I took the last two weeks off for the holidays and thought I would return with an abundance of creative energy in a fresh, uneventful new year (LOL). I will not be recapping episodes 7 and 8, the two episodes I missed, because I can barely eek out this recap between the doom scrolling. But honestly, writing it has been a nice distraction for me, and I hope reading it will be a nice distraction for you.
Episode 9 “Hip Hop and Heartbreak,” begins with Meredith disclosing the details of her couples therapy to her children.
Heather and Whitney ride horses,
and sexually harass their guide.
Jen plans Sharrief’s surprise birthday party,
which she’s throwing for him because she read in a personal growth book that if she wants more love she needs to give more love and throwing lavish parties is her way of giving love.
Jen calls Whitney to reveal the theme of the party:
Hip Hop and Golf, a theme she had to have used a Madlib to come up with.
Whitney asks Jen if Mary is invited to the party.
Of course Mary isn’t invited to the party. This episode needs a plot point.
We find Mary criticizing her housekeeper Charlinda’s vacuuming.
“I don’t want to have to do it myself,” she tells Charlinda as she strolls down the corridor like she’s Marie Antoinette.
Then with the exasperated sigh of a woman who cannot believe how difficult it is to find good help, she plops herself in the sitting room
and FaceTimes her grandfather I mean husband.
He’s in Florida checking on one of their homes, of which they have many — all part of Mary’s grandmother’s empire that Mary inherited. An empire that included a husband.
Mary tells Robert Senior she has been excluded from Jen’s party, and Robert tells Mary that the other women are jealous of her.
And look, I hate to be this guy, but if we’ve learned anything this week, it’s that enabling people in their delusions is a dangerous game.
Next, we finally meet Heather’s ex Billy, who has arrived at Heather’s home with Valentine's Day gifts for their daughters.
Heather explains that she married Billy because he was over six feet tall, cool, and Mormon royalty, and that’s all she was looking for.
But then she was actually married to him and learned they didn’t really get along. Weird that cool, tall, and Mormon royalty didn’t make for the perfect companion.
Heather explains things came to a head when Heather wouldn’t move the time of their daughter’s baptism to accommodate Billy’s sister and he told her he was leaving.
I’m sure this was the straw that broke the camel’s back and not THE reason for divorce. I bet they had both realized the marriage wasn’t working and divorce was the healthiest option. And honestly, their relationship now looks pretty healthy. A lot healthier than we’ve been told it was leading up to this point, anyway. It seems like Heather and Billy are both putting in a good amount of effort to create loving environments for their children and I think that’s great. I don’t have a joke here. Just want to offer my support.
Then, unfortunately, it’s back to Mary, who is counting cold chicken nuggets because everything about her life is deranged.
Most especially her pants.
Whitney has come to visit, and is required to wear booties over her shoes.
Mary explains it’s important that people wear booties when they walk in her home because they may have vomited and walked through it. Really.
Mary shows Whitney her closet, and Whitney has the same reaction we all had the first time we saw it.
A mix of shock and horror.
Whilst sitting atop her throne,
Mary asks Whitney about Jen and why no one is speaking up for Mary and insisting that she be invited to Jen’s party. Gotta tell ya, one time in first grade I begged, maybe slightly bullied, a girl to invite me to her birthday party and she did but I couldn’t enjoy the party because I knew the invitation had been forced and I just think that even if Jen did invite Mary, Mary would feel how I felt during that dark time in my life.
Mary tells Whitney she’s talked with Lisa and Meredith and they’ve both told her they are scared of Jen. I mean, duh. We’re all scared of Jen. That’s why she’s on this show.
Back in PC, Meredith and Seth lovingly and weirdly sexually argue over what to order for dinner,
Until Brooks can’t take it anymore and takes DoorDash into his own hands.
As happy as I am for Seth and Meredith and their decision to stay together (episode 8), they need to TONE IT DOWN.
Whitney arrives at a home that is every house built in Utah in the last seven years,
Where her friend Sara lives.
You may remember Sara from her drunken birthday serenade in episode 1.
