‘Sister Wives’ Spoilers: Meri Brown Plays The Victim And The Hero

Sister Wives returned to TLC on Sunday night for their Season 7 premiere. While the first hour of the two-hour premiere episode of Sister Wives was spent catching fans up with what has been happening with the Brown family since the end of Season 6, the second hour focused all of its energy on first wife Meri Brown’s catfishing scandal.

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The Sister Wives family has been dealing with the fallout of Meri Brown’s emotional affair for several months. Meri began talking to a man online named Samuel Jacob Cooper. By Meri’s own admission, the online relationship started out as a friendship only, but later developed into something deeper and emotional.

Soon, Meri and Samuel moved past online communication and started to communicate via text messages and phone calls. Tonight’s episode of Sister Wives reveals that from Kody’s perspective, the communication between Samuel and Meri took precedence over Kody and Meri’s relationship, even on days Kody was staying at Meri’s house.

“I was right here. I was in the house when you were taking calls from these people, and when those calls became more important than us, and when those calls started to interrupt our lives. And I don’t know why you asked me to stop coming around.”

Meri kept her emotional affair a secret from Kody and her sister wives, even after she found out that Samuel Jacob Cooper was actually a woman named Jackie Overton. Meri was being catfished by Jackie Overton.

During the premiere episode of Sister Wives Season 7, Kody and his four wives, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn, met at Meri’s house with their family therapist. Throughout the hour coverage of the therapy session, it seemed Meri never accepted fault for the emotional affair. TLC shared a condensed, two-and-a-half minute version of the therapy session on their website. According to Meri, she never had an affair.

The Sister Wives family has verbally supported Meri since the news of her catfishing scandal broke, but it was clear during the therapy session that the plural family is struggling. During the episode, Meri portrayed a picture of herself as the victim. She only focused on the part of the story where Samuel was actually a woman. She mentioned very little about the time leading up to the discovery that Samuel was a woman, where Meri began to fall in love with him.

The #SisterWives rally around Meri after her catfishing affair https://t.co/uaf06wTnDV pic.twitter.com/WhddKwZiXS

— Screener (@screenertv) May 9, 2016

After Meri shared with everyone how she felt she had been victimized, she then switched to the role of hero as she shared that she needed to protect her family. Meri stated, “I started taking my power back.”

Meri has even managed to convince Kody and her sister wives that she was protecting them. During an interview, Robyn stated the following.

“I know now that what Meri was doing was trying to protect the family from this person that was victimizing her.”

It appears that Kody believed Meri’s victim story as well. In an interview he shared, “I can only imagine how vulnerable, how abused she feels.”

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At the end of the premiere episode of Season 7 of Sister Wives, Kody stood up at the end of the therapy session and gave Meri a huge hug.

“I’m sorry, Meri. I’m sorry that all this happened. We’ll be here for you. We’ll take care of you.”

Although it appears Kody and the other sister wives have forgiven Meri for her actions, the same cannot be said for Meri’s only daughter, Mariah. In a preview for next week’s episode of Sister Wives, viewers see that Mariah is having a hard time dealing with her mother’s emotional affair.

“I don’t forgive her.”

Tune in for another two-hour episode of Sister Wives on Sunday, at 8/7c on TLC.

[Image by TLC/YouTube screenshot]