Yet again, Mary Cosby exhibits racist behavior on “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.” And she refuses to own up to racism in previous episodes.
Meredith Marks downplays and excuses Mary’s behavior.
Jennie tells Duy
Jennie Nguyen tells her husband, Duy, about Mary commenting on her “slanted eyes” at the pho luncheon to which she invited the other Housewives. Jennie says she was “very mad,” and Duy says, “I don’t blame you. Saying slanted eyes — you know [what] that means to us. … You don’t go to an Asian and say, ‘Hey, look, slanted eyes.’ I grew up with that.”
In a confessional, Jennie says., “It come[s] across racist. And it’s shocking because Mary should be more educated and understand it’s not appropriate to say things like that.” She tells Duy she plans to talk to Mary and let her know “you don’t say things like that.”
(Natalie Cass/Bravo) Jen Shah and Jennie Nguyen on "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Mary complains about Jennie
Mary and Meredith meet for lunch at Veneto, and Mary’s racism quickly resurfaces. She complains that Jennie doesn’t respect her, and she mocks Jennie’s accent, speaking in broken English. It’s the sort of behavior that has cost some people in the media their jobs and elicited protests against others.
Meredith wrinkles up her face and smiles. Mary says, “OK, sorry,” indicating she knows she shouldn’t have done it. Meredith laughs about it.
Then Mary essentially admits she lied when she said she didn’t say nasty things about Jen Shah behind her back, after Jen was indicted on federal fraud and money-laundering charges. “If I did say a lot of things about Jen, so what? It’s none of your business,” Mary says. Except that she was throwing everyone else under the bus and lying to Jen.
Mary goes on to say that she thinks Jennie “is a reflection of Lisa [Barlow].” And, in a confessional, Mary offers her theory of how friendship works: “If I have a friend, and I introduce my friend to another friend — how my friend that I introduced treats that person is coming from the person that introduced me to ‘em. However Lisa is, then … you just got another one.” It’s a unique take.
Meredith says that “Jennie has a little bit of a temper.” Although, to date, the blowups we’ve seen from Jennie pale in comparison to what we’ve seen from Meredith.
“I’m the wrong one to have a temper with,” Mary says, adding, “Lisa needs to check her friend.”
Maybe if Mary hadn’t made racist remarks/exhibited racist behavior four times to date, it wouldn’t seem so odd that she’s suggesting that Lisa, who’s white, needs to “check” Jennie.
Meredith vs. Lisa
Early in the episode, Mary ask Meredith where she stands with her supposed best friend, Lisa. Meredith says it’s “a little triggering” for her to hear Lisa is friends with Jen.
“It’s been very bizarre,” Meredith says. “You know what she’s [Jen] done with my child.” (That would be 21-year-old Brooks, who Jen allegedly outed as gay on social media, after umpteen publications had written that he is gay.)
“I don’t understand why [Lisa] wouldn’t just take my son’s side,” Meredith says.
Mary asks Meredith, “Who is Lisa to you?” Meredith replies: “That’s a good question.”
Later in the episode, Lisa tells her husband, John, that Meredith “was so weird” at the pho luncheon. “Just not the same Meredith.” And, in a confessional, Lisa says, “I feel like Meredith is being so distant with me. I just think we’re speaking different languages.”
(Natalie Cass/Bravo) Heather Gay, Jen Shah, Lisa Barlow, Jennie Nguyen and Whitney Rose on "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Showdown at Whitney’s event
All the Housewives attend the event that Whitney Rose throws at The Ivy for the rebranding of her skin care products lines, now called Wild Rose. Mary and Meredith arrive first, and Mary is instantly angry because there’s no coat check. “Is there someone that can take my coat?” she says, gritting her teeth. “Like, is there, like, service here?
Later, in a confessional, Mary says, “This is one of the worst events I’ve attended. Like, even just in … probably in my afterlife.” (Is she a ghost? A zombie?)
