“We should be moving furniture into one house, not four.” – Kody
This edition of Sister Wives kicks off with Robyn visiting the midwife. She’s been bleeding, and the family fears for the baby. The midwife looks for a heartbeat on the little doppler thing and can’t find one, so everyone understandably becomes even more frightened. But in the end they discover the baby and verify a heartbeat (as if we haven’t all seen the pictures of a much-pregnant Robyn), and everything’s fine. It was pretty scary and sad for a while there, but it’s all good in the end.
After that, Kody decides that they have enough money in their budget for each wife to get one room re-decorated, since everyone basically has empty space in their houses. Even with all the furniture that was in their big old houses, it’s not enough to fill four whole new ones.
Meri gets a whole new living room that Kody picks out for her, despite the fact that she liked a totally different set. Janelle gets a new living room with sort of a modern cowboy theme. Christine gets a new bedroom because her bed broke during the move. And Robyn gets a new bed set because she never had one before.
The rooms all look great, but there’s tension brewing, and it’s starting to show. Kody flat-out vetoed the couch Meri had her heart set on, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The other wives were uncomfortable standing in Robyn’s room. Janelle is still upset that she isn’t working and is even less happy about keeping her own home.
The ads for next week are playing up the drama, which is most likely exaggerated, but I’m willing to bet that at least a little of it is real. These people are under a lot of stress, and it’s always bound to start breaking through as soon as things calmed down. It looks like here is where it starts. How long can a family exist under constant scrutiny like this? I guess we’ll see this season.
But even here, there’s this togetherness that makes this family (and maybe the Duggars) stand out from the flock of reality TV families: the wives take the last of their shopping budget and get Kody a claddagh ring to match the ones they all have from each other. He’s gotten married four times and never had one, but here, when things are starting to get shaky, they give him one and reaffirm the unity of the group. It looks like even if all their kids go their separate ways, they’ll still all stay together.
More thoughts on Sister Wives, “4 Houses, 4 Relationships”:
- Based on the name of the series, I always expected this show to be mostly about the wives, and the parts that are just about them are ones that seem to be the most honest in a lot of ways. They’re looser when they don’t have Kody around.
- I wonder if they’re Scots-Irish? Is that where the claddagh tradition comes from? Robyn’s name was Sullivan before she got married, but was that her maiden name, or the name of her last husband?
- What would happen if Kody found a new girl he wanted to marry here in Vegas?
- The fear of Robyn having a miscarriage must be awful. It’s bad anyway, but this family is so much about family and making more of it, and there’s already the upset caused by Meri not being able to have more… it must be really terrible in that context.
Some stats and info about Sister Wives, “4 Houses, 4 Relationships”
TV SHOW – Sister Wives
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 3
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – TLC
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Trashtastic TV
STARRING – Meri Brown, Kody Brown, Christine Brown
This review was originally published on TV Geek Army.