On last night’s My Five Wives, the family travels to Seattle to visit the grandparents where we meet the best cast member of this entire series thus far: Brady’s clinically insane father.
Brady Williams gathers the family to discuss their upcoming trip to see his parents in Seattle. The wives have made a quilt for Brady’s mom, who’s been cancer free for 5 years. Brady says the family has been considering moving to Washington State since their current community has shunned them (since they left the faith). Paulie is not a fan of this idea because her grown kids have settled in their current hometown.
The wives spring into action to move their 30-person, 5-car battalion across state lines. The drive will be roughly 20 hours long and a mess of tears and bathroom stops, I presume. They leave before the crack of dawn after praying for sanity for the trip ahead. They plan to make this drive in ONE day. Ummmmkay.
Potty breaks take about an hour a piece, reports Rosemary. While the 24 kids line up at a 2-bathroom gas station, the grown-ups all realize they’ve had far too many kids the trip will take longer than predicted. Four thousand hours later, the troop arrives in the dark and are greeted by Brady’s parents. Brady’s dad, Rob, looks and acts exactly like Brady, seemingly being an aging man-boy. Except he’s wearing a ridiculous bandana on his head. Brady’s knee has “given out” during the trip as a result of a former injury he sustained while leaning slightly to the left in the yard – or something dramatic like that. Rhonda ices his knee and tells him to go to bed. Brady now has his excuse to be involved as little as possible for the remainder of the trip. #sneaky
The next morning, Rhonda and Brady’s mom, Stella, discuss their mutual cancer & cancer scares and Rhonda’s non-mutual hopes of pursuing adoption. Stella tells Rhonda it will “all work out if it’s supposed to.” Then they reminisce about how far the stigma of polygamy has come in recent years. Stella remembers her sister wives hiding in closets (to avoid WHOM?) and Rhonda remembers her mother instructing her to hide as well. She was also told to carry her baby into her house in a box – yes, BOX – so no one would know she had Brady’s baby. I’m not quite sure who was watching them, but I definitely want to hear more of this creepy stuff, please.
Grandpa Rob is outside in a KILT and bandana looking like a jackass and instructing the kids to assemble a teepee out of logs and rope. This is what they will be forced to sleep in. One of the teenage girls is put to work driving a backhoe while he yells at her not to kill one of her brothers and sisters but that “camera men are fair game!” I am LIVING for this episode. The crazy peeps are loose! I knew TLC couldn’t sweep all of the crazy under the rug, despite their valiant efforts each week to make Brady’s family appear *totally normal and happy*. Bring it.
After a string of near misses in which the teepee logs practically crush a kid or two, and after Grandpa Rob screams at everyone, Brady hobbles out on crutches to force a unionized lunch break for his children. Grandpa Rob later asks about whether they’ll consider moving to Washington, but Brady is reluctant to commit. Okay, here comes more crazy! Brady’s dad then reports that he was shocked – SHOCKED, I say! – when one of Brady’s kiddos told him he needed to “watch out for his junk” during the teepee building. How do the children know these secular slang words? wonders the old man in the kilt who apparently flashed his junk at them & scarred them for life, no doubt. Brady prefers the term “wobbly bits” when referring to his junk, while his dad prefers “applicator” or “jewels.” Eww. The term “junk” apparently offends Grandpa Rob’s delicate sensibilities. Brady tells the camera that his dad is eccentric. You say eccentric, I say mental disorder.
Oh, GAWD. Back to the teepees. The kids paint hand-prints all over the teepees & really seem to enjoy it. Grandpa Rob believes in Bigfoot, like for real, and tells the children a story about Sasquatch sightings in his yard. He’s even measured Sasquatch footprints at 16 inches in his head. The kids ask a ton of sharp-sighted questions like “where’s your proof?” and Grandpa Rob sort of ignores them and stares into the distance with the eyes of the un-medicated psychotic.
Brady hobbles around on his crutches to kiss each wife goodnight because “it’s my duty,” he says. Ah, Romeo. Rosemary has the pleasure bedding Brady tonight & they discuss his parents. Rosemary loves Stella and makes no comment about Grandpa Rob, which is probably best.
Day 2: Time for the Bigfoot Hunt. (One does not get to type that line every day.) Grandpa Rob teaches the kids valuable skills on their hike in the woods, like how to read a compass and how to say “hi” in Sasquatchian. Then they promptly get lost. Just as a reminder, last episode we were told that Grandpa Rob wrote a book about his time in the secret service.
Back at the house, Nonie and Stella talk about Nonie’s hope of having another baby. Nonie breaks down in tears while Stella coolly tells her to let it go & if it happens, it happens.
Stella then announces a tug-of-war kids-vs.-parents competition before dinner. The parents obviously go down like a stack of dominoes as the kids take revenge on the forced labor teepee building and Big Foot training camp they’ve been subjected to on this vaycay. Then in a girls-vs.-boys round, the girls smoke the boys, thus delivering the overarching metaphor of this show: The women will take over one day and kick all of the polygamist men to the curb. Period.
Rosemary, who really does seem to love Stella very much, presents Stella with the “healing hands” quilt they made for her. Stella cries & loves the gift. Everyone surrounds her in a huge group hug while Grandpa Rob picks his teeth in the corner and plans his next book deal, presumably.
TELL US – THOUGHTS ON THE TRIP TO SEATTLE? WHAT’D YOU THINK OF BRADY’S PARENTS?
Recap Author: Erin M.
Photo Credit:
