Things have not been going great for the Sister Wives family for a long time now.
Remember when they used to do fun things together on the show, or how there used to be sweet moments sometimes between them?
Yeah, it's all pretty much just bitterness now.
For the past two seasons, we've seen the Browns trying to figure out how to stay a family while still staying safe during the pandemic, and ... well, they've been failing miserably.
Kody and his wives all seem to have different ideas about what kinds of things they should be doing to stay healthy, but the main issue is that Kody makes demands of the entire family that even the CDC and medical experts think aren't necessary.
Because of this, nothing that Meri, Janelle, or Christine do in their homes is good enough for him -- Robyn's fine though.
As we've been seeing, he's been trying to convince Janelle to kick one of her children out so that it would limit his exposure to the virus and throwing an absolute fit that she wasn't jumping at the chance to do that.
He's also been shutting down Christine and her attempts to get the family back together and making charming little statements like "She's so full of bullsh-t" when she tries.
Meri, meanwhile, has been quarantining alone in her home and he even admitted that she'd been following his rules, but he still doesn't want her around because he thinks it would upset Janelle and Christine, which is ridiculous.
A lot of Sister Wives fans think that all of his strict rules are just made up so that he can stay away from his other wives and stay exclusively with Robyn, who he insists follows all of his demands.
(Even though she has a nanny come in regularly, but that's another story for another day).
And judging by this sneak peek of this week's episode, it looks like some of the family members have those same suspicions.
The clip, which you can watch in full below, begins with Kody and his wives gathered together in their carefully spaced chairs outside to have a little chat.
It looks like they got together to talk about the upcoming holidays (this was filmed over a year ago, so they're talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2020), and Christine, as usual, requests to revisit their rules on social distancing for the family.
"This isn't how a family is," she explains in a confessional. "Families don't social distance. We're not being a family right now."
Back in the meeting, Kody doesn't look too happy, and he tells Christine that since she'd been asking why the nanny got to come over but no one else could, he wrote out the list of rules that he has for the nanny so that everyone else could follow them too.
He printed off copies for everyone, and he asks Robyn if she wants one first, and she says "sure," even though they are the rules that are in place in her own home.
So Meri says "You know, those rules that you made up?"
She starts laughing immediately after and says that she's only teasing, but Robyn is visibly upset by her comment.
"I actually didn't," she tells Meri, and before a conversation starts about the actual rules, she cuts in to explain something.
"I'm just going to say it out loud, I know everybody is like suspicious of me, but just please stop," she says, obviously annoyed. "Like just don't be suspicious of me."
Meri repeats that it was a joke, and Robyn says "Just realize that Kody has made these rules, OK?"
In their confessionals, Kody says that Meri definitely was not joking with her comment, and Meri maintains that she was and that she just didn't realize that the rules were "such a touchy subject."
She adds "The fact that he doesn't get that I will defend Robyn all day, every day, after a decade or more of knowing her is really sad, that he doesn't have a clue."
Back in the scene, Meri apologizes sincerely to Robyn, but Kody cuts her off to say "Meri, this isn't about you, don't make it about you," which turned out to be a needlessly rude way to say that Robyn was already sensitive about other people thinking that she was the one behind the rules.
"We've had kids who have very specifically blamed Robyn," Kody reveals. "Kids who don't like the rules who are specifically blaming Robyn."
Robyn confirms that "There's been misunderstandings and I've had to sit there and correct them."
In her confessional, Robyn elaborates that "I had one of the kids actually call me and talk to me about like, 'Can't we loosen up the rules and see each other as a family?', like asking me."
"And I went, "Uh, this is not me. I didn't make up these rules.' And I very specifically pointed out that their dad, Kody, is not somebody to be run by one of his wives."
Interesting!
They never mention which kid called Robyn, but it had to have been one of Janelle's older kids, right?
Gabriel and Hunter have both been very vocal about how dumb they think the rules are, and it wouldn't be surprising if one (or both) of them felt frustrated enough to call her to try to change something.
Then again, after the way Kody treated Ysabel about her surgery, it wouldn't really be surprising if any of the older siblings felt the need to reach out to try to change something.
It's a difficult situation because of course it makes sense that Kody wants to keep everyone safe, but when you have your family spread out in four homes across an entire city, you're going to have to put in some work to come up with a plan that works for everyone.
Kody, as he's been repeating for a long time now, clearly just doesn't feel like making it work.
We would say we hope everything manages to work out, but we all know that it doesn't ...
At this point, the best we can hope for is that Kody doesn't lose all of his wives.
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