I’ll say one thing about the cast of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City: this group has an almost impressive talent for ignoring what’s right in front of them. We’re now at the penultimate episode of this wild, glorious season, and the Housewives, through a combination of binge drinking and sheer delusion, have managed to spend all of their time on petty fights while there are about a dozen glaring (and more interesting!) issues that everyone is completely ignoring.

Really, this season should have been about two people: Mary and Jen. When one of your friends is wanted by the FBI for defrauding the elderly and another one of your friends married her step-grandpa to inherit the leadership of an alleged cult, it seems like it would be hard to focus on anything else. The other cast members, though, have mutually decided to maintain an uneasy status quo with Jen. This can be frustrating, but I understand why. Nobody has any way to definitively know what Jen did or didn’t do (though the evidence does not look good for her,) and between a desire to believe their friend is innocent and TV contracts requiring them to spend time with her, most of the women have decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, there are moments where the group almost addresses the many, many reasons to be wary of Mary, a reverend who lacks even the most basic instincts of human kindness. But, partly because nobody can actually focus and partly because Mary will just deny everything anyway, all of this is neglected too. Instead, we get a protracted, exhausting investigation into Meredith’s dad’s memorial and a deep dive into the rapidly crumbling 10-year friendship between her and Lisa.  

I may be disappointed by all of the mess left unexplored (remember the little nugget that Meredith and Jen may have slept with the same man?!) but what we do have in this episode is so deliciously weird that I can’t complain too much. We pick up this week with Lisa’s furious hot mic rant, where she unleashed a torrent of every nasty thing she could think of about Meredith. When Heather, Whitney, Jennie and Jen go check on Lisa, she makes it clear that she feels everyone, not just Meredith, is to blame for not properly defending her. She packs a season’s worth of frustrations into one meltdown while security stands outside the door just in case. (Give everyone behind the scenes on this show a raise.) She threatens to pack up and leave in the middle of the night—as pretty much every cast member has done—and everyone besides Jen makes the mistake of following Lisa into the bathroom. She brandishes a hair dryer Brad-Pitt-in-Thelma-&-Louise style and yells, “I am fucking richer than all of you; I don’t need to fucking be here!” 1. I would like a fact check on this. 2. After this moment, Heather references this scene from Mommie Dearest in the confessional, solidifying her status as this cast’s one true gay icon. The other cast members actually do agree that Meredith hasn’t been a great friend to Lisa, who is left crying in the bathroom clutching a roll of toilet paper. 

While Lisa’s explosive tirades are accidentally funny, Meredith’s white-hot, quiet rage is genuinely scary to watch. While everyone else is dealing with Hurricane Lisa, Meredith fumes in the kitchen wearing a confusing original tracksuit while Mary mutters to herself that Heather “has the snobbishness of a true Mormon” and looks “inbred.” At this point, everyone should have gone to bed hours ago, but Whitney still tries to work things out with Meredith. She tries to explain that she didn’t mean any harm to Meredith by once again questioning the timing of her dad’s memorial, but Meredith doesn’t buy it and neither do I. Meredith brings up Whitney’s father, an addict who she hasn’t spoken to in months, and asks how she would like it if the group questioned her stories about him. Meredith is certainly hitting below the belt, though Whitney could have avoided this whole situation by believing Meredith’s first (and most plausible) story. Meredith points this out, to which Whitney responds, “Do you want me to hire a private investigator to find out?” I’m not on Whitney’s side here, but that’s a solid burn. Apparently, Mary was standing in the corner during the whole conversation, and after witnessing the confrontation, she just says “women” and shakes her head. Okay!

At this point, everyone has officially lost it. While Jen, Heather and Whitney are drunk peeing, Meredith storms in and demands to know who is speculating about her dad’s death. Whitney says “everyone,” and Lisa comes in swinging to deny this. I suppose we could quibble about the definition of “speculating,” but so far pretty much everybody, including Lisa, has at least entertained the possibility that Meredith is lying about the memorial. Lisa calls Meredith a “fucking liar,” and things devolve from there. Meredith is so upset and defensive that Heather feels even more suspicious, Lisa refuses to apologize and drunk Whitney yells “Meredith needs you” at Mary over and over. For once, Mary’s constant annoyance with Whitney makes complete sense, and Mary says this trip was her “last attempt” to make peace with the group. (Maybe she was never going to film the Season 2 reunion.)

