Total Divas: Mandy's family is broken but happy; Brie's business ideas are incredibly crappy; Nattie gets frustrated by her strange pappy

The Divas grow up a little bit this week. For Nattie, it’s by learning to look beyond her father’s quirks that used to cause her embarrassment. For Mandy, it’s realizing that her divorced parents aren’t going to get back together, no matter how much she wants it. Meanwhile, Brie is forced to acknowledge that she has a lot to learn about the business world. Check out the full recap for all the details.

Paige dresses up sexy for a photoshoot, and then pulls a Hasslehoff, eating a grilled cheese sammich on the floor. Pointless.

The Bellas and Daniel Bryan go out to eat, and Bryan suggests they eat Dutch Babies, probably not on the floor. They start talking about the Bellas’ Birdy-Bee bra and panty business, and then about Brie’s bedtime gassiness.

Nattie and Mandy are training at the Performance Centre, bonding before their combined family vacation. Nattie’s nervous that her father Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart may embarrass her on the trip.

The Bellas go onto The Today Show and while in New York, they plan on meeting some business lady to talk Birdy-Bee. Brie gets baby fever and starts talking about wanting kids for the millionth time, but Nikki is all about the business.

Mandy’s family arrives at the vacation house, and it’s huge. There’s about a dozen of them there, ranging from toddlers to her separated parents. During a family picture, her parents don’t want to stand beside each other. During a talking head segment, Mandy breaks down in tears and explains that she wants to see her parents get back together. She mentions this to her muscle-head brother, and he tells her that it’s not going to happen so fuhgeddaboudit. Later, Mandy gets crabs.

Which has nothing to do with the arrival of Nattie and her family to the guesthouse. Nattie’s excited about the trip, but tells Mandy to let her know if he does anything strange. She’s worried about how he’ll function, having just come out of rehab.

The Bellas go out for lunch and Nikki tells Brie that she’s called in some favours to get meetings with some fashion bigwigs. Nikki’s all excited about having a big company behind them, but Brie wants to do things the old-fashioned way, including making the bras and panties by hand. Anything that takes them away from the wrestling ring is fine by me. Nikki argues that dammit, Jim, we’re wrestlers not seamstresses, but Brie is worried that they’ll just be victims of “big fashion”.

The next day, Mandy and her brother talk more about her ill-fated plan to try to get their parents to reconcile. Meanwhile, Nattie puts makeup on TJ and some kid in preparation of the family canoe race they’ve scheduled against Mandy’s family. Jim makes some dumb jokes, to which Nattie over-reacts because if not, how can they end this episode without some kind of happy resolution where she learns to accept her dad the way he is?

The Bellas go to a sewing school where Brie tries to learn how to make underwear and Nikki criticizes her for wasting time by trying to learn how to make underwear. Nikki is proven to be right when Brie botches her attempt.

Nattie’s and Mandy’s families meet at the beach for their Dragon Boat race. Mandy’s family rows like a well-oiled machine, while Nattie’s family is a nautical disaster, probably because Jim is sitting in the boat like an anvil instead of rowing.

The Bellas leave the sewing class and Nikki keeps needling Brie for her lack of sewing skills and overall business acumen. Brie sits there silently like Jim Neidhart on a boat and freezes her out.

Jim gets angry watching his wife get a massage by some handsy masseur. Before he confronts the guy, Nattie pulls him away to talk. Meanwhile, Mandy’s family are all hanging out together and having fun. Seriously, their two families are like that episode where Homer sees the Flanders family all signing gospel tunes and then turns to his own family where Marge is drunk and the kids are fighting each other and he realizes how much his family sucks.

Later, they all go fishing. Mandy tries to manipulate things so that her parents are on a boat together in hopes that they’ll reconcile. Meanwhile, Nattie’s mom says that she’s put a curse on Jim so that he’ll never catch a fish, and about this time, Nattie should fill both of their pockets with lead sinkers and push them into the lake.

Mandy talks to her mom and gives her a hard sell on getting back together with her dad. But while her mom says she’ll always love her father (note – Mandy says “father” weird), they’re not getting back together.

On their way to another business meeting, the Bellas argue over Etsy (whatever that is), with Nikki saying that they should be the brains of Birdy-Bee (God help them) and that Brie is like a child playing grown-up. They go visit a jewellery designer they know to talk about how to get their business off the ground. At the meeting, Nikki buries Brie and her lack of business acumen, and Brie doesn’t do herself any favours, bringing up Etsy again. The lady laughs at Brie’s stupid ideas, and this swells up Nikki’s head.

The Mandy siblings go for a walk on the beach, and Mandy brings up what her mom said about still loving their father. They argue about whether it’s even possible that their parents can get back together, with muscle-head emphatically rejecting the premise.

That night, Brie admits to Nikki that her ideas were dumb and realistic and acknowledges Nikki as having the better business mind. Then they argue about which hugs worse. They should argue about which one wrestles worse, and they’d both be right

Mandy tries, not so subtly, to get her parents to reconcile, but they’re not having it. This makes Mandy and her one wimpy brother start crying like babies. Her parents say that they’ll always be friends and will always care for one another, and just because the two of them being together isn’t possible, it doesn’t mean they’re not all a tight family. Mandy and her brothers accept this, and the Mandy clan are all happy again.

The next night, the two families all have dinner together, and celebrate the successful joint family vacation. As Mandy gives a toast, Nattie realizes how lucky she is that her family are also tight, even if Jim can act a bit strange sometimes, and everyone’s happy.

The Bellas go visit the guy from Dragon’s Den who apparently created Fubu, whatever that is. They mention their idea for Birdy-Bee where every sale of underwear would lead to a donation of another pair to a young girl or woman in need. At first, the guy looks at them like they just said they want to remove his kidneys with a rusty pen knife. But then when he realizes that he’s on their show and not the other way around, he puts over their idea as the greatest idea in the history of ever. He says he’ll talk with his team and give them a call. Which, to me, sounds suspiciously like code for “as soon as these cameras are off of me, I’m going to forget you ever came in here, and will spend the rest of my day counting my billions of Fubu-generated dollars”.

Nattie and her family hit the beach one last time, and after getting inspiration from some random kid there (possibly a Mandy relative?), she realizes that she loves her family, warts and all.

The Bellas go for dinner and toast the progress they made on their business venture, before Brie backhandedly calls Nikki fat as the show comes to an end.

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