This week, I finally turned on Maripier Morin. Or I turned on the version of her presented to me by the editors of Hockey Wives, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the real person. In any case, I turned.
The major storyline in this episode involved Maripier and her boyfriend, Montreal Canadiens winger Brandon Prust, celebrating Christmas in Quebec City with both of their families. You know when you have a friend who’s been in a relationship for a while, and that friend has been gunning hard to get engaged, and every holiday that rolls around, you think to yourself, “I wonder if this is the time? And I wonder if this will turn into a tire fire if she thinks it is but it’s not?”
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(And yes, we’re going to assume the person on the wanting end of this is female, because they usually are, for lame and antiquated societal reasons that we are not going to unpack here because this is not an undergraduate sociology seminar.)
That’s where I landed at the beginning of this episode, when I was still seeing Maripier’s storyline as a woman who wants to move forward in her life and relationship, as grown-ups do, while her boyfriend just keeps lobbing the emotional equivalent of wet willies at her. But then things started to look different.
They go skating in an absurdly picturesque historical spot in old Quebec; she moons about what a great father he’ll be when she sees him with his nieces and nephews. Back at the hotel, she simpers about him handing over her Christmas gift; he baits her about it. He gives her a vintage gold bracelet watch that she saw last summer and he somehow found out about; she is happily gobsmacked for 1.7 seconds, then freaks out over some magical belief that giving a watch means you’re putting a time limit on the relationship. Brandon continues to wear his open-mouthed look of adolescent contempt the way Bart Simpson wears blue shorts and a red t-shirt, but I suspect he was just trying to give her a nice gift and not voodoo their relationship to death. Then he reaches over to adjust the watch for her and the following exchange takes place:
Maripier: “Oh, you’re putting it on the right time? The time to propose?”
Brandon (managing not to look directly into the camera lens): “I don’t like an audience for that.”
Maripier: “Why don’t you want to marry me?”
Brandon: “Shut up. I do, I’m just waiting for you to pass all your tests.”
Maripier: “Oh, f*ck off.”
Then she leaps off the couch to go get another drink, which is exactly what I wanted to do while watching them interact, but it was 10 a.m. and I was sitting at my desk in the office, where such things are apparently frowned upon. I guarantee the friends of Maripier and Brandon drink a lot more when they’re around, and not because everyone is having such a jolly time.
The next scene is Christmas morning, with the two families crammed into a hotel suite along with a full-size Christmas tree Brandon shoplifted from a reception room and somehow dragged upstairs. All the teasers make it look like there’s one last gift under the tree that causes Maripier to sob happily. I have watched so, so many rose ceremonies and runway challenges and elimination cook-offs, hours upon hours that I will surely have to account for in some cosmic way at the end of my life. I should know better than to fall for a manipulative preview clip.
But still, when the video on my laptop froze as the big reveal started, I got a little too upset. And then the video resumed and I got exactly what I deserved. That special gift? It was Brandon’s sister and her husband asking Maripier and Brandon to be godparents to their infant daughter. I actually wrote, “WAH WAH WAH!” in my notes, which I have decided is how you spell that wilting Debbie Downer trombone sound effect. I mean, that’s lovely and all, and the baby is adorable, but come on.
And what shoves Maripier into tearful ecstasy is that when she asks Brandon if he’s willing to take on this role with her, he grunts something that sort of sounds affirmative.
“Brandon could have asked me to marry him and I would not have been as happy as I am right now. It is more significant than any ring,” she says. “All of a sudden, I’m a part of their family forever.”
I waited and waited for Tiffany to scale the building on a window washer’s scaffold, tap sharply on the glass with her rings and mouth the word “BULLS—,” having abandoned her family at Christmas and flown across the continent to deliver this worthy message, but this time, she let me down.
Ice Chips
Some assorted other noteworthy moments from this episode:
· We see George Parros and Ray Whitney, who has just officially retired, playing in a charity NHL alumni tournament in Park City, Utah, with their wives cheering them on. Ray scores two goals and Tiffany offers some motivation. “If you score a hat trick,” she says, lasciviously pointing back and forth between herself and Ray’s wife, Brijet. “I mean, obviously we promised him a threesome,” she explains to the camera. “But it’s like butt sex, you never actually get it, you just promise it.” I am going to start an Etsy store featuring Tiffanyisms embroidered on deceptively prim throw cushions, and then I will retire to eat bonbons on my bed of money.
· Jenny Scrivens found out about her move to Edmonton on Twitter. She says she was perusing the site and all of a sudden saw chatter about her husband, then-L.A. Kings goalie Ben Scrivens, being shipped off to the Oilers. “I texted and I was like, ‘Are we going to Edmonton?’” she tells her friends. “He was like, ‘Yep!’” Dude, come on. Tell your wife you’re moving to Edmonton before she finds out on Twitter.
· George Parros does a seriously impressive gorilla impression, chasing his delightedly screaming daughter Lola down the hall of their Las Vegas condo. Later, we see him pawing through the refrigerator: “Monkey Dad’s tired.”
· Tiffany offers this tidbit, but sadly no photographic evidence, of her enforcer husband’s very early career: “His mom was a figure skating coach, so the first skates George had on were figure skates.”
· Noureen DeWulf and Ryan Miller are in their Vancouver condo prepping for a magazine photo shoot, and Noureen complains, “I’m too pregnant!” The make-up guy working on her scolds, “You didn’t say ‘We are pregnant.’” Noureen scowls at him: “I’m pregnant!” and Ryan Miller mutters, “I’m not doing anything.” This is the correct response to the idiotic idea that pregnancy is a two-person undertaking.