After what has felt like 17 episodes of real-time documentary footage, yet another grueling girls’ trip has come to an end. Even Meredith elects to ride home on the sprinter van, and everyone must have exhausted themselves because no exciting footage is shared.

Back in SLC, Jen meets with her long-suffering lawyer Clayton. I’m always fascinated by Shah legal drama but this is pretty uneventful except for two things: Clayton says they won’t be going against Stuart unless he makes a plea deal and testifies against Jen, which has already happened and we learn that Jen herself wants to take the case to trial. 

Back at the Barlows, something truly remarkable happens: Lisa is cooking! And I mean actually cooking, not reheating Taco Bell. Inspired by the grill in Vail, she makes bacon-wrapped asparagus and immediately announces her plans to become a celebrity chef. (I am similarly ambitious when I am even slightly good at a new hobby.) She is bursting with confidence and announces that her next cooking adventure will be…learning how to make eggs. John, a supportive king, responds with a halfhearted “yeah.” With John, she debriefs after the trip and declares that she’s done getting in the middle of Jen and Meredith’s problems. She also says she will “always love” Meredith, which is an interesting stance considering her entire rant just days earlier.

For probably the last time, we get a sneak peek into Faith Temple, which is always equal parts fascinating and frightening. Apparently, Mary invited Jen personally to attend a service, which definitely feels like a trap. Jen, who relates to being accused of wrongdoing, wants to check out Mary’s church herself before making any preconceived judgments. What she finds is, as always, unique. In the church’s first in-person service since the pandemic, congregants tearfully read very passionate letters about how much they love Mary, all while someone fans her like she’s a medieval monarch. This is not the kind of footage you want when others are accusing you of running a cult where you’re worshiped as a God, but Mary has never had great judgment on what to share on a reality show with producers who are definitely not on her side. 

The episode closes with Meredith, who, along with her yassified personal trainer Jeff, is bringing out some sort of machine that looks like something between exercise equipment and futuristic torture device. I don’t know what her plan is, but she has brought out wine and a full spread of appetizers, so this workout already seems like my speed. Meredith has invited Whitney and Heather to experience…whatever this is, but Whitney is still mad at Meredith from Zion, and she plans on fact-finding, once again, about the date of her father’s memorial. At this point, I have steeled myself for another disastrous confrontation, but the vibes are much better away from the Cinco de Mayo pressure cooker. Heather and Whitney try these mysterious machines, which apparently use direct current muscle stimulation, whatever that means. (Heather knows this is probably pseudoscience but considers putting one in Beauty Lab anyway.) Meredith apologizes for her Zion outbursts and says that she believes Whitney’s intentions were good even if her delivery was questionable. She also gives a clear answer to one of Whitney’s biggest questions: the date of the memorial. This date matches Heather’s story and not Lisa’s, which I’m not sure means anything nefarious. All three, though, speculate that Lisa is up to something. Behind the scenes, Whitney and Heather were much bigger Meredith memorial truthers than Lisa, but for Meredith, who knows her friendship with Lisa is already on shaky ground, this is just one more question mark. For now, this is Meredith’s biggest ammunition, at least until the reunion, where everyone can hash out Lisa’s private comment that Meredith has “fucked half of New York.” (Woo!) Next week: the season finale!

Random observations:

• A lot of these women pronounce Zion like out-of-towners. (It’s zi-IN, not zi-ON. SMH)
• Meredith once again dispels the rumors that she traveled to Vail separately because she knew that the FBI was looking for Jen: “I’d want to be there to watch the arrest. Are you crazy? You think I would have missed it if I was the cause of it?”
• Who knows if the series will ever fully unpack all of the dirt Meredith has on Jen or all of the details people know about Faith Temple Church. So much left on the table, so little time!

Read more of our recaps of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

Usually, if a play is at all successful, the audience won’t spend time considering the green exit signs in the corner of their peripheral vision. Sure, you might spend a half-second finding the emergency exits during the standard pre-show speech, but if you find yourself staring at escape routes instead of actors in the middle of Act II, something onstage has gone seriously wrong. 

