But it doesn’t seem that Christine is particularly getting the short end of the stick, except in her own mind as Kody maintains a frantic schedule of commuting each day and night between his four wives and their four houses. In this episode we watch him travel each day before dinner to another wives’ house. Each wife and her kids get him every fourth night. It’s never enough for each wife and her children and it looks exhausting for Kody who’s always carrying a black duffel bag for his clothes and toiletries.
He has dinner with that wife and their children that night, helps with bedtime, breaks up fights between children AND attempts to have some private time to deal with each wife’s needs and their relationship together. Christine spends her one night out of four admittedly hostile to Kody. Passive aggressively she swears she doesn’t blame Robyn for her own problems with Kody. ” Robyn’s phenomenal, she’s wonderful and she sees mine and Kody’s relationship struggling and it breaks her heart,” she shares. Yea right, we don’t believe for an instant that Christine really believes that Robyn is wonderful. No, she’s green with envy that Robyn is getting “more” time and attention from Kody, and is now pregnant with Kody’s 17th child.
To make matters worse, Robyn blabs to the other three sister wives that she’s determined to have a “honeymoon” experience for” years and years” with Kody, like her own parents had together. ” I take care of my own things when Kody’s not here and when he is, we sit here and make each other the priority, create this really cool experience”, she explains. Somehow, in her house, it seems like she has put her kids to bed early enough for she and Kody to have alone time.
Meri, wife#1, also seems to mostly enjoy her new independence in her own house and since she only has one older daughter, Mariah, she ‘s not as frazzled when Kody’s around as Christine and Janelle.. And Janelle, wife#2, still is more freaked out about not having her career anymore and about the fact that the family is running through their savings, to be in a tizzy that Kody isn’t there for her and their 6 kids nearly as much as he used to be.
The truth is that while Kody used to bedhop each night, the sister wives and children all saw him far more in Utah when three wives and their children all shared one house. Now, he’s on the road between all four. How he will EVER be able to have another paying job, besides shooting this show- I don’t know. How will he possibly fit a job in between nurturing his relationships with ” four independent, strong-willed women” , and giving a smidgeon of attention to each of his 16, soon-to-be 17 kids.
I don’t like to be this guy who goes from ” home, to home, to home,” he bemoans. But who can feel sorry for him – this is what he wanted.
And no one seems to want the sister wife lifestyle and big polygamist family more than Robyn who goes all passive/ aggressive on her own when Meri dares to say she wants her own independent career instead of a family business that all four wives and Kody run together. The five adults all meet to discuss business ideas since they are all unemployed. Kody wants them all to work together but Meri announces that she wants to go back to working with “at-risk” youth.
“You’re trying NOT to be a part of my family anymore,” screeches Robyn. ” You like living apart and you want to work somewhere else. You said we were going to be a family,” she accuses. Poor Meri. First Robyn’s pregnancy reminds her that she’s infertile and now Robyn’s dissing her career ambitions. It’s a miracle, Meri and Christine don’t get together and sink their claws into Robyn together.
This was a stellar episode with all this raw emotion being honestly expressed and with Kody’s exhausting “commuting ” schedule exposed with it’s stressful demands. But it doesn’t end until the entire family gathers at Robyn’s house for the big reveal of her baby’s sex. The Brown family already has 10 girls and 6 boys- something which freaks out the fetal sonogram technician who clearly thinks Kody Brown is joking when he tells her, he has four wives .
Lucky wife #4 Robyn, has “secret hopes” and she does get her wish – Kody’s going to have his seventh boy!
Even Christine says she’s excited. Stay tuned!
-BONNIE FULLER