Jen and her husband, Sharrieff, arrive, and Meredith is not happy. In a confessional, she says, “I don’t know if there’s, like, a hearing problem that’s going on, but I think I have said over and over not to invite me to things that Jen’s invited to.” So far, both Jennie and Whitney have ignored Meredith’s demand.
(Charles Sykes | Bravo) Mary Cosby on an episode of "What What Happens Live with Andy Cohen."
Jennie gets all the other Housewives to join in her in a private room at The Ivy because “Mary has a tendency to say, ‘Oh, I didn’t say that. Oh, I don’t remember that.’ So I want all the ladies to witness when I confront her.”
When the women sit down, Jennie tells Mary she felt “very insulted” about her “slanted eyes” comment. “Really?” Mary says obliviously. “I love slanted eyes.”
“And you’re still saying it,” Jennie says. “To me, it’s a very discriminatory, racist kind of joke.”
“Well, I didn’t mean any harm by that,” Mary says, giving Jennie a sour look, turning her head, rolling her eyes and smirking. Later, she says it was “a compliment.”
“You’re an adult. Take some responsibility. Right now, there’s a lot of Asian hate. Be conscious of your words,” Jennie says. Lisa nods in agreement.
Mary feigns ignorance. “Did anyone else know that’s offensive?” And Meredith refuses to call Mary out for it. “It’s something I wouldn’t say. I don’t know if it would be offensive or not.”
In one confessional, Jennie expresses her outrage at Meredith’s comment: “Meredith, I’m telling her it is. And you’re listening and you’re sitting there, like, ‘It can be for some people.’ No, it can be for every single one.”
In another confessional, Lisa says, “ I don’t think we need to do a Gallup survey to figure out that, yeah, that’s offensive, Meredith.” In another confessional, Whitney says, “If it was anyone else, Meredith would have called bulls—.”
In her own confessional, Mary says, “When you say slanted eyes, like, that’s a feature. And that’s a beauty — in America.” In addition to her racist comment, Mary puts Jennie down because she’s an immigrant.
(Charles Sykes/Bravo) Jennie Nguyen on an episode of "What What Happens Live with Andy Cohen."
Returning the shoes
Jennie brings the $1,300 Christian Louboutin shoes Mary gave her during their visit to Vail to Whitney’s event, intending to return them because the gift was “not genuine.”
“Props to Jennie,” Heather Gay says. “Now she’s making me question my own integrity. I mean, yeah, Mary is an ass—-, but I’d probably shut my mouth and keep the shoes.” Heather does not indicate she plans to return the $5,750 Louis Vuitton handbag Mary gave her.
After the “slanted eyes” confrontation, Jennie gives the shoes back to Mary, because “in my culture, it was very insulting because it was, like, a regift.” And “to make things worse,” the shoes were “used.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Mary asks. Then she says, “They’re not used, they’re brand new.” Later, she contradicts herself: “I tried them on and they hurt my feet.”
Jennie says Mary intended the shoes for Jen. That’s according to Lisa. We didn’t see Mary say that, but she does not dispute the statement. And Mary left the receipt in the shoe box. Mary grimaces and says, “I didn’t mean to do that.”
Shortly after learning of Mary’s “slant eyes” comments and expressing anger about them in a confessional — and knowing that Mary has maligned her behind her back — Jen takes the shoes. “Jen Shah does not say no to red bottoms (aka Louboutins). I’m literally Cinderella, bitch.”
The confrontation continues
Whitney says she feels like “everybody’s just kind of letting it go” about the “racially derogatory things.” Mary gives her an angry look.
In a confessional, Whitney says, “Listen, I like my friends how I like my skin care — nontoxic and cruelty free.” To Mary, she says, “Help me understand, like, why … it’s OK to say that?”
“I don’t know if I say that about everyone,” Mary says. And Lisa interjects that, while they were in Vail, she was bothered when Mary called Jen a “thug” and compared her to Mexican drug dealers. That’s on tape — the clip is repeated here — but Mary lies and insists she never said that.