In Egress, a new production at Salt Lake Acting Company, though, it’s perfectly fine to gawk at these oft-forgotten exit signs—in fact, they are intentionally called out during the production. The play’s protagonist (Reanne Acasio,) known only as You, is an architect who specializes in egress, also known as the means of exiting a space, which, yes, includes those ubiquitous green eyesores. After a traumatic incident, which I won’t spoil, You needs a fresh start and accepts a teaching position at a sleepy small-town college. The move, though, hardly stops her insomnia, intrusive thoughts or general sense of anxiety. As You attempts to regain her sense of security, a prosecutor (Vee Vargas, who plays multiple roles) encourages her to testify in a case about the incident that originated her trauma. 

Architectural safety and ethics may not sound like the most compelling subject matter for a drama, especially if, like me, you come in knowing next to nothing about the topic. Playwrights Melissa Crespo and Sarah Saltwick, though, use the protagonist’s career as an effective, unforced metaphor for the instability of trauma. You may be an expert on safety, but she can’t stop relitigating the time her own safety was most threatened, forcing her to reckon with the inherent insecurity of the world, especially as a woman. In one clever device, the play depicts several of You’s lectures, aided by projected images, which, besides providing interesting bits of architectural history, comment on the ways You feels trapped in her own mind.

Large sections of the play are addressed to the audience in second person, a conceit which requires Acasio to carry much of the play’s narrative and emotional arc all by herself. Acasio handles the challenge, building an authentic connection with the audience. She gives a subtle, vulnerable performance, depicting You’s fragile state-of-mind without resorting to histrionic extremes. Vargas and J.C. Ernst, playing the rest of the ensemble, are also compelling performers while providing some needed moments of levity. The lighting, designed by Jessica Greenberg, provides effective visual shorthand for moments that blur the lines between reality and You’s troubled consciousness and Dennis Hassan’s simple scenic design, mostly consisting of three walls of stacked white doors, reflects You’s anxious claustrophobia. Directed by Colette Robert, who also helmed the play’s virtual New Play Sounding Series Festival production at SLAC last year, the play slowly and surely builds tension as it reaches its climax. I wouldn’t call Egress a psychological thriller in the traditional sense, but the plot has just enough forward momentum to propel audiences through the mostly character-based drama.

Crespo and Saltwick don’t shy away from the political issues inherent to the plot. Several times during the play, You considers purchasing a gun for self-protection. (This is America after all.) As she weighs the decision, You contacts an online gun salesman with sexist assumptions about her motivations and questions whether the weapon will actually make her safer. Other characters have their own opinions on gun ownership, and their debates authentically lie beyond the expected liberal/conservative divide. At times, though, these social issues threaten to overwhelm the play’s delicate drama. 

Less explicit, and more successful, are the questions Crespo and Saltwick raise about a criminal justice system that, on a massive scale, fails to protect women. You’s interactions with an attorney are a throughline in the play, and she is reluctant to testify in a trial that she expects will only add to her trauma and sense of instability. The ending finds a delicate balance between providing a resolution and suggesting that the legal system is not the most effective avenue for providing genuine healing. In one telling moment, You asks her students to design the safest places they can imagine—many inadvertently create prisons. You’s obsession with safety may be a natural response to a frightening world, but as Egress movingly shows, self-preservation is not the same as healing.

Egress will be performed in person through Feb. 27 and streamed online from Feb. 21-March 6. For tickets and more information, visit Salt Lake Acting Company’s website. Read more about theater in Utah.

Is anyone actually going to be on this cursed TV show by the end of Season 3? This week, after Jennie Nguyen’s racist, far-right and anti-vaccination Facebook posts received widespread backlash, Bravo announced that Jennie has been fired from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City in the middle of Season 3 filming. This was the right call, though it certainly calls into question Bravo’s vetting process. (These were public social media posts a random person uploaded on Reddit. It didn’t exactly take the FBI, or Meredith Mark’s PI, to find them.) Mary, who has her own controversies surrounding racist comments, ditched the Season 2 reunion and almost certainly is not coming back, and Jen could very well go to jail in the middle of filming. By this point next year, every episode might be Whitney trying to remember what her skin care company is called while Lisa takes a road trip to visit every Sonic in Utah. (Honestly, I wouldn’t complain.)