“I’m creating a new version of life,” Sara tells Whitney.
Which I think is in reference to her third marriage, but could also be applied to her deep adherence to Q.
The two women lament over the challenges of being a second wife, and Whitney tells Sara that it took Justin’s family years to accept her and replace Justin’s first wife on the portrait wall.
I’ll be honest, if my son were married with children and had an affair with a woman twenty years his junior, impregnated her, and left the mother of his children, it might take me a minute to get over it.
Whitney shoe-horns in a conversation about Jen and the fissures she’s causing within the Real Housewives circle, and Sara encourages Whitney to talk with Jen.
Maybe because Sara is a life coach (really- imagine paying that women to tell you what to do with your life), Whitney decides to take Sara’s advice.
The next few minutes are just aquarium sponcon
Featuring Lisa and her fam.
Lisa enthusiastically misidentifies this fish as a shark:
Then the Barlows get to do a penguin encounter
An experience I tell everyone every year that I want for my birthday and no one ever takes me seriously.
Lisa tells us that her kids are developing a men’s grooming line called Fresh Wolf, an objectively terrible name for a line of grooming products started by a 15-year-old and 8-year-old. What does this have to do with aquatic wildlife? Nothing. But you have to hand it to Lisa for pulling off sponcon within sponcon.
Then we find the women getting beautified for another party:
And choosing their looks:
Sharrieff believes he and Jen will have a nice, quiet date night
And has no idea that under her coat Jen has on Beyonce’s Super Bowl halftime show bodysuit. Sharrief gets pretty stoked on the idea of a shrimp po’ boy after Jen mentions they’ll be near a Popeye’s.
Meanwhile, the party guests have started arriving at Top Golf,
While driving toward Popeye’s Jen tells Sharrief that they’re actually going golfing, and Sharrief tries his best to look excited even though you can tell he’s very disappointed he won’t get a shrimp po’ boy.
Jen leads him into a room where one hundred of his friends and family and four housewives yell “Surprise!”
And Sharrief does seem surprised, and just a little sad he doesn’t get a po’ boy.
Mingling ensues,
And then a dance battle.
Whitney starts twerking in the center of a seventh grade style dance circle,
While Lisa explains that Whitney needs a lot of attention.
Oh really? She does? Can you tell me about fish? Do they need water?
Next, Jen does the worm,
and her favorite scissor move,
and is crowned the ultimate dancer at the extravagan-Shah.
Whitney, who at this point in the party is sloshed,
has decided now is the right time to talk to Jen about the group dramz.
She asks Justin—who is wearing the Jersey of his stupid supplement MLM company—to kiss her good luck,
asks Heather to join her
then drunkenly pulls Jen by the harness and declares, “Get out here you sex master!”
Jen is, understandably, taken aback when Whitney starts slurring through some real talk.
“I thought you were good with the other women,” Whitney says.
And then just kind of stops talking, and stands there, looking spacey, until Heather jumps in and tells Jen that Lisa and Meredith are scared of her.
This goes over as well as you would expect.
THEN. Because Whitney is VERY DRUNK, she tells Meredith that Jen has been telling people Meredith has been seeing someone other than Seth.
At this point Meredith decides she’s had enough of Whitney’s “liquid courage”
and announces she is leaving.
This upsets Jen even more,
And that’s when Heather decides to literally walk away from the situation
And stand a few feet from the kerfuffle.
As you can imagine, Jen is upset to learn that her friends are afraid of her and to learn that Whitney told Meredith she has been spreading rumors about Meredith’s marriage.
So it’s no surprise that when someone mentions Mary, we get our first drink throw of the franchise.
Jen finds the party’s guest of honor and demands that they leave the friends and family who have flown in for the event.
And Whitney tries to defend her actions, but is too intoxicated.
And that’s the honesty.
We’ll witness the fall out from this event next Wednesday night. Until then, check out our audio recaps of the RHOSLC episodes on The Green Room, and subscribe to our newsletter to get these recaps and other Hive Mind content in your inbox weekly.
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