From a bizarre Greek tragedy to Heather’s onscreen producing, the wives throw everything at the wall to see if Meredith will crack.
Photo: Bravo
It’s a miracle that Angie has made it out of this season alive given her insistence on doing a violent pratfall every single episode. After walking into a platter of glasses last week, she emerges the next morning with a bruised, swollen lip that makes Mary gasp. But to be fair, we’ve seen far more mangled faces on these shows from voluntary cosmetic procedures — and at least we won’t spend a season and a half trying to figure out whether her bruise came from Jen Shah or not. To make matters worse, though, her high heel gets stuck in a Greek cobblestone, sending her stumbling into a limbolike Matrix pose … but she stays up!
Another miracle is the fact that Meredith woke up in such a good mood that she started her day by making coffee for the whole group. But this easy-breezy attitude is particularly confusing to Bronwyn, who says that just hours earlier, a panicked Meredith summoned her to her room because she was spinning out about everyone being out to get her. When Bronwyn tells Mary about this late-night, off-camera meeting, in which Meredith apparently was asking about what they talked about during their lunch last episode, Mary says that she’s being paranoid. But is it really paranoia if she’s right? They were, in fact, talking about her, and the rest of the women are largely out to get her.
But when Bronwyn sits down with Meredith to recap their conversation, Meredith categorically denies ever asking what was said at lunch. “I am gooped, gagged, bamboozled, befuddled,” Bronwyn says in her confessional, as if she were just gifted a Bravo-themed thesaurus. In fact, Meredith completely contradicts Bronwyn’s description of their conversation and says that she was actually the one comforting a nervous Bronwyn. But why would Bronwyn be nervous? It’s not like Todd’s there to fart and steal her cherries. In any case, this denial is the last straw for Bronwyn, who feels like Meredith has been using her for information. “I don’t know who the fuck you’re gonna use next, ’cause there’s no one else, Meredith,” she tells her.
The conflict comes up with the rest of the group in the sprinter van later that day, after they clock Meredith’s chilly change of mood. Meredith once again denies pumping Bronwyn for information and asking her about the lunch, clarifying, “I didn’t ask, I made a statement.” Ah, suddenly this all makes sense. As we know, Meredith is a master of semantics. The English language is her art form, and she’ll warp it beautifully to keep her hands technically clean. What Bronwyn interpreted as a question about the lunch was likely posed as a leading statement that encouraged an answer, but legally, Meredith could say she actually never “asked.”
This all gets tabled for now because the women have a play to go to — specifically, a play about them. No, not Book of Mormon, but rather an original Greek tragedy written by a playwright named Stella that Angie commissioned to interview the women and craft a play about their group. I can’t believe I didn’t book this gig. Is that not what I’ve been essentially doing here all season?
The play itself is a bizarre experiment in Housewifery. We’ve long known that the experience of watching themselves back on television has an impact on these women. Some get new cosmetic procedures, some divorce their husbands, and some change their behavior. But this is a unique chance for us to watch them watching themselves — sort of. The play is a theatrical portrait of each of the women and how they interact with each other, and points out all of their respective vulnerabilities. Heather is accused of hiding behind her humor, Lisa of hiding behind materialistic things, and Angie of hiding behind her sharp tongue, for example. And this is all presented by masked actors, as if a season recap was done in the style of Eyes Wide Shut. I think the production should tour. Set up shop at New World Stages. Let Nell Benjamin write some music for it and do a pre-Broadway tryout. They can start engraving Stella’s name on the Tony now.
But how did its subjects receive it? Shockingly, it seemed to have resonated. I was certain Lisa would have something to say about it, referring to her as “one of the eldest,” but alas. They’re struck by their weaknesses being shown back to them and agree with the play’s message that they’re nothing without each other. Lisa and Angie make up, Meredith acknowledges that she hides behind semantics, and Bronwyn cries over being disloyal. This play is bringing about far more resolution than any reunion ever has. They need to send Stella to New Jersey.
But just as things seem to be going well for the group, Heather brings up that day’s conflict between Meredith and Bronwyn, despite it having nothing to do with her. Why? Well, there’s a part of Heather that can’t help but operate as a producer. Her penchant for knowing what makes for good television and how to drive story is, at times, a benefit — but sometimes it can get too sweaty. Knowing that we were in the final moments of the season, her gut instinct seemed to have been telling her that this was far too kumbaya for a finale, and something had to be done. So she took it upon herself to light the fuse on this unresolved conflict, but in the process interfered with the neat little bow it looked like we were wrapping up with.
“This is why I don’t open up,” Meredith says, throwing her hands in the air. She feels like she’s yelled and screamed at every time she tries to open her mouth, so why should she keep trying? She storms off, which is simply bound to happen anytime she isn’t bolted down, and Mary yells to the rest of the group asking why they’re all there if they can’t be real friends and express their genuine concerns.
“I have one question,” Meredith says upon her return. “What’s the goal?” Finally, Mary takes the reins and tells Meredith that they’re all worried about her because they feel like she’s spiraling. Meredith assures them that she is, in fact, okay, but Mary continues to counter. She ultimately admits she’s, of course, sad sometimes and starts to break down as she explains that she carries a lot of the world’s weight on her shoulders. We finally broke through the wall, and the other women see this window as an opportunity to pounce and explain the source of their concerns.
Whitney says she only used words like pill-popper and alcoholic because her experience with her father was her only point of reference for these kinds of mood swings. Bronwyn, in turn, explains that she shuts down in the same way when she’s having marital problems of her own, but this parallel is quickly shut down by Meredith, who says her marriage is the strongest it’s ever been. “Meredith, Todd, and I were having dinner in New York, and I saw Seth,” Bronwyn blurts out, as if she suddenly just realized that cameras were only going to be up on the season for a few more minutes and had to squeeze this in just under the wire. As you can imagine, Meredith storms off again, leaving Lisa to yell at Bronwyn on her behalf. “This is why she’s closed off,” Lisa says, and she’s right. In the same breath, they’re demanding that Meredith confide in them about her struggles, while throwing her struggles back in her face.
But is this about friendship being a two-way street, or is it about the show? Because why does it really matter all that much if Meredith is more tight-lipped about personal struggles than her friends? “I’ve realized that looking perfect is more important to her than being friends with any of us,” Bronwyn says in a confessional, shedding light on the real crux of this issue. Vulnerability is currency on reality television, and after a season of exposing their own struggles and embarrassments, the other women are annoyed that Meredith wants to keep up appearances. It’s like if the whole group made a pact to jump in a pool, and one after another they did it, and when it was finally Meredith’s turn she said, “Uh, actually I changed my mind, I don’t feel like it.”
Try as they might to coax something, anything, out of her all season — she’s not budging, which has led to this intervention of sorts where they have to dance around the fourth wall. Everybody but Lisa has put her on trial, and the season ends on this anticlimactic divide. Maybe they’ll be able to explain what’s really behind all of this at the reunion, where it’ll be at least a little harder for Meredith to run away.
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