Lines have been drawn. Sides have been chosen. And the Brown family is considerably broken.
And the only person who doesn’t seem fine with that arrangement is the one person most family members agree is the reason for the estrangement.
So far, season 19 of Sister Wives has been a testimonial to the horrors of divorce. Filmed over the course of the holiday season at the end of 2022, fans have watched as the Brown family navigates life as 4, individual families, rather than one big plural household.
Some are doing better than others, but producers seem to be making an effort to focus on Kody’s relationships with his children, both estranged and otherwise.
Whether this was a decision made in the wake of Garrison’s passing is unclear.
But what’s clearly evident is that Kody’s children fall into two categories in their father’s eyes: loyal or disrespectful.
Grandpa Kody Meets The New Additions
One of the few older kids who has maintained a relationship with her father is Mykelti. In the fourth episode of season 19, she invites her father and his last, remaining wife Robyn over to meet her newborn twins.
It’s an unusually tender moment under extremely tense circumstances. Robyn explains in her confessional that Mykelti seems more of “the truth.” This means that unlike some of Kody’s other siblings, Mykelti does not place the blame or harbor ill-will against her father for how the family has imploded.
However, when Kody suggests that Mykelti move to the Coyote Pass compound and build a house near him and Robyn, her response echoes that of many other family members.
“No way in hell,” she says.
While she may have forgiven her father for his past misdeeds, Mykelti’s clearly uninterested in bringing her young family into that particular fold again.
As Christine puts it “She’s not afraid to ask for what she needs. All the kids just need to take a page out of Mykelti’s book.”
The Pain of Covid Lives On
For the first time this season, fans catch up with Gabriel, Janelle and Kody’s oldest son.
He visits his mom at her apartment just before Christmas and they share a heartfelt conversation over breakfast. The topic? Kody and Robyn.
“After the COVID scare was over and we all went back to our normal lives, we still couldn’t reconcile as a family because Kody felt like the boys needed to give an apology to him and to Robyn. Especially to Robyn.”
Fans will recall that during the pandemic, Kody insisted on very strict regulations within the family. Furthermore, for much of that time, he refused to visit with any of the other wives and kids outside of his home with Robyn.
This included missing his daughter Ysabel’s spine surgery. He also decreed that the older boys, including Gabe, move out of Janelle’s house after Garrison supposedly got everyone sick after seeing his girlfriend.
In terms of Janelle’s kids, it sounds like Savannah is the only one who can “meet him where he’s at.” 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 pretty perfectly summed up later in the episode.
It all comes down to Robyn.
Mykelti has embraced Kody’s fourth wife. She even went so far as to include her in the birth of the twins, much to the discomfort of her actual mother, Christine.
Gabe, on the other hand, can not stomach Kody’s blatant “favoritism” of Robyn and their kids, as he puts it. Therefore, he’s unwilling to give Kody what he really wants, and that’s undying loyalty.
“If she actually believes that we were mistreating her or her children in any way when she was constantly getting favourited by dad and we were always working on our relationship with her kids,” Gabe explains.
“If she actually believes that, then there’s no chance of me having a relationship with Robyn ever again.”
Janelle adds, after Robyn joined the family, Kody’s approach to his relationships changed. Rather than looking for “ love and charity,” he demanded “loyalty and respect.”
And she has a point. If one were to treat this episode like a drinking game, when the only rule was to drink every time Kody talks about “loyalty,” they’d be in the ER before seeing the promo for next week for sure!
Crying At Christmas
But all this talk of Robyn is kind of ironic, given that out of everyone, she seems to be the only person clinging on hope of fixing the family.
Janelle is very clear: she wants peace for her kids, not reconciliation. Christine has more than moved on, steering clear of even discussing Kody in favor of gushing over her new name, David.
And Meri, who was the most likely to stick things out, is now more than ever thrilled she got her release (aka a divorce through their church) as Kody has done nothing but trash talk her to anyone who will listen.
(Meri is also someone apparently who was not “loyal” to Kody, but that seems to be code for she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about the split and told the church…)
At 1 AM, on Christmas Eve morning, Robyn films a tearful confession from the bathroom floor. Despondent and clearly depressed, she laments over the fact that Meri refuses to come for Christmas day and that once again, the whole family won’t be together for the holidays.
But what about Kody?
“When he’s not doing his anger stuff, he is vulnerable. He misses the family experience,” Robyn admits, which seems to be true when it’s things like having one-on-one time with his new grandkids.
Kody seems more interested in investing in their marriage and their “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 of a divorce, it might not work out as Kody hopes.
Time will tell, though!