Who knows what the already controversial Season 3 will look like, but as Season 2 approaches its final episodes, the cast is gifting us with some god-tier reality TV. At the beginning of the series, you could still feel that (most of) the women were testing out their relationships and getting to know each other. Now, especially after the trauma bonding in Vail, the cast has a natural intimacy that raises the emotional stakes. Last week, that meant the Housewives actually enjoyed each other’s company for the first time in recent memory. This week, it means the gloves come off in some particularly personal confrontations.

At the beginning of this episode, the good vibes are (tentatively) still intact. The Housewives are hungover after their night at the club (read: blacking out in an Airbnb basement.) Meredith thinks she was “very level-headed and tame,” so of course the editors flash back to her kissing Whitney in the hot tub. In the light of day, there might not be any more friendly kisses, but everyone’s feeling pretty good about turning this almost disastrous girls’ trip around. In an act of hubris, the women divide up into unexpected groups for the afternoon. The first half of the episode felt like a sitcom in its fifth season trying out some subplots with characters who don’t normally talk to each other. (This is a compliment, by the way.) 

Perhaps the most unlikely duo is Heather and Lisa, who go horseback riding on their “first date.” This excursion seems to be a total success. They both get to live out their horse girl fantasies— before leaving, Heather demonstrates to Whitney the difference between a gallop and canter— and over a lunch of popsicles, they both seem to recognize that their early rivalry was petty even by Housewives standards. With her new bestie, Lisa discusses the long-simmering tension with her old bestie Meredith. Heather, who earnestly relates to TikToks about being an empath, tells Lisa that she feels for her and Lisa replies, “I feel for me too.” If you can’t feel bad for yourself, how the hell are you going to feel bad for someone else? Lisa’s mistrust of Meredith goes deeper than I realized, and Heather and Lisa discuss, yet again, the timing of Meredith’s dad’s memorial. They stumble on what they believe to be bombshell news—Heather and Lisa claim Meredith told them different days for the memorial. In my eyes, there are several plausible, non-nefarious explanations for this, but Heather is convinced she’s found more evidence that Meredith isn’t telling them the whole truth. 

As Heather and Lisa gallop off into the sunset, Whitney and Jen muscle through their hangovers to drive an ATV, led by a guide who’s wearing a T-shirt that reads “let’s do something dirty.” Whitney has decided to move forward with Jen since her indictment, but she hasn’t appeared to invest in the friendship as deeply as Heather or Lisa. (I am still haunted by the fact that Lisa and Jen used to talk for three hours a day. Three! Hours!) Still, these two usually have fun together, and after their ride they also gossip about the woman on everyone’s minds. Whitney is also suspicious of Meredith’s father’s memorial (sigh,) but her theory that Meredith’s hatred of Jen goes far deeper than some out-of-pocket Tweets is much more plausible. Jen, meanwhile, feels ganged up on, because of course she does. They are also frustrated that Meredith continues to defend Mary, who is arguably the most openly rude person in the group. At this point, the circle of finger pointing is pretty tiresome, because every single cast member either has major skeletons in their closet or is defending someone with major skeletons in their closet.

Meredith, Jennie and Mary, realizing that sharing a house with Jen is more than enough adventure for one trip, head to the spa. After their massages, they share a painfully awkward snack time as Meredith confronts Jennie about spilling information to Jen about the PI she hired. On the one hand, Jennie was wrong to go behind Meredith’s back. On the other hand, Meredith should know by now that anything she tells the group will leave the room faster than Lisa Barlow could down a 32 ounce Big Gulp. (Meredith doesn’t know that Heather was even more explicit to Jen about the PI.) After Jennie apologizes, the three try to shift to small talk about their husbands. We learn that Duy won’t go to therapy, because he’s the worst. When Jennie tries to ask Mary about Robert Sr., Mary cooly rebuffs her, even though she could have very easily given a generic answer and moved on. Knowing about Jennie’s previous anti-Black comments certainly places the dynamic between her and Mary in a different light. Still, you don’t have to defend Jennie to acknowledge Mary’s own rude (and racist!) behavior. At this point, I’m relieved both of them will be off the show.

