by Jessica Besser-Rosenberg
Ask for the Mormon ideal of perfection and you shall receive. In a pandemic, where everyone is on Zoom all day, there is a Botox-filled lining. No one wants to stare into a glowing screen and see their wrinkles waving back, so Heather’s Beauty Lab has grown exponentially. And have you heard? Under-eye fillers are in, so get ready for a slew of housewives who can no longer communicate with any part of their face.
Back at home, Heather is helping her eldest daughter prepare for the transition to college and she just wants her to go wild and rebel against her mormom upbringing, where the idea of a good time was dressing up like a pioneer and reenacting some days of yore trek through Utah. Heather’s daughter can still be a pioneer if she wants but a sexy one. One with a bonnet that has straws on either side that connect to beer cans and a cargo skirt that can come unvelcroed to turn into a mini cargo skirt.
Meanwhile poor Jennie is being harangued by her husband to have more kids, even though they already have three and she’s had nine goddamn miscarriages and three c-sections, and one perfect child named Karlyn. If it’s Sunday, Karlyn’s leading her family through an exploration of the reactive properties of sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid…but with cool colors. She’s straight out of a Wes Anderson flick and she will 100% be POTUS in 28 years. Either way, Jennie’s husband seems douchier than Seth’s newly acquired soul patch.
Jen Shah invites Lisa out for a day of snow biking, a sport which looks neither athletic nor enjoyable. She tells Lisa that she wants to invite all the women out for a special secret activity (ice fishing) but she needs everyone’s height, weight, age, SSN, and bank passwords. Honestly, the ladies have nothing to worry about because Jen only defrauds the truly vulnerable elderly population of Utah.
Mary joins Meredith at her house for a soiree of charcuterie and fashion (if fashion were one small rack of overly tailored blazers that Meredith is presenting to a room of her closest friends as her new “collection” for her store.) Her son Brooks is all “This screams Meredith Marks,” and “I want to crawl through your ear and inhabit your body, I love you so much Mom.” A typical mother-son dynamic.
Mary and Brooks have formed a truly odd friendship over their disdain for Jen, aka “She who will not be named, because if she is named, Mary has to fart in public.” How is Mary gonna school her poor son about the way he eats his cheese sandwich when she’s flatulating all over the hills of Salt Lake.
Mary convinces Meredith to go ice fishing to hash it out with Jen, so a few days later, Meredith puts on her big girl snow pants and treks across a frozen river to demand an apology.
When Meredith arrives, the ladies are running about trying to catch trout, and I honestly believe that if these women had to hunt for their food, they’d all be dead in a week. Meredith gets straight to admonishing Jen for her homophobic tweets towards Brooks. Jen denies it all and blames her social media team. Meredith accuses her of projecting, deflecting, lying and Lisa and Jennie try to engage in shuttle diplomacy between the two parties. As Meredith’s rage boils up, her head bobbles back and forth with such force that I imagine it could pop off and land in a trout hole at any moment. Still better than snow biking.
Jessica Besser-Rosenberg is a Chicago-based writer, comedian, and admirer of all the women on every Real Housewives franchise ever. (Except D.C. That one sucked.) Her work has been featured in the RedEye, MockMoms, The Belladonna Comedy, The Second City Network, and the iO Comedy Network. Follow her on Twitter at @JessGBR.