Sister Wives Season 17 Is a Triumph of Documentary Filmmaking – Gawker

If youre 17 seasons behind on the long-running TLC documentary series Sister Wives, take this blog post as a sign from the God of the Apostolic Brethren that you may start now. You dont have to go into the archives you only need to watch the last five episodes.

Enjoyment of this riveting family drama requires no context other than this: In 2010, patriarch Kody Brown and his wives Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn wanted to show the world how polygamy could be functional in the 21st century. By 2022, Kody and his wives all living in different rental homes in Flagstaff, Arizona are eating crow, admitting to the world that their original situation was not tenable for them or their children (in order of birth: Logan, Aspyn, Mariah, Madison, Mykelti, Hunter, Paedon, Garrison, Dayton, Gabriel, Gwendlyn, Aurora, Ysabel, Savannah, Breanna, and Truely). Christine has left the family, moving to Salt Lake, and taking 11-year-old Truely with her.

Kody, a control-freak whose longtime sole obsession with having sex (or intimacy) with his most favored wife Robyn has transmuted into a similarly intense Covid 19-induced agoraphobia, is requiring the family to shoot every scene on their iPhones without a film crew. Unintentionally, Kody has had his first stroke of divine genius with this directorial decision. What was once a fairly glossy production (although and no disrespect to these women who clearly are spread thin, what with running a small village and all there never did seem to be a hair or makeup budget) is now cinma vrit. Its real and unfiltered.

One of the major set pieces of the 17th season is a mostly unfilled bookcase in Christines house, which would be filled with thrift store books on really any other reality program besides early Vanderpump Rules. Most of the important conversations so far have taken place in front of this unadorned shelf: how Kody never felt attracted to Christine; how Christine used to be smitten with Kody but now feels nothing; how families tend to rewrite their own histories as peaceful and rosy when they were anything but; how Kody wants 50/50 custody of Truely, even though he didnt seem to want that when they lived in the same house for the first years of her life; hilariously, how Kodys biggest fear is that Christine will meet an opportunistic boyfriend in Salt Lake that will try to scam the family out of all their money.

If this sounds too bleak for you, trust me that there are as many moments of levity as there are harrowing terrors, at least in the last five episodes. The worst parts of the show are when the wives and Kody natter endlessly about the apparent hilarity of Janelle buying a fifth wheel trailer to live in, but the editors still have some tricks up their sleeves to humiliate Kody without actually being in one of his homes.

In one confessional, Kody explains that its okay that he lets a nanny into his house with Robyn every day despite his strict quarantine protocols because its easier to pay her $20 an hour than to lose his own work, which he claims is worth $200 an hour. None of the wives seem to have any idea what Kody does all day.

In a scene from the last episode, the entire family serenades Ysabel, who is leaving for school in North Carolina, to Natasha Bedingfields Unwritten. As in the theme song to The Hills. Everyone cries.

Most of the laughs and heartache come in the form of Christine, a woman who I always felt seemed nice enough but is now the beating heart of the show, as well as the audience proxy. In her confessionals, shes enlightened for the first time in 20 years of marriage. Shes had enough of Kodys idiocy, manipulation, and neglect, and shes moving to suburban Salt Lake, goddamnit! Shes a feminist icon, and I cant wait to see Connie Britton get an Emmy for a Hulu show based on the first five episodes of the 17th season of Sister Wives.

So please take this blog post as a call to action the five episodes in question are available on Discovery Plus. Ive suffered through this program for 16 boring and banal seasons (with the exception of season 7, where one of the sister wives got catfished, which ruled), but this season has clawed its way to the title of the best show on television with the word Wives in its title. Thats really saying something.

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Sister Wives Season 17 Is a Triumph of Documentary Filmmaking - Gawker