lisa and Bronwyn’s relationship has been one of the season’s more fascinating storylines.
Early on, it was established that Lisa and Bronwyn have known each other for years, predating either’s involvement on the show. As the season went on, though, the cracks in the friendship revealed themselves — usually because Bronwyn felt like she’s more supportive of Lisa than Lisa is of her.
One flashpoint in the reunion follows up on something that happened on the couples’ trip to Palm Springs that Bronwyn and her tech-financier husband, Todd Bradley, hosted to mark their anniversary. In one moment on that trip, Todd arranged for Bronwyn’s jeweler to visit with a couple expensive items — including a $4 million diamond necklace.
In the reunion conversation, Bronwyn details what she ultimately bought from the jeweler. Then Lisa says that she knows the jeweler, who told her that Bronwyn never bought anything. This prompts a lot of cross-talk about how unprofessional the jeweler would be to tell Lisa anything about another client.
(Bravo) Bronwyn Newport, left, and Lisa Barlow, have an argument by the hot tub during their Palm Springs trip, on an episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Lisa vs. Bronwyn, part II
“I kept thinking something went wrong between Lisa and I,” Bronwyn tells the group. “You see me chasing her, almost the entire season. What went wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Which you took as me nitpicking you.”
Looking back at how Lisa talked to Angie and Heather, and to the camera in confessionals, Bronwyn says, “I don’t think anything went wrong. I think I just was unaware that we were not as close as I thought we were. I think I was Lisa’s social friend, and I thought we were really good friends, and so I kept expecting really good friendship out of somebody who just is somebody who sees me socially.”
Lisa’s follow-up backs up Bronwyn’s assessment. “I enjoy Bronwyn, but it was definitely more of a social friendship,” she said. “We weren’t embedded in each other’s lives. We didn’t tell each other our deepest, darkest secrets. And I’ve always thought highly of her.”
Bronwyn said that because of her past relationship with Lisa, it blinded her to building friendships with the other Housewives. “More often than not, I placed Lisa on a higher pedestal than the others,” Bronwyn tells Andy. “If there was an avenue to fix it with Lisa, I kept running to fix it with Lisa, rather than seeing there were other friendships here I could have made [better].”
(Bravo) Todd Bradley, left, and his wife, Bronwyn Newport, share a moment as they fly with the group to Palm Springs, on an episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Lisa vs. Bronwyn, part III
The harshest talk between Bronwyn and Lisa centers around the topic of Bronwyn’s 18-year-old daughter, Gwen.
Early in the season, it was revealed that Bronwyn got pregnant when she was a student at Brigham Young University. In addition to getting kicked out of BYU (whose owners, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, take a dim view of sex outside of marriage), Bronwyn was cut off from the family of Gwen’s biological father, who died when Gwen was 2. Bronwyn raised Gwen by herself to age 8 — when Bronwyn married Todd, and he became Gwen’s stepfather.
Lisa told Bronwyn earlier this season that she knows Gwen’s paternal grandparents. Lisa said she’s friends with that family, and offered to help Gwen if she wanted to meet them. Bronwyn is leery of this offer — because she isn’t as convinced of the family’s goodness as Lisa is, based on 18 years of silence — but says it’s ultimately Gwen’s decision.
What Bronwyn is most upset about is something Lisa said in one of the “aftershow” segments. Lisa said that it was her understanding that Gwen’s paternal grandparents never contacted Gwen because they didn’t know Gwen existed — because they had believed that Bronwyn’s pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. We then see a bit of unused footage from the season, where Lisa tells Bronwyn this.
Cut back to the reunion, as Bronwyn says she asked producers not to play those clips, so as not to further identify Gwen’s biological father or his parents. “I have never told a single person who this person is,” Bronwyn said. “I’ve never asked for money. I’ve never said anything to them.”
It’s difficult to tell here whether Bronwyn is accusing Lisa of spreading misinformation that she faked a miscarriage, or is mad that Lisa is repeating the grandparents’ belief that there was a miscarriage. Both are bad in Bronwyn’s view.
“You have been on TV for a long time,” Bronwyn tells Lisa, fighting back tears. “and you know how damaging that would be to me.”
The topic remains in the air during the episode’s final minutes, when five of the Housewives’ husbands — Justin Rose, Todd, Shawn Trujillo (Angie’s husband), John Barlow and Seth Marks — take stools behind the couches.
Todd bristles at the invasion of privacy the show has brought on his family — and brings up Lisa’s “aftershow” comments. When he aims some of his anger at Lisa, John Barlow says, “Watch your tone.” Todd replies, “I’m not watching my tone. You watch your tone.” That’s where the conversation ends until next week.
A note to readers • The second part of the Season 5 reunion of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” is scheduled to air on Bravo on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 8 p.m. Eastern time — 6 p.m. Mountain time on DirecTV and Dish, and 9 p.m. Mountain time on Xfinity. (The show streams the next day on Peacock.)