(After the episode aired, Mary issued an apology on social media.)
“What? I don’t even talk like that,” Mary says. Later, she tells Lisa, “That’s not part of my vocabulary. I don’t talk like that. I wasn’t raised like that.”
In the midst of the confrontation over racism, Meredith pulls the conversation back to her beef with Jen. She says she’s “very disappointed” with how the other women treated Jen at the pho luncheon. Her theory remains that she doesn’t have to be nice to Jen because they’re not friends, but the other women are Jen’s friends and should treat her better.
“She needs support and friends, and I can’t be that right now,” Meredith says.
“Why can’t you be my friend?” Jen asks. Meredith shoots back: “Because I have too much pain.”
(Fred Hayes/Bravo) Meredith Marks and Lisa Barlow on "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Meredith vs. Lisa and Mary vs. Lisa
Lisa points out that she never attacked Jen at the lunch. (From what we saw, that’s true.) And Lisa adds, “Mary lied about me. You said I said, ‘Jen’s going to jail and you’re [Mary] next. I never said that.”
“I didn’t lie. Don’t call me a liar,” says Mary, despite the repeated clips from producers showing she is indeed a liar.
Mary gets up and walks off. Meredith follows her. Heather tells Lisa, “You can’t let Mary come between you and Meredith.”
Mary has learned nothing. When Meredith’s husband, Seth, asks what happened, she replies dismissively, “They’re all saying, ‘Oh, you offended me because you called my eyes slanted. That’s a racial slur.’ And then Lisa said that I called Jen a Mexican thug.”
Lisa tracks Meredith down and says they’ve got to talk. Meredith says, “Yeah, you’re continually attacking me and yelling at me and it’s not boding well for me.” And she walks away from Lisa, again. This time, Lisa doesn’t follow. For the record, we did not see Lisa yell at Meredith. We saw Lisa push back in normal tones when Meredith made apparently untrue attacks against her.
Heather advises Meredith to talk to Lisa. Meredith says that Lisa “just came up to me again … and I can’t take it.” Lisa came up to her, said she was upset and that they needed to talk. Meredith is calling that was an attack.
Lisa asks Mary if the two of them can talk. “No,” Mary says, but Lisa ignores her and tries to engage. And then Mary tells Lisa that “sometimes you do come across as two-faced.” And “everything I say is judged.”
Later, in a confessional, Mary offers an incoherent excuse for why she said what she still maintains she didn’t say: “I don’t remember saying it. I want to believe I didn’t say it, but maybe I lined [Jen] with the cartels because all the news. And I keep seeing her face flash before me with those braids and that really pretty fur on. And why did they need a helicopter for Jen? And why is the FBI here? And why is — Homeland Security? That has to be the cartels!”
She tries, incoherently, to put Lisa on the defensive for not confronting her the moment she made the comments about thugs and Mexicans. “If I did something, say it to me in that moment,” Mary says. “I don’t harbor and harvest and, like, dwell on things and wobble in it and then come back and talk about it, like, weeks later and say things that I barely half remember.”
In a staggering moment of hypocrisy, Mary tells Lisa, “I really do feel like you don’t own [up to] things.”
In a confessional, Lisa says, “I’m sorry I brought this up in a group setting. … But the bottom line is you’re being defensive because you know you’re wrong.”
Are Meredith and Mary behind Jen’s arrest?
Whitney tells Heather that, according to Lisa, “Mary said, ‘See what happens when you mess with my church. You end up in jail.’” Heather asks Whitney, “Do you think, like, Mary had something to do with Jen getting indicted?”
“Well, that’s what it freakin’ sounds like, right?” Whitney replies. “Either she really is God, or she knew something.”
