‘Sister Wives’ Recap: Robyn Calls Christine and Janelle’s Post-Kody Lives a ‘Cheap Version’ of the Family

If there’s anything we learned from Sunday’s episode of Sister Wives, it’s that Meri Brown deserves some sort of medal. The woman has been forced to sit through the exact same conversation with Robyn Brown about why Christine Brown left the family approximately one million times over the course of the past 1.5 seasons. 

Now that the holidays are over, Robyn is once again having Meri over to discuss the only topic she can ever seem to discuss — Kody Brown‘s failed marriages. 

It’s been almost a year since Christine told the family she intended to leave Kody, and now in the wake of Kody and Janelle’s explosive fight at the holidays, the subject of the splits continues to be all Robyn can talk about. 

“I need a reason why my family got blown to smithereens,” Robyn says.

Perhaps next time Meri could bring over a mirror because the main issue for all of the wives’ collective strife seems to be Robyn — how she’s handled things and Kody’s apparent favoritism. 

“I’m not going to trust someone that says they want family and yet they are fine with Kody only being at their house. That’s not a family. That’s monogamy,” Christine says of Robyn. 

But Robyn maintains that she was “constantly” putting in effort with Christine, saying, “I was constantly holding out an olive branch to Christine, constantly wanting the relationship, constantly trying to ask her, ‘What can I do?’ All she ever told me was ‘I’m just jealous of you.'”

Christine says that even if Robyn had reached out to her, she still would have shut down any sort of relationship with her.

“I would have rejected her friendship anyway to be completely honest with you… because I couldn’t trust her,” Christine says. 

Robyn claims that just like the other wives, she and her children struggled with wanting more of Kody’s time. 

“My kids struggled like crazy feeling like Kody wasn’t around,” Robyn tells Meri. “They talked about it all the time. They talked about how he was so busy with all the older kids.”

Robyn specifically points to a time in Las Vegas where she logged how often she saw Kody compared to his other wives and found that she saw him less than the others. 

Kody too shares that one month he tried an “experiment” where he spent 25 days at Christine’s house, saying it made Christine happy but the rest of the wives upset. 

“For one month, I got him as much as Robyn got him the rest of the time, the rest of the 59 months,” Christine says, calling out the hypocrisy of Kody and Robyn’s comments. “Because he was not at Janelle’s house either, and we all know he was not at Meri’s house.”

Meri then shares a heartbreaking story about one Christmas where Kody showered Christine with presents and gave Meri none, which Christine confirms. 

“I don’t remember that, but that’s sometimes a place where resentments build,” Kody says. 

Christine also points out that though Kody has often said that in order to have a good relationship with him, his wives need to have a good relationship with Robyn, that hasn’t applied to Meri. 

“Hmmm, who had a great relationship with Robyn for years yet he wasn’t attracted to her? Oh yeah, that’d be Meri. He’s full of s**t,” Christine says. “I don’t think Kody’s going to change. I think that Kody’s going to constantly be running around Robyn and her life for the rest of his life and I don’t think he has any room for Janelle in that life.”

Janelle seems to be done with Kody, but not sure how to proceed. Christine tries to encourage her to move to Utah, but Janelle points out her ties to Flagstaff with Savanah finishing school. 

“I’ve just felt so much freedom in Utah, and I love it so much, and I would really like to see her happy again,” Christine says of her friend. “I just remember what it was like for so long being married to him and not feeling any hope… I just don’t like seeing it happen to Janelle… It’s just happening all over again. Is he going to leave everybody but Robyn?”

Christine gets particularly upset when she learns that Kody never reached out to his and Janelle’s youngest daughter, Savanah Brown, for the holidays. 

“I’m angry at him mostly. And I was really sad, ’cause, you know, that’s my dad. But now I’m just angry at him. No gifts, no nothing,” Savanah says. 

“I don’t care if he’s mad. When you’re a dad, you’re a dad and you step up,” Christine adds. 

As the episode builds, Robyn seems to get more and more upset by Christine and Janelle’s decisions, specifically referencing their choice to spend the holidays separate from her and Kody in a vacation rental home with their kids. 

“I don’t care what anybody else is doing. That’s just a cheap version of what our family was,” Robyn says through angry tears. “I don’t care who’s getting together. I don’t care how many presents you give and I don’t care how many special foods you make or how many fancy houses you rent or anything like that. It’s a cheap version. It’s a broken version. And these kids, they know it.”

Christine admits that she had been hopeful that the family could get together for reunions and holidays, but doesn’t feel that’s possible anymore. 

“Even with me leaving, I felt we could be mature enough and adult enough to get together, but as of right now I don’t see that being possible… there’s so many things that are broken now. We’re just not a family anymore,” Christine says, with Kody agreeing, adding, “Too many lines have been crossed.”

And now Meri is finally standing up for herself… a little bit… and making a decision that will help her life to be less separated between her late mother’s B&B in Utah and her life in Flagstaff. Meri shares that she plans to move her clothing business to Utah, saying that the decision “causes me a lot of anxiety,” sharing that she’s not sure how the family will react, specifically Robyn. 

“She’s going to feel like I’m leaving as well, which I know she doesn’t want,” Meri says of Robyn’s desire to maintain a plural family. 

Tragically, Meri says she plans to tell Robyn about the relocation of the business before even Kody because “he’s not going to give a flying rat’s a**.” 

Meri insists that she’s still “not leaving the family” or Kody, despite the fact that “Kody has basically left me already.”

Janelle calls Kody’s treatment of Meri “very sad.” 

Christine adds, “I saw Kody string Meri along for years. And it was mean and cruel. And I saw that he would have done the same thing to me if I would have stayed.”

Meri claims she’s not “oblivious” to Kody’s treatment of her and the conversations he’s had about their relationship with others and on camera. 

“[He] has been pretty direct in his non-interest of healing our relationship, but he’s never had that conversation with me. I don’t think it’s fair for us to make any decisions about our relationship without the two of us having had that conversation.”

And it seems that some of those conversations will be happening next week. 

Sister Wives airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on TLC. 

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