‘Action-packed’ and other unexpected descriptions of ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’

The latest episode of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” picks up right where Episode 5 left off, at Lisa Barlow’s “Après no ski” party as Angie Katsanevas approaches Meredith Marks about the rumors Meredith has been spreading about Angie’s marriage.

The confrontation is exactly what you would expect — Meredith denies spreading any rumors, Angie insists that she’s the culprit, and on and on and on. All I can think about during this scene is how a couple of episodes back Angie called Meredith “a trampoline with eyes.” I still don’t know what that means. It’s so specific and yet so vague. It might be an insult; it might be a compliment. I believe our greatest philosophers dead or alive would not be able to parse the statement to find any meaning.

Meredith eventually gets up and walks away after Angie makes a (non-trampoline related) jab about Meredith’s marriage. Meanwhile, the rumor disseminates throughout the party, which is wont to happen when the subject of the rumor is yelling loudly about how it’s not true. The response from the rest of the women is eye rolls, the appropriate response to hearing a rumor about a male hairdresser’s sexuality. The ’90s called, it wants its tropes back.

“I can’t believe I wasted another outfit on this event,” Mary Cosby says before she asks Lisa if there’s no food at this event. She asks this while sitting inches away from the crepe table. Lisa jumps up to find food for Mary because that’s the power Mary has over people. As her personal pizza cooks, Mary asks the caterer how long it’s going to take and why he won’t put it in a to-go box for her, and concludes he must be lazy. As hilarious as Mary is, it’s important to remember she’s also very mean.

The next morning Angie has to tell her husband, Shawn, about the rumors, and it doesn’t go great. Shawn’s main concern, rightfully, is how these rumors will affect their daughter, Elektra. Angie reassures him that Elektra won’t believe these rumors, but that might not be true for Elektra’s peers hearing about these rumors.

Next, we find Monica Garcia waking up her four girls for school. In her confessional, Monica explains that she’s trying to give her children a more stable childhood than she had, when she and her mother moved constantly for what she says was her mother’s pursuit of bigger and better. “I’ve always been searching for stability,” she says. On one hand, I empathize. On the other hand, it’s a statement I have to take with a grain of salt given her admitted history of having an affair with her brother-in-law. Twice. And that just doesn’t scream searching for stability in my opinion.

Lisa and her oldest son, Jack, are spending an afternoon together in preparation for Jack’s upcoming mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They start with pedicures in the most luxurious nail salon I’ve ever seen. If this show can claim any success, it’s revealing a bunch of Salt Lake County establishments I had not known existed.

While Lisa eats her signature meal of a candy bar and Diet Coke, she asks Jack how he’s feeling about his upcoming mission. He tells her he’s excited. She asks him if he’s read the Book of Mormon and he tells her that he’s currently reading it and finds it “action-packed,” a description I never would have expected but one that’s technically true.

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“Based on the things I’m hearing about this book I kind of want to read it,” Lisa says.

Angie invites Lisa and Whitney Rose over for some friendly consoling. After she tells her friends about her conversation with Shawn and how they’re both feeling, she mentions that Heather Gay invited her over to apologize for not sticking up for her more in Palm Springs. In one fell swoop, Lisa immediately makes the conversation all about her and how she’s never received that kind of grace from Heather.

“I had no idea she was harboring so many feelings from last year,” Whitney says. When she pronounces “feelings” it sounds like “fillings,” because Whitney is the most truly Utahn of all these Utah ladies. “We came over here to make Angie feel better,” she adds. “Fill better” is what I hear.

Next, we find Meredith reliving some trauma while her son Brooks drives her through Park City. She tells the producers of her ride home from Lisa’s party wherein the driver, nearly blinded by the snow, looked like he might drive off a cliff for a second but instead drove into a snowbank. The thing about this is that anyone who has spent a single winter in Utah has a story about nearly dying while driving through a snowstorm. I’m sure it was as terrifying as she claims it was, but I’m also sure anyone who has driven in Park City from the months of October to May has also thought they were going to drive off that same cliff.

Regardless, the near “accident” has made Meredith reflect on her relationships and interactions and made her decide she really wants to spend her time with the people she cares about most. “You never know when it’s going to end,” she says through tears and it’s tough not to laugh.

Then, Monica and her mom are taking Monica’s nana to the senior center with a quick pit stop at McDonald’s, as every proper family outing has. Quick aside: Once, on a family vacation, my dad got so fed up with our indecisiveness at the McDonald’s drive-thru that he just started firing off random orders, and we were instructed to eat whatever we got OR ELSE. That was my first time trying a sausage McMuffin and you know what? It was delicious.

At the senior center, Monica and her mom and the accompanying camera crew insert themselves into some card games before they sequester to a corner of the center to talk about their dating lives. This quickly turns into a shouting match, while at a nearby table, one of the seniors yells different cards like “ace of hearts!” It’s the kind of interaction I come to this show for. And I look forward to more such interactions in the coming weeks. This show, after all, is action-packed.