Listen to me, reality TV producers.
I’m begging you. This has to stop.
When the characters in your show are participating in an activity — bungee jumping, say, or karaoke — you must start resisting the urge to craft your storyline around the idea that, holy cow, this activity is kind of a perfect metaphor for the relationships at play here, don’t you think?
If I ever wrote a story that read, “They hiked across the rugged and scenic terrain, which was both difficult and beautiful, like life itself would be, and which they travelled while holding each other’s hands, just like they would in real life,” I would fully expect my editor to slap my keyboard out of my hands. Whatever is the reality TV producer equivalent of a journalist’s keyboard — I don’t know, editing software, a Ouija board and a bottle of vodka mixed with Kardashian blood? — you guys need to set it aside and walk away before you craft one more torturously obvious analogy. We see this again and again and — God help us — again on The Bachelor franchise, where any date scenario can be twisted into a metaphor for the burgeoning relationship/hot tub-borne infection at hand.
And now this scourge has come to Hockey Wives.
This first episode of season two of the W Network show functions as both a “last season on…” recap and a set-up for this season’s storylines and new characters. As such, it must be said that the season premiere is a little dull and slow-moving.
But the big plot development is that Maripier Morin and defenceman Brandon Prust — formerly of the Montreal Canadiens and now with the Vancouver Canucks, in a development the show foreshadows as causing a lot of tears — are, finally, engaged. The cameras follow them on an idyllic vacation on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, where MP happily introduces herself as “newly engaged” and the couple jokes about how Brandon stashed the ring inside a sock in his suitcase.
We reach the Greater Metropolis of Painfully Obvious Metaphorville following a lunch in which MP and Brandon dare each other to eat tiny hot peppers from a plant next to their table, and then Brandon dares her to swim in a rocky coastal grotto they’d seen from their boat. MP goes on about how she’s a terrible and nervous swimmer.
“Brandon and I, we’re going to jump in together,” she says. “It’s like we’re jumping into our new lives together.” She follows this with a half-mocking “Awww!” that makes it clear she gets the joke, but this does nothing to quell my rage over the lazier conventions of reality TV storytelling.
Several of the hockey wives from last season are back—Kodette LaBarbera, Tiffany Parros, Martine Forget and Noureen DeWulf—along with a half-dozen new faces. Most visible among the new additions, by virtue of her husband’s prominence in Montreal, is Angela Price, wife of Habs goalie Carey Price.
It’s immediately obvious that Angela’s role on the show will be Woman Who Wants To Get Pregnant, Like, Yesterday.
“We’ve been trying for a baby for about four months now,” she announces in an on-camera sit down. “No success.”
This is a deeply awkward thing to tell anyone outside of your closest social circle, if you consider all the information it implies — never mind announcing it on television. It seems Angela is comfortable with a certain level of disclosure, though, because later in the show, she’s hanging out with her parents and she tells them she thought she was pregnant a couple of weeks back but it was a “false alarm.” (I waited for her dad to mop his brow and frantically tap-dance out of the frame, but he held steady.)
This episode was filmed back in the early summer, so we know how this storyline works out: the Prices announced a couple of weeks ago that Angela is pregnant.
She also blasted a journalist and blogger for sharing the news right before she and Carey had a chance to announce it with a photo of the two of them holding Coke cans emblazoned with “Mom” and “Dad.”
This Week We Learned:
Brandon Prust hoards shoes
As they lounge in bed in an all-white hotel room eating an Italian breakfast and generally looking like a magazine spread, Maripier demands Brandon promise he won’t show her any more shoes. He defends his shopping habits, insisting Italy is “basically the shoe capital of the world.” Maripier is exasperated. “I think if there was a shoe capital of the world, Brandon could be the mayor of it, or the president,” she snorts.
Easton LaBarbera is a predictable child
Kodette and Jason LaBarbera are sitting in their Calgary backyard talking about the Ducks’ heartbreaking playoff elimination. Their younger son, Easton, comes out to ask for a snack, and Kodette tells him to show her what he wants, then laughs to Jason that he’ll probably come back with a marshmallow. Moments later, as Jason is still talking sadly about his team’s loss, he looks past Kodette and says, “Look what he grabbed.” Easton stands on the deck brandishing a giant marshmallow over the railing. “Do I know this kid or do I know this kid?” Kodette crows.
Noureen DeWulf is tired. So, so tired
Noureen DeWulf and Vancouver goalie Ryan Miller’s son, Bodhi (Noureen announces his name is Bodhi Miller, but no one acknowledges that’s basically the same name as ski racer Bode Miller and it’s driving me crazy because I can’t tell if they’re ignoring it or oblivious), is now four months old, and looks like a tiny, adorable, slightly puzzled version of his dad. He also, apparently, does not sleep much.
“I have a lot of moments at night where I’m like, ‘I don’t want anything bad to happen to me. I don’t want anything to happen to him. But if the world just blew up and everybody just ended at the same time, I’d be fine with that,’” she confesses good-naturedly. “That’s how tired I am.” Which is probably the most likeable and relatable thing anyone has said on the show so far.
