
What the hell is Elizabeth talking about? The previews for this episode and even the “upcoming” previews during this episode made it seem like our latest Housewife would finally unravel the big secret and hold a real conversation for us, and instead we got some Google sound that sounded like three dozen seagulls shit at the same time on the hood of a Ford Taurus. This was the most plausible revelation since Oprah let everyone in the audience know they were being attacked by killer bees.
This happens when women go to Sky Park, a completely empty amusement park that isn’t really an amusement park because all the rides make you do some things. Riding a bike up a hill? No thanks. Throw an ax at a target? Proci cu. Shoot a bow and arrow as if it were an archery unit in a gym class with Mr. DeSantis, your mustachioed gym teacher sympathy whose shorts were too short and bulging for a little gay kid to focus on a small pile of hay 30 feet away? This is not safe for anyone. What happened to sitting on a roller coaster and doing nothing but being scared of urine?
Anyway, Gina and Kelly ride a variety of bikes, and it’s moderately fun that Gina rides a bike just as well as she doesn’t buy every thing at HomeGoods. Braunwyn and Elizabeth go throwing axes and shit. (The woman at the amusement park says, “You picked a good time to come in the middle of the week because there’s no one here,” which is the mantra of every free hostess trip they’ve ever gone on.) Braunwyn and Elizabeth talk about their recently reduced differences around Braunwyn looking for all these information on how Elizabeth rented her house and how she does not repay loans at Shannon’s urging. Braunwyn bored the cops in prison and being a shitty person and that motivated her. I love a housewife who will behave horribly, so this is great.
Elizabeth talks to Braunwyn about her lies, a conversation built on what she told us earlier about her parents who were Pentecostal ministers. Her grandmother once told her that she was speaking in tongues, and when she did, the whole parish believed, and one woman even fainted because she “felt the spirit”. Elizabeth tells us, “I knew that day that adults were full of shit and that I could lie to get whatever I wanted.” This seems to have been the most formal experience in Elizabeth’s life, one that led her to discuss all sorts of things, big and small. We see the backlash as Braunwyn said the reason she doesn’t have clothes in her house is that she rents an apartment nearby just for the clothes, which is obviously a fabrication to sound richer than one of Jeff Bezos ’ex-wives. Of course, she doesn’t; women accepted it then, and we know it now. That’s everyone’s problem with Elizabeth; her stories never agree.
As she tries to explain it to Braunwyn, she says it stems from her experience when she was young and she’s not ready to talk about it, but she will tell her. She continues this long, unfortunate yarn about how she has been abused in this extremely religious setting as well, and it doesn’t seem to make any sense. We only see about 30 seconds, but you know we got the best parts, and it probably took another ten incomprehensible minutes. Braunwyn is very understanding and empathetic to Elizabeth’s pain, though she admits she has no idea what’s going on. Then Elizabeth says, “I can’t say I was a member of a cult and they told me they would throw me off the bridge if I opened my mouth,” and even Braunwyn pauses for a moment and says, “What now? “
I don’t think Elizabeth is lying about this. From what we’ve already heard, her childhood wasn’t good. She was poor in the Ozarks family, her family had problems with drug abuse and physical abuse, and several of her siblings deal with addiction problems. Clearly, a lot of things are wrong with Elizabeth, and now that she is no longer isolated from wealth and marriage to a successful man, she is facing these raw emotions for the first time. I agree with her; she’s not ready to talk about those things because she hasn’t processed them yet. He can’t frame them, it has nothing to do with cohesive narrative. And yes, she needs help to deal with these things, but she thinks she needs someone with specialized training because she’s so fucked up. No, girl. Get to a therapist, any therapist, as soon as possible and as often as you can afford. It’s a much better use of your money than renting an apartment just for all your feathers. (For some reason, I guess all of Elizabeth’s clothes are actually the look of Mae West cosplay.)
While coaching Elizabeth through the panic attack she had after she discovered it all, Braunwyn has a lot of problems of her own. We see most of this through a hint of her relationship with this woman Shari, whom Braunwyn calls “wife” because they are so close. Braunwyn talks to her every day and talks about how he wants all women to be like her. He even laughs at Shari’s lame jokes as they do some crafts in Braunwyn’s kitchen wearing those clear plastic face shields that do absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Seriously, it’s a virus in the air. These particles will slide straight down from one mask and slide up under the other mask, and you will get it. At this point, you can only kiss French. It’s about safe.
Speaking of French kisses with Shari, we know how Braunwyn’s story ends: in sparkling baths lit by candles, discussions of feelings, tickets to a Tegan and Sara concert, and a hug from Sapphic. Braunwyn totally wants to scold Shari because she’s not yet a skilled lesbian enough to know that scissors aren’t really the thing real lesbians do. The hint here is not even subtle. It’s like a pre-black eclipse.
Meanwhile, at home, Shannon and Emily are still dealing with coronavirus outbreaks. After Shannon Beador held all the tests in Southern California, she finally got what she wanted: a positive test. Okay, I’m going to take a very negative look at Shannon’s psychology for a moment, so please excuse me. Yes, I think Shannon actually wanted to test positive. How else could she get the most attention out of this pandemic? How else could she make people feel sorry for her and her lung condition the most? Not by avoiding bullets day in and day out at home. Standing in front of the firing squad and forcing all those who care for her to tell her how sorry they are as they watch the blood leak from the wounds into the ground.
When he finally achieves a positive result, Shannon goes crazy, which is natural because we are all worried about the virus and how it will affect us, of course. There is nothing scarier than the unknown. But at that point, screaming about it won’t help him or go away. You just have to wait and see. She could have a little optimism and hope for the best. No, instead, the mind takes her to a dark place where she will inevitably die, and her children are to blame.
As scary as it is to have a virus, I think there is something about Shannon who wants to be able to keep it over their daughters ’heads for the rest of their lives. Her phone call from the three of them, who had sneaked into the party without masks and were all infected with the virus, is annoying. Here are the girls who are afraid of themselves. And they have the thing (however irresponsible to procure it), and instead of trying to help and comfort them, Shannon puts the welfare under their feet. Worse, she feels they miss her and would like to be more emotional because of what she has already decided will be her final death.
The show does an amazing thing and contrasts Shannon’s journey with Emily’s. Her husband Shane is currently in the hospital and will be there for five days while undergoing the most sophisticated treatment available at the time, which injected the body full of disinfectant and absorbed it with sunlight, a treatment known as Full Trump. Emily is at home trying to babysit three children under the age of 10. He says: “You find energy and pull it from somewhere in the depths, you fight through exhaustion and you fight through emotions to do everything to protect your children. ” Yes that is correct. Emily puts herself and her own well-being in second place to be strong and take care of her children. This is what survival looks like. This is what grace under pressure looks like. This is what protection looks like, and it seems like these are skills that Shannon Beador will never be able to master.