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SPOILER WARNING: The following story contains plot details from Season 5 of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
From its very first moments, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” has been inextricable from the toxic entanglement
between #MomTok influencer Taylor Frankie Paul and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Dakota Mortensen. Two years ago, the show began with a violent encounter between the pair as captured on police officers’ body cameras. (The incident resulted in Paul’s arrest and subsequent guilty plea for aggravated assault.) Then, earlier this year, a planned season of “The Bachelorette” starring Paul — a bit of crossover corporate synergy between ABC and “Mormon Wives” streamer Hulu, both owned by Disney — was canceled after more graphic, harrowing footage of the same fight was leaked to TMZ.
Paul’s new venture may have been scuttled, but her flagship star vehicle remains intact. This week, “Mormon Wives” returned for an abridged Season 5, almost entirely filmed before production went on hiatus in March amid Paul’s public relations furor. The new information revealed in the five episodes is minimal. We learn the eventual winner of the final rose on the unaired “Bachelorette” season, making it even less likely the competition will ever see the light of day. We also learn how irrelevant the victor’s identity is, because Paul slept with Mortensen again the very night she returned from filming. Paul and Mortensen, by her own admission, have “an addiction” to one another and their toxic relationship. Most pairings formed during the “Bachelor” franchise don’t last; Paul’s was doomed before it even began.
But watching Season 5, something else becomes clear: “Mormon Wives” itself has a seemingly unbreakable dependence on the Paul-Mortensen saga, a tragedy that’s at once the show’s driving force and its greatest liability. What has already incurred a quite literal cost to ABC is now exacting a more metaphorical toll on the hit reality show, which is being swallowed whole by its most volatile element. In the season’s closing minutes, cast member Mikayla Matthews expresses her amazement that the friend group known as #MomTok has mutated from a source of “empowerment” into something much darker. Yet viewers have watched this process unfold in almost real time, making it anything but mysterious. Paul and Mortensen can’t quit each other, “Mormon Wives” can’t quit Paul — and the ensuing tragedy has turned what was once an addictive work of pop sociology into a grim spectacle that’s the opposite of fun.
Season 5 makes some token attempts at milking other sources of intrigue, like a half-hearted conflict between “Dancing With the Stars” alumni Jennifer Affleck and Whitney Leavitt or Jessi Draper’s recovery from what she characterizes as excessive plastic surgery. Paul and Mortensen are nevertheless inescapable — partly because the exes are trapped in an endless cycle, and partly because their dynamic is echoed in so many other pairs within the cast. No one sinks to the same depths as Mortensen, who claims to have sent Paul a sex tape of himself with another woman and, it’s strongly implied, likely weaponized the TMZ footage in retaliation for Paul drawing a boundary. In context, however, the couple comes off less like an exception and more like a tone-setter for a larger study in cautionary romantic tales.
Affleck’s husband Zak, arguably the show’s secondary antagonist, complains about his wife wanting to pose for Sports Illustrated even as her fame allows him to drop out of medical school and drive a CyberTruck. Miranda Hope’s ex-husband Chase McWhorter, fresh off a DUI, clearly yearns to be on camera and is duly rewarded for his confrontational stunts. Layla Taylor dates McWhorter’s brother Mason, showering him with gifts and vacations while he’s unable to return the favor.
“Mormon Wives” has always held interest for how the cast’s lucrative internet fame — which predates, though is accelerated by, the show — inverts the traditional gender dynamics instilled by their religion. But five seasons in, that fascination has curdled into discomfort. “Mormon Wives” isn’t just depicting unhealthy partnerships; in many cases, it’s exacerbating them, creating a perverse incentive for malcontents like McWhorter to stick around in return for exposure that’s still conditional on the women in their lives. In some cases, this tension exists among the women themselves: Paul has the most followers of anyone in the cast, and Draper expresses concern fans will inevitably take her side against her well-meaning friends.
Unlike the stars of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” the other reality smash set in the same area, the “Mormon Wives” are much younger and remain more entrenched in the Mormon community. Where Housewives like Heather Gay have proudly emancipated themselves from their marriages and the social expectations that came with them, the “Mormon Wives” feel like they’re still mired in the worst heterosexuality has to offer. (Though Layla Taylor has recently shared that she’s now dating a woman.) Paul and Mortensen, who she often refers to as her “baby daddy,” are in some ways far from traditional matrimony. They’re still stuck performing their dysfunction in public — a process that’s gone on so long it feels irresponsible to keep centering. But if “Mormon Wives” isn’t about terrible men exploiting women, what is it about? That’s one question among many for an upcoming spinoff set in Orange County to answer.
The only way to win this game, it seems, is not to play. Following her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in “Chicago,” Leavitt announced her plans to leave the cast after Season 5. But even before her official exit, Leavitt already feels physically and emotionally distant. Well-spoken and level-headed, she’s almost unrecognizable from the volatile villain she came off as in Season 1. She’s also barely willing to engage with Affleck, whose issues with Leavitt have the subtext of Affleck’s less successful music career. (I have little faith the flamingo-inspired single “Pink Back” will be Affleck’s breakout.) Whatever issues Affleck claims to have with Leavitt’s behavior, she seems more jealous that Leavitt was able to leverage her talents into an escape hatch, leaving Affleck to share such dire sentiments as “I feel like Zak doesn’t understand me.” The “Mormon Wives” may have a sincere belief in religious concepts like Heaven, but for now, the show feels more like purgatory.
