Hockey Wives: Season 2, Episode 2 review

Jonathan Bernier’s wife, Martine Forget, explains why she had to remove the Maple Leafs logo sticker from their baby's onesie, which became an instagram pic that went viral.

The whole concept of Hockey Wives is basically an extended meditation on how the other half lives.

But this week’s episode contains a number of amusing examples of how rich athletes are either just like the rest of us in weirdly quotidian ways, or uh, not at all like the rest of us.

The first not-like-you-and-I moment arrives when Kodette LaBarbera visits Tiffany Parros in Las Vegas. She asks Tiffany how she likes living in Vegas and whether she gambles.

“Here’s my version of gambling: George gives me $350 and I take it and take a cab to the mall,” Tiffany replies. “My version of gambling is shopping while drinking.”

That is a lot of pocket change to keep yourself busy for a couple of hours.

In related news, plans are coming along beautifully for my Etsy store featuring Tiffanyisms embroidered on throw cushions and tea cozies. Order by Nov. 27 and your products will arrive in time for Christmas!

Next, we see Maple Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier trundle out to his backyard to continue working on an elaborate wooden play structure he’s building for Tyler, his son, with fiancée Martine Forget.

Bernier starts sorting through a pile of miniscule plastic bags containing various bits of hardware, and it’s clear from the sopping-wet, gnawed-open cardboard box these parts are sitting on that this play structure has been a work in progress for a while.

Bernier mutters away to himself, quickly working through the furniture-assembly stages of emotional ruination, from plucky resourcefulness to bewilderment to annoyed rage (“Stupid wood!”).

Dude, you’re a millionaire, please just hire someone to do these things for you—how are the rest of us supposed to be okay with being not rich if we can’t comfort ourselves with the knowledge that those who can afford it outsource life’s most annoying tasks? It’s like finding out Queen Elizabeth cleans her own toilet: you owe it to those of us in the trenches to live better.

Then we see Tiffany and George Parros out for dinner with Paige and Ryan Getzlaf. Seemingly out of nowhere, Paige asks Tiffany, “Have you joined the Mile High Club?”

This is less a normal thing to bring up in conversation than something you’d find in a deck of Cards for Humanity and instantly realize why it’s a terrible, terrible game to play with family members.

Tiffany says no, and then Paige explains to the camera: “It’s definitely easier to join the Mile High Club when you fly private, because then you just put a blanket up.”

Rich people: They’re just like us, but they have sex among the seagulls!

Tiffany explains that this is an example of the divide among NHL players: big-name, big-contract guys will fly private and thus have Mile High membership, while she and George fly commercial, like mere sky-sexless mortals.

Between Tiffany and Paige, we also get a brief exchange that provides one of the most interesting glimpses into their world that we’ve seen on this show so far. Tiffany asks Paige, as the wife of the captain, if she’s succeeded yet in getting booze into the wives’ room in Anaheim, and Paige says sadly that she has not.

It turns out that the various wives’ rooms across the NHL have different rules and amenities, which seems odd: you’d think it would be standardized, if for no other reason than to keep spouses happy and make every team an appealing destination.

Tiffany notes that while Anaheim is dry, Montreal—surprise!—had a full bar, dim lounge lighting and a kids’ room right next door. The uneven service in the wives’ rooms has to be a thing hockey wives discuss and gnash their teeth over in private online chats, and now I want to know exactly who has what.

Do they just straight-up offer jugs of bourbon in Nashville? Wool socks and wine skins in Minnesota? I dunno, stand-up tanning beds and eyebrow threading in L.A.? The public needs to know.

Also in this episode, one of the prominent running storylines is Martine Forget heading back to work full-steam, now that her son is 10 months old. “Some girls start dating hockey players and they’re just like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to have babies and stay home.’ That was not me,” Martine says. “I told Jonathan that as soon as I’m going to have my body back, I’m going to go back to work.”

This means that we get the return of the modeling agency cabal, who are quite possibly decent and skilled human beings, but who come across on the show like the soulless market research hyenas on The Simpsons.

Martine and her management have determined that she needs to build a profile beyond being a model, so they’re trying to increase her social media following and land her product endorsement deals. In the agency’s Toronto office, they shoot quick, informal Instagram photos of her modeling lingerie.

“What’s really important is that this image is not Photoshopped,” Terrible Agency Person One says.

“We should definitely hashtag that in some way,” Terrible Agency Person Two replies.

This is the conversational equivalent of people whose Twitter bios include the words “guru” or “visionary” non-ironically. Martine posts the photo online, dutifully hashtagging it, and then Terrible One announces, “Now we watch the likes come in.”

Martine seems like a warm, funny and self-possessed person, and I feel she deserves better than to work with people like this.

Finally, in this episode, we are introduced to David and Ashley Booth.

Ashley was Miss Tennessee USA in 2011, and her wide-eyed declarations to the camera and the twinkling, adoring smiles with which she showers her husband make it easy to picture her dominating the pageant scene.

It also becomes clear that the Booths are a distinct anomaly in the hockey world and on Hockey Wives, in that they are vocal, demonstrative Christians.

Almost the first thing Ashley says on the show is this: “When David and I first started dating, we immediately said we’re not going to live together before we get married and we’re not going to be intimate before we got married.”

These kinds of declarations always seem like entirely too much information to share, in the same way that loudly announcing you are “being intimate” (paging Angela Price) is crass and awkward for people to process.

As the episode goes on, we get this hilariously inspired editing treatment of the Booths, like they’re constantly starring in a Nicholas Sparks trailer: soft-focus shots, ethereal lighting, background music comprised of the kind of soulful, crooning hipster ballads that nice but unimaginative people pick for their first wedding dance.

“David, he’s definitely a prayer warrior—I like to call him that,” Ashley tells us. “I know on game days, he knows he has to play for God’s glory before anything else.”

I cannot wait to hear Don Cherry’s take on whether this is an appropriate way to play the game of hockey.

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