Photo: Natalie Cass/Disney
I simply cannot imagine trying to skip the intro song of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. It hasn’t even been in my life for a full calendar year and already my bodily response is Pavlovian. The intro — especially this new version, with the girlies doing a sexy interpretation of that river scene from O Brother, Where Art Thou? — is emotional engineering. It’s the sonic equivalent of the font from Twilight. Or getting a text that says, “Can I say something bitchy?” Or watching Jennifer’s Body for the first time, then strutting around your high school thinking you are the world’s first real feminist, while also not being able to say the word “feminist” out loud.
Which brings us to MomTok. From the jump, we are reminded that MomTok is a NATIONAL SENSATION. From Hulu’s lips to God’s ears, because every episode of this television program is packed wall-to-wall with mentions of MomTok. I briefly considered doing a bit where I kept track, but within the first few minutes, I realized it was a waste of time. The Mormon Wives have spent the last year dutifully creating content for the rest of us heathens, and there is much to discuss. So let’s get into it.
We begin at the Gracie Lou Cowboy Pillows influencer event. I was confused for multiple minutes about why there were no pillows at the pillows spon-con event until I realized it’s a euphemism for both ass and titties. Straight culture is really something! The moms and their mom bladders take turns riding a mechanical bull and analyzing the health of the MomTok brand. It’s important to remember that MomTok contains multitudes — it’s a hashtag, it’s a friend group, it’s a social movement, and above all it’s a brand with very strict but ever-changing brand standards. And I think it’s important we establish the KPIs of MomTok from episode one. MomTok intends to do things like “move the needle when it comes to the patriarchy” and “push the church to modernize” and “live our lives, making videos, smashing men’s hearts.” This policy agenda is clearer than that of 90 percent of American politicians.
Whitney shows up very pregnant to the event and the other women look at her like she just replaced the coconut cream in their 44-oz. sodas with her own piss. In case you forgot, Whitney is the villain because she skipped Taylor’s baby shower, was a no-show at her supposed bestie Mayci’s brand launch, and did other classic clownery like removing herself from the group chat and then getting irate when no one called to check in on her. Even though she’s no longer “in MomTok,” she still has to come to this event because her job is being an influencer. This is the perfect example of MomTok’s complexity! In the context of Whitney’s feelings here, MomTok is less like a brand and more like a group of seventh-grade besties who call themselves the Skittles because of some old inside joke.
Anyway, we have a potential new villain in town. Her name is Miranda and she’s actually not new at all. She was one of Taylor’s old BFFs who was heavily involved in the soft swinging scandal. Now she’s divorced and trying to tell her side of the story. It’s hilarious because (1) last season was such a mess that we moved on from the swinging scandal by like, episode three, and (2) the other women see right through her. They know she’s just trying to claw her way back into MomTok for the clout and that her claiming that she’s “never touched a wiener, not one time” isn’t exactly helping the cause. One of the other core tenants of MomTok is that liars will not be tolerated, especially when the loudest girls in the group have already shamelessly cleared the air on topics like fucking around with other people’s husbands. Taylor gives Miranda “you’re not important enough to hate” energy because she is exhausted — Dakota is up to his old tricks (infidelity and lying).
Speaking of men behaving badly, Jen is minding her own business, double-fisting protein shakes and caffeine-free Diet Coke when her estranged husband, Zac, shows up. He comes armed with a new haircut and the kind of suitcase you take on a women-only cruise that departs from Key West, and thinks these will be sufficient resources for his journey in convincing Jen to take him back. Lest you forget, this is the man who threatened to divorce his wife for walking into the lobby of a men’s dance performance and promptly leaving. His reputation laundering includes saying words like “therapy” and “fight for our marriage” and “there to support you and your career” (i.e., “there for your career to support my gambling habit”). Jen puts her foot down with a list of demands that includes him genuinely thinking about her feelings and her being allowed to go to Chippendales if she wants to go to Chippendales. It’s MomTok in action! Naturally, he responds by looking at her like she’s suggesting he cut his dick off using his own toenails.
