If one were to rank the cast members of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” in terms of their ability to generate drama, Tuesday night’s Season 6 premiere makes a case that Lisa Barlow should be at the top — and she wasn’t even there.
Lisa was a no-show for the new season’s first outing, but she was the central topic of sometimes heated conversation — in which the cast members discussed financial issues and a couple of lawsuits, and name-dropped The Salt Lake Tribune.
The episode also included revelations by Whitney Rose and Britani Bateman, outdoor recreation on the Provo River, and the invocation of a Utah urban legend of dubious origin.
Camping, not glamping
Mary Cosby provides this season’s opening voiceover. “True friendship unfolds over time, shaped by hardship, grace, shared memories — and made safe with trust,” Mary says, over video of the cast members seemingly enjoying themselves on a camping trip. Then the images turn sinister, evoking thoughts of “The Blair Witch Project”: ”But when trust is gone, fear takes over, blame points fingers, and friend turns against friend.”
Then the action starts, with Angie Katsanevas picking up Mary in a large recreational vehicle. Angie says in a confessional that she and her husband, Shawn Trujillo, have taken up RV camping in the past three years, and she wants to introduce the other cast members to the great outdoors.
“There’s nowhere to run, there’s nowhere to hide,” Angie says in confessional. “There’s you, your closest friends and your closest frenemies.”
Mary isn’t thrilled with the idea at first, but she’s more game than the five cast members Angie picks up outside Heather Gay’s Beauty Lab + Laser. Bronwyn Newport’s response — “oh, for [bleep]’s sake” — sums up the overall reaction.
Meredith Marks tells the others that Lisa’s not coming. Later, there’s a flashback from five days earlier, of Angie chatting with Lisa, who says she doesn’t “want to spend the night with Bronwyn.” Lisa also brags that she’s attending a celebrity-studded business event: “I’ll be with Ben and Blake.” (The producers then put up photos of Blake Lively and Ben Affleck.)
Heather helpfully recaps who was fighting with whom as Season 5 wrapped up: Meredith doesn’t like Britani Bateman, Heather’s “not a fan” of Bronwyn, and Angie, Bronwyn and Whitney Rose are all harboring animosity toward Lisa and vice versa.
“One might ask why we’re going on a girls trip when there are five ongoing disputes,” Heather says in a confessional. “That’s actually kind of tame for this group.”
But, as Heather says later in confessional, “When someone plans a girls trip, you go. And if you don’t go, it’s to make a statement.”
As the group is set to leave, men in police uniforms suddenly surround the RV. Heather says she’s having PTSD flashbacks to a similar moment four years earlier, when police arrested former cast member Jen Shah as the Housewives were gathering outside Heather’s business. This time, the men call for Whitney, who is handcuffed — which is when we learn that these men aren’t really police officers, but strippers hired by Whitney as a prank.
“It was a lot harder than I thought to find male strippers in Utah,” Whitney says in confessional.
Lisa and her lawsuits
The RV trip takes about an hour, long enough for some conversation and tequila shots. (Angie hired a driver, so she could imbibe safely.) The RV eventually arrives at a bare-bones campsite near the Provo River.
Bronwyn, in a confessional, says she was expecting a glamorous cabin. “I was not expecting to be camping. I was not expecting to be in an RV,” Bronwyn says. “I was not expecting to be in a sleeping bag next to Britani.”
At a picnic table, the conversation picks up where the RV talk left off about Lisa’s absence — and about the state of her tequila and event-planning businesses. Whitney mentions “crazy accusations” she’s seen against Lisa online. Bronwyn adds, “what I’ve heard is that there are multiple issues, and some of them are not done yet.”
Bronwyn complains that Lisa often throws stones at other cast members, “and she’s never sharing with us what is hard or difficult or messy or, frankly, maybe even [bleep]ing bull[bleep] about her own life.”
Bronwyn mentions lawsuits that Lisa, her husband, John, and their businesses are currently involved in. When Heather questions Bronwyn on her sources, Bronwyn answers, “It was in The Salt Lake Tribune!” Then a headline from The Tribune appears on the screen.
(The Tribune has covered three recent lawsuits filed against the Barlows, all filed in 2024. In one, a Park City home builder accuses Barlow and two of her companies of not paying back some $400,000 in loans. In another, Financial Services Corp. of Salt Lake City accused John Barlow and Vida Tequila of not repaying more than $100,000 in loans. Both are ongoing, and the Barlows have denied all accusations in both, calling the first one “a fanciful tale.” The third lawsuit was filed in August 2024 and withdrawn the next day.)
Britani changes the topic to herself. She announces that she and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jared Osmond, got engaged last December. She quickly adds that they broke off the engagement soon after that, because of negative reactions from their children.
Later, over a campfire, Whitney makes her own announcement, and it’s a bombshell: Her business has failed, and she and her husband, Justin, had to fire 30 employees. “I failed at something I was really excited about,” she says. “I failed my employees, I failed all my customers. And I failed my family.”
Britani, who had been arguing with Whitney on the RV ride and during lunch, tries to come over and give Whitney a hug. Whitney shrugs her off, saying, “I’m not ready for a hug yet, Britani.”
Recreation and a ghost story
Angie has arranged two activities for the cast members: Fly-fishing and kayaking.
Those who choose fly-fishing find it meditative, if a bit frustrating, and two of the cast members show their unfamiliarity with fish. Meredith makes a joke in confessional that’s also a plug for one of her business ventures: “I don’t know anything about fish, except it’s where I get my caviar.” Mary tells one of their guides, Dusty, that she doesn’t want to kill any fish she catches, and that she thinks Dusty can perform CPR on a fish to revive it.
Whitney, Heather and Bronwyn try the kayaks – a single-person boat for Whitney, and a double for Heather and Bronwyn. Whitney jokes in confessional that “I’m going to ‘Parent Trap’ them” into cooperating.
In her own confessional, Bronwyn jokes about sharing a kayak with Heather. “Who knew it could be this simple to be friends with Heather?” she says. “I just have to literally sit behind her, take a back seat, be a second-paddle, not make eye contact, and we’ll get along just fine.”
By the campfire that night, Heather tells the others about “the legend of Molly Sorensen.” In the woods around Provo Canyon, Heather says, Molly’s ghost kidnaps young women who come up to make out with their boyfriends. It’s a legend Heather says she heard while a student at Brigham Young University — and the fear of Molly kept Heather from being “a good-time girl” (an insult assigned to her years ago by Lisa, and now the title of Heather’s second book).
I searched via Google (under various spellings), asked my Utah-born Tribune colleagues and consulted with my wife, Leslie, a seventh-generation descendant of Mormon pioneers. None of them had ever heard of Molly Sorensen or any such Utah legend.
Whether Molly comes from Utah lore or Heather’s imagination, her legend spurred Heather to lead a nighttime search for evidence. Equipped with camcorders, supplied earlier by Britani, the cast members go into the darkness, and the jittery black-and-white footage becomes a short thriller, ending in a cliffhanger to be resolved next week.