Southern Charm
Family Bonds
Season 9
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
Photo-Illustration: Bravo
There are some traumas that Bravo shows are great at handling. Do you want to throw yourself a divorce party after parting with a no-good man? Shereé Whitfield has just the party planner for you. Did your boyfriend cheat on you with your best friend, and you need a full-season redemption arc? Ariana Madix is currently cha-cha-ing her heart out for your grandmother’s entertainment. Do you want to prove that your baby-daddy was an abusive gaslighter who convinced everyone you were crazy for seasons when he was the real villain? Boy, do we miss Kathryn Dennis right here on this show.
While docusoaps might be great for all of these things, what they’re really not good at is dealing with grief. Just look at this episode. Last week in the “next week on Southern Charm,” we saw Leva freaking out on the phone, saying she’s shaking and doesn’t want to film. We all thought — because the editors made us — that it would be something about the ongoing drama with Taylor and Austen and Shep and Olivia. Or maybe there was going to be some new scandal. Maybe Madison was cheating. Maybe JT, Mini-A-Lago himself, finally did something interesting.
But no, it is not drama; it’s something worse, harder to understand, and harder to shoehorn into this static formula: death. But not cast death. I feel like we could handle that with lots of sepia-toned flashbacks and crying women. Instead, it’s Olivia’s brother’s death, which was unexpected and unexplained. (I also don’t want to speculate.)
This is not the kind of thing the show can pretend didn’t happen and then have everyone at some barbecue be like, “So, what are you going to wear to the wake?” Not only is that bad taste, it’s also bad television. Instead, the episode shuts down, and we just have everyone trying to comfort Olivia and see how they can fit into the grieving process. Shep does the menschy-est thing he’s ever mustered and moves into Craig’s so that Olivia’s family can stay at his house, which is across the street from hers. Craig tries to do his part by making a gluten-free lasagna, but his own personal kryptonite thwarts him: opening things. First, it’s a wine cork that he rips to shreds with a corkscrew, then he ruins a whole can opener trying to pry off the lid of some tomato paste. Damn, his kitchen appliances are really taking this death hard.
Venita invites Leva and Taylor over to help console Olivia; she even makes comfort food of chicken nuggets and French fries. If I just lost a sibling and you had me over, I would really appreciate that gesture, but if you’re going to serve me French fries, they better be fresh from a restaurant. I’m sorry, but oven French fries never cut it, especially at a time like this.
The real contention isn’t over the food, though; it’s over Taylor. Venita invited her, but she never RSVPed, and she’s not answering anyone’s texts or calls. When she finally rings Venita, she says she’s had a hard week dealing with her emotions. Yes, I’m sure it was hard on her that her friend’s brother died, but Olivia, the one in the middle of this mess, managed to set a plan; why can’t Taylor? When Venita tells her that her energy is all over the place and maybe she should skip it, she starts to say that she’s much better friends with Olivia and somehow deserves to be there more, even though she did not arrange this event in the first place and didn’t even bring any food, not even disgusting oven fries! As Venita is quick to point out, are we really going to be comparing friendships here because didn’t you just make out with her ex-boyfriend and then lie to her about it for six months?
When Olivia finally makes it over, it’s as harrowing as you could imagine. She says her father has just been working on the phone the whole time, afraid to rest because of what horror might flood into the absence of something to do. Olivia is avoiding her brother’s room in the house, but her mother just wants to be in it, sobbing, trying to find a way to be close to her son once again. Olivia does mention how everyone stepped up, including Austen, who brought her a “comfort bag,” which is not something I have heard of before, but it seems like the thought that counts.
This was kind of a weird episode because almost the entire thing was mournful. There is a scene at the very beginning where Paige invites Madison over for some bottled lemonade and tea straight from the pot. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Paige says to Madison when she arrives. “We have so much shit to talk about.” Yes, you do, and I am seated and ready to receive all of it. This is the only girls’ night on this show that I really want, and it’s a shame that we can’t really enjoy the gossipy back and forth because of everything that came after that.
There’s a scene where Austen goes home and tells his parents that he made out with Taylor, and they’re like, “How on Earth did we create a monster like you?” His mother literally says, “We’re going to need another bottle of wine,” which, at this point, is probably Austen’s ringtone in her phone because every time he calls, they get news like this. But as he’s talking to his parents about their relationship and how strong they are, his father says the only way they got through losing a daughter was because of the strength of their bond, because they are each other’s best friends.
If you don’t remember from his first season on the show, Austen lost his older sister in an accident when he was eight years old. It’s perfectly natural that he will be especially upset by Olivia losing a sibling (possibly in an accident, we don’t know), even if he was dogging on her with her best friend just a few weeks ago. I usually hate it when psychologists go on reality shows, but I do think that Austen’s trip to therapy was a little illuminating. She says he can’t get close to people and doesn’t want to settle down and have kids is because he can’t fathom getting married, having a kid, and then losing one like his parents did. It’s so funny how grief can just borrow into your brain like that, and just when you think it’s over, just when you think it’s gone, it spawns a whole new generation of monsters up there in your skull to haunt and torture you into paralysis, bad behavior, or a little bit of both.
All of this, both with Austen and Olivia, is tragic, but there’s one other scene that also hit me hard. Whitney is at home with his mother doing the time-honored dance of trying to show your parents how to use technology without shouting or completely embarrassing them. They’re doing a FaceTime with her former butler, Michael, who had a stroke two years ago. He seems healthy and is engaging in a rollicking conversation with the two of them, but he’s still in an assisted living facility in Florida.
The ostensible reason for the call is for him to teach them how he makes his famous martinis so that Patricia can have one even while he’s gone. They go through the whole lesson — the only tip we get is crushing the ice with a mallet — and sip on their perfect cocktails. But what got me was when the call ended. Michael expressed how much he missed Patricia and Whitney and how good they had been to him before and after his “incident.” As she hangs up, Patricia silently picks up a tissue and dabs at her eyes, sopping up a few errant tears before they ruin her mascara or take off her false lashes.
That’s what did it for me. It wasn’t a loss with finality, like Olivia or Austen losing a sibling; it was something deeper and possibly sadder. Patricia was mourning her friend and employee, someone with whom she spent many days in the comfort of her home. Yes, he’s well, but he’s not there. He never will be. He’s on the other end of the phone, but he’s gone. I think in all of these cases, it’s not just the leaving; it’s the rupture of having to reconfigure how the future will look. It’s recalibrating their expectations and confronting their own mortalities, how their life or wellness could be ripped away instantly. Those tears were about grief, they were about mourning, they were about wishing things for her friend could be better, that he could be made whole again, even though that hope is as distant as the dusty red savannahs of Mars. Those tears, more real for their subtlety, are the best one of these shows will do, and even that is woefully inadequate.
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