At Mayci’s house, Taylor sits down with Dakota’s side chick, Jenna, to compare notes. Taylor — who just gave birth to a child with Dakota — is prepared with a full timeline of Dakota’s claims. Jenna is prepared to hand over her complete text history with Dakota. This man is cooked and it’s another victory for the MomTok agenda. Everything about the situation is incredibly predictable, but I will forever be haunted by the activities Dakota and Jenna were doing together. They went to the trampoline park and the dinosaur museum. These do not scream “foreplay for boning someone who isn’t your pregnant baby mama.” They are activities you do with a kid you’re babysitting if their parents hand you the Amex. Taylor is incredibly hurt, not just by Dakota’s lying, but at the realization that she was in fact the night girl, while Jenna was the day girl getting the planned activities and the cute texts. I guess Jenna had also originally asked Dakota if he was dating Taylor, but he said he was just hanging out with her for clout. That hair transplant wasn’t gonna pay for itself.
Meanwhile, Miranda meets up with Whitney because she figures it’ll be easier to start coalition-building by befriending the existing outcast. They bond over not layering appropriately for the weather and being hated by the other women. Miranda will be hosting a happy hour at her house to break the ice because she doesn’t want to solve online problems online. I strongly agree with this and think everyone would benefit from more IRL interaction, especially the uncomfortable kind. I do not, however, think this is a good strategy for Miranda because she has yet to prove her ability to hang in real time with someone like Demi. Whitney froths at the mere idea of someone else stuck in the hot seat.
Oh, did you think haunted houses were not Mormon-approved because perhaps they are too vaguely satanic? Well you are wrong! Because several of the girls pop on over to Fear Factory for some spooky shit-talking about Miranda’s wildly obvious clout-chasing. I remain fascinated by the sinner-saint dichotomy at play here. Jessi and Demi as sinners makes sense to me, as you’re generally considered a sinner on this show if you’ve been divorced and do not live by all tenets of Mormonism. Mayci as a saint makes sense since she doesn’t drink and is only on her second husband because her first tragically passed away. But Mikayla? That saint title is based exclusively on vibes, as she hasn’t been a practicing Mormon in ten years. If I were a member of MomTok, I’d motion to abolish the saint-sinner situation in order to unify the moms toward their larger goals. We have plenty of drama to fuel this show without a fake schism!
For example, Taylor dealing with the fallout of Dakota’s cheating and lying. Her mom Liann comes over to show off her new nose/face and then has the audacity to first tell Taylor that she should have thought about Dakota’s shortcomings before she got pregnant with his baby AND THEN that Taylor’s generation is too quick to hit the bricks when things aren’t working and that she should keep trying to make it work. She’s been trying to make it work! And she’s pretty clear about how hard that’s been, especially in the context of her unaddressed issues re: her biological father. I want Demi and Jessi to sit down with Taylor’s mom and do what they did to Jen (gently dropkick her down the long and winding road of radicalization, using their own stories of emotional abuse under the hands of entitled men as primary evidence).
Oh, you thought haunted houses were an LDS gray area, but how about ketamine? Jen and Zac go to ketamine-assisted therapy since it’s not explicitly mentioned in the Book of Mormon. The thing about ketamine-assisted therapy is that talking about it is basically like telling someone about an elaborate and profound dream you had, which is always a real come-to-Jesus moment about just how cringe it is to grow and change in public. It’s no different for Jen and Zac. Alas, they are stronger than I am because I truly can’t imagine coming down from ketamine, my ego freshly deceased, the room spinning as I gasp for Zofran — all while a producer nudges me to ask my garbage husband if he’s still planning on apologizing to my friends for the rude things he said about them when he was threatening to divorce me.
Speaking of garbage men (guys, I’m sorry, but they just keep rotating through ’em!), Dakota is boxing up all his trucker hats to move out of Taylor’s house. He admits that he did all the stuff Taylor caught him doing, with the bonus add-on of hooking up with Jenna in Taylor’s room. He then says a lot of words about how guilty he feels and how he let his son down and how it’s all worth fighting for. It’s Tom Sandoval/Schwartz levels of self-propaganda and I will believe none of it until I see some tangible action.
Finally, we get to Miranda’s house. She’s fanned out a bunch of deli meat on some fake leaves from Hobby Lobby and carved “MomTok” out of cheese cubes. Over glasses of Martinelli’s, the moms awkwardly stand around until Mayci straight-up asks Miranda what her intentions are for this function. Mikayla wants to get to the bottom of the discrepancies between Miranda’s swinging report and Taylor’s.
But instead of that, we are treated to a hyperspeed cut of what to expect for the season: secrets! Lies! Confessions! Police run-ins! Sabotage! Skeletons! Husbands rubbing their little dicks on people! And of course, MomTok! Perhaps heavenly father is looking down upon us, after all.
