Wife Swap

Network: ABC; Genre: Reality, Documentary; Content Rating: TV-PG (for language); Classification: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Series (season 1+)

"Wife Swap" is trash. Fortunately, it is also just one of those shows where you just have to describe the premise and the reason why becomes pretty clear. Which makes it easy on me. It is yet another network remake of a British reality series. Once again the uncreative Americans are stealing a brilliant idea from the Brits. A little sarcasm there.

No, "Wife Swap" isn't about free love and key parties. In it two families from completely opposite sides of the tracks swap the matriarch of their households and spend a week experiencing life through the eyes and living in the home of someone else. Someone that they would never come into contact with in their own lives. It's not a bad idea actually, particularly as a media answer to the media contrived notion that America is sharply polarized and that people only ensconce themselves in opinions that agree with their own. In reality though, it is shows like this that have really created that idea in the first place.

"Wife Swap" thinks that in order to maximize this concept the families that get swapped have to be as diametrically opposite from each other as humanly possible. Either that or it feels the swaps have to be so extreme that we, the audience out in the hinterlands, won't recognize it if it isn't spelled out in stark black and white for us. Real? Of course, they're real, but the show is wildly misrepresented. As an unintended consequence to that premise, everybody here is a fanatic that lives at the margin of whatever their belief system is. The difference between who is tired and who is funny is directly related to how often we see these clichés elsewhere on TV. On one hand we have the homophobic, fanatical Christians, boring, on the other hand we have the obnoxious deadbeat liberal who thinks "the U.S. should be drawn up on war crimes": funny. I particularly like a family who drinks coffee through a straw because there is a chance it will not stain their teeth.

Episode after episode appears to come down to the same suspicious broad conclusion in the end: the sloppy family is the one that is having fun and has found happiness; meanwhile the neat, organized family is too stifled, stressed, repressed and not having any fun. Filth = happiness, neat = uptight. Where on "The Bachelor" the catch phrase has become that all the women say "I can really see myself with him" after a few minutes on the show, the catch phrase deserving of parody on "Wife Swap" goes something like: "I can't imagine how a house this clean can have any love in it". At the end of the period the neat mother learns the all-valuable lesson of "loosening up" where the piggish family just goes back to roll in the mud. This negative correlation between cleanliness and happiness rings as a theme throughout the entire series. It is bizarre.

It is another one of those shows that claims to provide a service by promoting discussion, but the discussion it promotes is based on a false reality it, and other television like it, has inadvertently created. That everybody of any devout ideology lives at the fanatical margin of that ideology, that organization is repressive and filth means raising a heard of farm animals in your house. And I shouldn't even mention the "Oprah" demographic pandering afoot here. Like an Oprah episode, "Swap" is an exercise so that lazy bum husbands get to see how hard their wives work and finally learn to appreciate them. I'm not saying its inherently bad, its just typically predictable.

It can be mindless entertainment when it isn't completely unpleasant. The show is watchable, if only because there are far worse in the reality show genre. It is certainly better than its sleazy FOX rip-offs. We just need a little nuance to this one. There is no insight or deep lessons learned. While everybody says their lives where "changed forever" you always get the feeling they will go back to normal in about 2 weeks.

Bottom line: You would be a fool to take any of this seriously.

* * / 4

I've watched a few episodes of Fox's Trading Spouses and I liked some of the episodes a lot. I especially loved the episode that takes a man from Southern America and puts him in a New York city apartment with a very rich New York family. The two families were different, yes, but the Southern man tries to fit in with the new culture and does a very good job. The host family was nice and treated him like a guest. What was nice was the way the host family carried on as normal.

Most episodes of Wife Swap are different, however. Like Trading Spouses, the families are completely different, but the problem is that instead of simply having the wife living with a new family the show tries to start a fight by getting each wife to read some sort of manual about the other family and then after a while to set rules. The wives who swap don't even try to adapt to the environment. They are intolerant of other cultures. They loudly and proudly hold on to their way of life, thinking it is superior, and try to change the other people in the process. I hate it most when the wives tell us at the beginning who they are. You don't learn about who someone is by listening to what they say because their ideals about what they should be will get in the way with what they really are. There's a reason why people buy status symbols like large cars and large houses. They are trying to express themselves and project signals to others so they can be recognized as belonging to a certain social identity. Too many families use Wife Swap as a vehicle to show off their identity. Everything the parents do on the show, whether it is sport or shouting at their kids, is just another weak attempt to conform to an image or a stereotype.

It's not just the contrived conflict that makes Wife Swap so painful to watch but also the fact that you know the wives are posing for the camera. It is so clear these women are desperately trying to show off their identity for the world to see. In other words, they are acting, and that goes against what I expect in reality TV.

This is a really good show, showing the different families around the world swapping with each other. I just don't get the negative reviews!

In my opinion, there are 3 types of reality shows: competition reality shows like The Amazing Race and I Survived a Japanese Game Show (most of the reality shows I like are in this category), shows that follow people's everyday lives such as Jon and Kate Plus Eight and The Girls Next Door (I think these are boring and pointless), and "drama" reality shows such as those VH1 shows with the word "love" somewhere in the title (I absolutely hate most of these). Wife Swap falls into the "drama" category, but it's actually watchable. The premise is that mothers from two American families who are almost completely different in a certain respect trade places for two weeks. In the first week, the wives have to follow the new family's rules, but during the second week, they impose their own rules. I like this show, but I wouldn't say I love it. I won't go out of my way to watch it, but I'll watch it if it's on.

When ABC produced this show, FOX produced an almost identical show called Trading Spouses, which I think is slightly better.

Some of these presentations are amusing; however, in my estimation, they don't possess the instructive value which the producers/directors seem to feel they portray.

For example, I saw two episodes today. The first had a beauty queen/late-sleeping princess type, whose husband did everything for her, swapping places with a gal obviously not into great concern over appearances (either hers or her home's), with a street performer husband with some sort of metal clips permanently installed in his forehead, permanent red striping on his face, and more tattoos than the typical NBA basket-baller.

As to grooming, the family of the former apparently spent more time applying cologne (even to the kids) after showering, than the latter group might be spending on an entire week's total grooming.

The second had the mom from a family of religious fanatics, and a son wearing a "Promise ring," swapping households with a gal in a self-styled "ultra liberal" family with a son and daughter, each proclaiming himself/herself, respectively, a "stud" and "wild child."

The problem with this show, particularly episodes like BOTH of these, is that I found no empathy for either family in both episodes. In both story lines, I wouldn't care to emulate any of their particular lifestyles,. Neither would I want to spend ANY time in any of these households.

A good way to view most of the folks in this series is to be thankful we don't live in a society dominated by any of these almost freakishly extreme families.

(4* because of the level of fascination provided. This is especially true in viewing how almost every one of the women, as well as their husbands, profess to have virtually every answer and piece of advice necessary to alter their counterparts' lives and families.)