Lines were drawn. Sides have been chosen. And the Brown family is considerably dysfunctional.
And the only person who doesn’t seem okay with this arrangement is the one who most family members agree is the reason for the estrangement.
So far, the 19th season of Sister Wives has been a testament to the horrors of divorce. Filmed during the holiday season in late 2022, fans watched as the Brown family navigate life as 4 individual families rather than one large plural family.
Some are doing better than others, but producers seem to be making an effort to focus on Kody’s relationship with his children, both distant and otherwise.
It is unclear whether this was a decision made after Garrison’s passing.
But what is clearly evident is that Kody’s children fall into two categories in their father’s family eyes: loyal or disrespectful.
Grandpa Kody meets the new additions
One of the few older children who maintained a relationship with his father is Mykelti. In the fourth episode of season 19, she invites her father and his latest wife, Robyn, to meet her newborn twins.
It’s an extraordinarily tender moment under extremely tense circumstances. Robyn explains in her confessional that Mykelti feels more like “the truth.” This means that, unlike some of Kody’s other siblings, Mykelti doesn’t blame or harbor ill will toward her father for the way the family imploded.
However, when Kody suggests that Mykelti move to the Coyote Pass Complex and build a house near him and Robyn, her response echoes that of many other family members.
“No way,” she says.
While she may have forgiven her father for his past mistakes, Mykelti is clearly uninterested in bringing her young family into that particular group again.
As Christine says, “She’s not afraid to ask for what she needs. All children just need to take a page out of Mykelti’s book.”
The pain of Covid remains alive
For the first time this season, fans meet Gabriel, Janelle and Kody’s oldest son.
He visits his mother at her apartment just before Christmas and they talk warmly over breakfast. The topic? Kody and Robyn.
“After the COVID scare passed and we all went back to our normal lives, we still weren’t able to reconcile as a family because Kody felt the boys needed to apologize to him and Robyn. Especially for Robyn.”
Fans will remember that during the pandemic, Kody insisted on very strict regulations within the family. Additionally, for much of this time, he refused to visit Robyn with any of his other wives and children outside of their home.
This included missing his daughter Ysabel’s back surgery. He also ordered the older boys, including Gabe, to leave Janelle’s house after Garrison allegedly made everyone sick after seeing your girlfriend.
In terms of Janelle’s childrenIt seems Savannah is the only one who can “meet him where he is.” Gabe, who admits to seeing a counselor about his feelings, can’t do the same.
“He texted me and said ‘I forgive you, please forgive me’. I was like, forgive me for what?
The blame game
The stark difference between Mykelti and Gabe’s relationship with their father was perfectly summed up at the end of the episode.
It all comes down to Robyn.
Mykelti hugged Kody’s fourth wife. She went so far as to include her in the birth of the twins, much to the discomfort of their real mother, Christine.
Gabe, on the other hand, can’t take it Kody’s blatant “favoritism” towards Robyn and her childrenas he says. Therefore, he is not willing to give Kody what he truly wants, and that is undying loyalty.
“If she truly believes we were mistreating her or her children in some way when she was constantly favored by her father and we were always working on our relationship with her children,” Gabe explains.
“If she truly believes that, then there is no chance of me ever having a relationship with Robyn again.”
Janelle adds that after Robyn joined the family, Kody’s approach to his relationships changed. Instead of seeking “love and charity,” he demanded “Loyalty and respect.”
And she’s right. If anyone treated this episode like a drinking game, when the only rule was to drink every time Kody talks about “loyalty,” they would be in the emergency room before seeing next week’s promo, for sure!
Crying at Christmas
But all this talk about Robyn is kind of ironic, given that out of everyone, she seems to be the only person who has any hope of fixing the family.
Janelle is very clear: she wants peace for her children, not reconciliation. Christine more than moved on, even avoiding discussing Kody in favor of talking about his new name, David.
And Meri, who was the person most likely to resist, is now more than ever thrilled to have achieved her release (aka divorce through the church) as Kody did nothing but talk trash her to anyone who wants to listen.
(Meri is also someone apparently who wasn’t “loyal” to Kody, but that seems to be code as she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about the breakup and told the church…)
At 1am on Christmas Eve, Robyn films a tearful confession from her bathroom floor. Discouraged and clearly depressed, she laments the fact that Meri refuses to come on Christmas Day and that, once again, the entire family will not be together for the holidays.
But what about Kody?
“When he’s not showing anger, he’s vulnerable. He misses the family experience,” Robyn admits, which seems to be true when it comes to things like having one-on-one time with her new grandchildren.
Kody seems more interested in investing in the marriage and the “special” connection than living in the past.
“Let’s move one,” he says. “Let’s let go. It was never meant to be. It was never meant to work.”
But can she? Given all the talk about divorce, it might not work out how Kody hopes.
Time will tell, however!