“If this was really about lust, prostitutes are a lot cheaper than wives.” – Robyn
In last season’s season ender, the Browns find themselves in a one-month vacation rental with 30 days to find a new place where they can live permanently. The biggest challenge? Polygamous households don’t seem to exist in Nevada, and that means the houses big enough to hold them don’t exist, and they have to find separate homes for each wife. Each wife finds a home they think is perfect, Robyn first, then Janelle, then Christine, and finally Meri, only ten days before they have to be out. Meri’s house is a mile away from the other three, on the other side of a public park, and already there’s concern that they’ve made the wrong choice. Kody worries about Meri having a house as big as the other three, even though it’s just her and Moriah, and the other wives defend her choice. Meri feels bad that she wasn’t able to fill a house with kids, but doesn’t want to take a back seat to the others just because of biology. And the kids hate being separated.
Meanwhile, Meri and Robyn go back to get the rest of the stuff out of the old house and to rescue the pets, and rebond a little along the way. Then, once everyone has a home, they have a potluck to meet the neighbors. It seems like a well-populated neighborhood, and everyone seems to be open, at least to their faces, but you can tell no one is all that happy with the idea of polygamy.
And all the kids start school. And there are kids in all three levels, so they have to be out in hour intervals to get to schools a half hour away.
And Robyn finds out she’s pregnant, but how will the others react? Real-life cliffhanger-time!
This was a sort of rambly episode. Four wives had to find homes, and that means a lot of wandering around, a lot of looking at houses, a lot of moving things. And with the kids not liking it one bit and meeting the neighbors and so on, it seemed a little like it went all over the place. But that’s how real life is, no? And through it all, the wives still had a lot of smart things to say about pulling together and supporting each other and not letting the stress fracture the family. It’s all been noted before, but it’s still amazing how communal their mindset is. In situations this stressful, it seems that mainstream families tend to crack up and get fighty. But this family, even though they are literally being separated by circumstances, still manages to have yet another proper birthday party, and to get everyone in on the moves.
But it looks like the separation is going to be the biggest problem. Already, Meri likes having space to herself, and says the quality of attention from Kody is higher since there are so fer other distractions. Christine likes being able to set up a pattern with her kids where they can pray and sing every night, which they didn’t do in the big home. Kody hates it: he doesn’t like driving from house to house, he doesn’t want his kids living in separate houses, and he really doesn’t like that his wives prefer to live separately. Janelle, however, is missing the togetherness, and Robyn only got to live with the others for a short time before they had to move.
The older kids don’t like the situation at all, and are already starting to act out, too, so next season promises to be full of drama!
More thoughts on Sister Wives, “Sister Wives in the City of Sin”:
* At the party, Kody made a faux pas that strikes me as very telling of his worldview: he thought one of their neighbors’ stepdaughter was his wife! Not a sister or something when she seemed to be too old to be a daughter, but his wife.
* Even though we saw the episode when they actually moved, the flashbacks still make it look like that wailing police car is coming for them, when it know it wasn’t. The editors are building a mythology for the show!
* The Browns want to use their retirement money to set up a family business since everyone is now out of work, but they don’t indicate what sort of family business it would be.
* The commercials during this episode show the Browns “trying to keep it together” and show the Little People having marriage problems. Add that to the Jon and Kate drama, and it seems like TLC causes divorce…
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.