Back at the villa, Jen is hoping to rekindle the magic of Club Zion with an elaborately themed Cinco de Mayo party. (She says the theme is in honor of Mary comparing her to a “Mexican thug.” I need to lie down.) Before the festivities even begin, Meredith provides a dose of reality by asking Whitney who exactly is paying for this ill-advised fiesta. She reminds Whitney that Jen has told federal authorities that she has zero assets, and Meredith worries about the ethical and legal ramifications if Jen paid this from her own pocketbook. Whitney believes that the husbands footed the bill, which means all Meredith has to worry about is watching a bunch of white women try to pull off Frida Kahlo flower crowns. 

As dinner begins and the mariachi band starts playing, everyone is trying (a bit desperately) to keep the fun going. After a cringeworthy attempt at a conga line and some high school Spanish vocab practice, Jen gives everyone the diamond snowflake necklaces she bought with Stu Chainz (!) all the way before Vail. (Apparently, Meredith has less moral qualms about accepting diamonds than quesadillas.) The spirit of giving quickly dissipates, though, when Mary continues to be an ass to Whitney unprompted. Everyone besides Meredith is tired of having Mary around, and everyone is familiar enough with each other to know exactly what buttons to push—all it takes is one margarita and a stray passive-aggressive comment. Mary sparks it all with a dumb dig about Heather not having a husband. Heather, who’s usually hard to piss off, responds with “Fuck you, Mary Cosby. Who’s your husband? It’s your step-granddaddy.” Lisa, who is still nursing resentment against Meredith, points out to her that Mary isn’t being kind, and Jen calls Lisa out for having a double standard or something, and I’m honestly exhausted on Lisa’s behalf. Lisa, too, says that she’s at her “breaking point” with both Meredith and Jen. When Mary denies Lisa’s claim that she’s friends with everyone, Lisa goes in. This inspires a truly iconic confrontation which includes Mary criticizing Lisa’s diet (Justice for my Taco Bell queen, though remember to eat local too,) Lisa saying that everything about Mary, including her church, is fake (I mean…) and Lisa saying “Lisa Barlow is an amazing human being.” (Again, I can’t fault the self-confidence.) 

After more back-and-forth about why Mary mistreats everyone in the group even though she leads a Christian church, Whitney backs up Lisa and asks Meredith why she defends Mary. As Meredith tries (and mostly fails) to explain herself, Lisa quietly walks away. At the table, Whitney again directly asks if Meredith’s father’s memorial actually happened. I don’t know if Whitney is savvily stirring the pot for screen time or if she genuinely believes she’s Nancy Drew (probably the former,) but it’s pretty galling for her to once again confront Meredith about this when the cast has barely reckoned with the serious, credible allegations of crime and abuse against Jen and Mary. Nobody learned their lesson from yesterday, and a once again scary mad Meredith storms off with Mary.

Meanwhile, Lisa is furious that Meredith doesn’t stand up for her. Behind closed doors, we get a genuinely explosive hot mic moment. (Who knows if Lisa knew that the cameras were picking up her statements or not.) She suggests that Meredith’s family is fake, says that Seth changes jobs so much that the family doesn’t own a house and calls Meredith a whore (more specifically, a “fucking piece of shit garbage whore” who has “fucked half of New York”) multiple times. After Lisa literally throws her microphone off, the rant is over, but it’s hard to see how these one-time best friends can come back from this.

Random observations:

• Jen kicks off the Cinco de Mayo party by telling the private chef “don’t be scared.” Always a great sign for the night!
• Before the party, Mary calls Robert Sr. and asks what she should wear. He is unhelpful and pees in the middle of the phone call. Heartwarming!
• Besides her feud with Mary, most narrative threads involving Jennie have gone dormant, and it’s extra hard to care knowing that she won’t be back for next season.
• Lisa yelling “I love Taco Bell!” as Mary rambles about nutrients is Exhibit A of why this delights me.