They are suspicious that Mary bailed shortly before she was supposed to join them on the shuttle bus to Vail the day that Jen was arrested. “It’s not crazy that Mary might have something to do with Jen’s arrest,” Heather says in a confessional. “There’s no way that she’s over all of the horrible things that they went through last year” — Jen mocking Mary’s marriage to her step-grandfather and “being relentless on social media. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mary still had residual anger.”
Heather points out that “Meredith and Mary are tight,” and Whitney recalls that Meredith hired a private investigator to dig into Jen’s life. “What if the private investigator came across something, and Meredith … knew something was going to go down,” Whitney says. “And she told Mary. And that’s why Meredith and Mary were not on the bus.”
Jen and her mom
Jen’s mother, Charlene, visits her and expresses her full support. “I believe in you and I know you’re innocent and everything,” she says. “It’ll all come out.”
Jen says her three attorneys “keep scaring the crap out of me … probably” to justify their $2 million retainer. She’s agreed to move to a smaller home, even though, “I keep hoping for some miracle to happen that this will all go away, but it’s not going away.”
Charlene is cashing out her retirement accounts and putting up “properties” to kick in nearly a million dollars to Jen’s defense fund. “You are innocent,” Charlene says, “and I’m going to do whatever I can.”
(Natalie Cass | Bravo) Whitney and Justin Rose on "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
Whitney spends $300,000-plus
Whitney is “freaking out” over the rebranding of her beauty line and the launch event. “We’ve officially gone through our entire savings,” Whitney says. And her husband, Justin, is “getting mad” about it.
In a confessional, Whitney says, “It’s been difficult, because Justin and I have invested well over $300,000″ in the rebrand. “And when I haven’t seen the return yet, it makes me feel ashamed. It makes me feel like I’m stealing from my own family.”
At the event, John Barlow asks Justin how Whitney’s business is doing. “She’s doing amazing things right now,” he replies, not actually answering the question.
Lisa ruined her prom
Lisa’s 16-year-old son, Jack, is headed to prom, and Lisa cannot resist micromanaging. She questions his hair, the way he’s wearing his tux, his posture, his poses for the professional photographer she hired.
At one point, the photographer tells Lisa, “Let me get a couple without you.” And Lisa’s husband, John, jokes, “Wait, Lisa can’t get in the picture? That’s a cardinal sin.”
“I want this to be magical for Jack,” she says in a confessional. “If I could go to prom as Jack for Jack, you know I would.”
In 1992, she went to her own prom with “this guy named Joey.” They were friends, and “for some strange reason I was so worried he was going to want to kiss me” that she “totally ruined” the evening. “I am sorry, Joey,” she says in a confessional.
Jack’s prom date, Sammy, shows up at the Barlow house, and Lisa takes over putting her wrist corsage on her. “Lisa, who’s going to prom? John asks.
“Is it weird that I feel like crying?” Lisa asks. John replies, “Yeah.”
Short takes
Lisa cleans a toilet • In a first for one of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” we see Lisa cleaning a toilet. Awkwardly. And then we learn that her cleaner’s efforts are “never enough.”
“Not to your standards?” John asks. “Never,” Lisa replies.
Heather gives a gift • Speaking of not exactly being relatable, Heather gives her business partner, Dre, a gift that is “the smallest token of my appreciation” — a new Audi.
Where’s the sister wife? • Jennie drops by her husband’s chiropractic office with a picnic lunch.
“Duy’s office is 10 minutes away from our home, so sometime I pop in and say hi,” Jennie says. “Sometimes I go get him lunch or get him coffee. And sometimes I just want to, you know, stop in and see, you know, is there a sister wife hidden somewhere in his office.” (She’s joking, I think.)
Golfing with your wife? • We haven’t seen much of Seth for a while, but he goes over the top (as usual) at Whitney’s event. He confronts Justin and says, “True or false. You play golf with your wife.” When Justin says he does, Seth screams in horror. “The point of golf is to get away from your [expletive] wife,” he says.
