"Welcome to Plathville": Ethan Plath Feels "Caught in the Middle" Between His Siblings and Wife Olivia

[Ubiquitous]

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season 5 premiere of TLC's
Welcome to Plathville.

Ethan Plath is seriously over all the drama on Welcome to Plathville.

In Tuesday's season 5 premiere, Ethan and his wife Olivia Plath, both
25, returned from several months in Europe feeling refreshed after
spending a summer away to recharge and work on their marriage.
Unfortunately, they came home to even more problems: Ethan discovered
that Moriah, his 21-year-old sister and Olivia's former best friend,
moved out of their shared home in Tampa in their absence.

Things have been tense between Olivia and the rest of the Plaths for a
while now. She and Ethan's 51-year-old mother, Kim, are not on speaking
terms. Moriah hit a "breaking point" with her former best friend last
season when Olivia refused to get out of the car for their late brother
Joshua's memorial due to Kim being present.

Additionally, Olivia accused Kim of using Ethan's credit card in an
interview at the end of season 4 of Plathville. After that aired in
August 2022, Moriah and her siblings Micah, Lydia and Isaac
subsequently shared a public statement on social media defending their
mother and claiming their sister-in-law was not telling "the full
story."

"I'm really disappointed in Moriah, disappointed in Micah for going
along with it," Ethan told Olivia as they discussed the post. "To say,
'You can't say X, Y, Z about my mom because I don't like it.' There's
two sides to a coin: She may not like it but it still doesn't negate
the fact that it happened."
Toward the beginning of the episode, Moriah explained her reasons for
moving out without telling anyone. She, Olivia, Ethan and Olivia's
brother, Nathan Meggs, previously rented a house together. She told
producers that she felt her leaving was the "best" option.

"I don’t know how this is gonna play out," she admitted. "But I do know
when it comes to Olivia, I don’t feel even guilty at all for just
saying, ‘Hey look. You were my best friend for a while, I love you, I
wish you the best, but I don’t wanna be a part of it anymore.’ It’s
sad, it’s really really sad, especially because I know that by me
ending my relationship with Olivia, I probably won’t have a
relationship with Ethan for a while. But this is what I needed.”

When Ethan, who returned from Europe a week earlier than his wife, came
home and discovered that his sister had moved out, he was blindsided.
All of Moriah's things were gone and she'd left only a note behind as
an explanation.

"I am very frustrated and genuinely surprised," he shared in a
confessional interview. "Moriah had told me before we left for Europe
that she was gonna stay a couple weeks after I got back. But then
something happens that she doesn’t like, packs up all her stuff, that
does feel a little bit theatrical, if you will.”

He also acknowledged that things were "sensitive" in his family at the
moment with his parents' divorce. "I think that my siblings’ reaction
to what Olivia said, you know, might just be a desperate attempt to
keep some type of a sense of family and togetherness when it’s clearly
being split hard right down the center," he explained. "But the fact of
the matter is, what Olivia said happened. There's no disputing that,
and it was a problem. And me and Olivia and my mom worked it out in a
way that I felt made amends for what was wrong."
Meanwhile, Olivia returned from Europe to find that none of the Plath
siblings would speak to her. She said that, while she had apologized
for her actions and understood where her in-laws were coming from, she
still felt like she was ultimately being "s--- talked" no matter what
she did.

"It’s also kind of crazy to me to kind of ask over and over again for
someone’s reasons why they’ve chosen not to have a relationship in
their life and then as soon as they share a story that relates to only
them, it’s their story," she said in an interview. "The immediate
response is, ‘That’s a lie. It didn’t happen. Get over it and grow
up.'"

"But at the end of the day, I know what I lived through," she
continued. "I know what I experienced, I know why I’ve chosen to have
the boundaries I have.

Later, Moriah and Micah spoke to their parents Kim and Barry about
their concerns over Olivia's behavior. Moriah continued to believe her
mother's side of the credit card story and declared that she no longer
wanted to maintain a relationship with her sister-in-law.

"I have had to choose. And I choose my family," she said firmly.
At the end of the episode, Ethan and Olivia shared a hug as he prepared
to travel to Cairo, Georgia to work on his cars for 2.5 months in
preparation for their move to Minnesota. Olivia got emotional, crying
that she didn't want him to leave with all the family drama going on.

In the meantime, Ethan admitted to producers that he felt "caught in
the middle" between his wife and the rest of his family.

Ethan Plath in "Welcome to Plathville".
"This whole thing is definitely extremely frustrating," he shared. "I
feel like I’m caught in the middle between Olivia and my family and I’m
just so tired of all the nonsense. I almost can’t stand it.”

--
Let's go Brandon!