Wife Swap USA

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

Reality TV.

00's was the beginning of the end of TV because reality TV were gradually showing up and occupying people's minds with garbage that was never 100% accurate. Reality is supposed to be 100% accurate, although people insist on remaining fool'd by the concept of reality TV. I ask what do they gain from it?

Wife Swap another manipulative program was about people swapping their wives for another wife. Literally. You had the annoying wife, the Christ freak wife, the authoritarian wife just to keep people watching. Wife Swap was pretty popular in the 00's for a while only because of the fat Christ Freak wife who freaked out because the house was unChrist-like. I think that's the episode that really made Wife Swap popular.

Wife Swap is just another garbage reality TV show. I was only a teen at the time and I could easily tell which shows were garbage, yet grown adults were unable to differentiate. Shows intelligence isn't about getting a Diploma, getting a Masters or having children. Intelligence is about knowing wrong from right, seeing the smallest picture and having self-control.

That this show is renewed once much less that it ever got on air at all is yet another example of how dumb our country has become. This kind of gutter garbage does nothing for the human experience and is insulting. I'm not saying everything on TV has to have a moral center or be totally educational, but good lord, do we really have to sink this low? I hope parents are not letting their children watch this. If they are they should be hauled in front of a court for child abuse. This show does nothing but play to the dumbest in all of us. It's like waiting for a car wreck. It's worst than that. The only logical next step to is televise executions. Actually, on second thought, let's not. That would probably be the most popular show on TV and spawn spin offs like "Who wants to be an executioner?"

Wife Swap was not something I was ever going to watch. I thought it was about sex. A friend said she watched it, explained what it was, and that piqued my interest. I enjoyed the fact that the families "traded" moms for 2 weeks. It gave enough time to see how everyone was doing things, and then implement the changes. I especially like the way the husband and wife teams talk after the show. The follow up is terrific, it is so uplifting and encouraging to see people's lives get better once they learn to appreciate what they have, and change what is wrong in their lives. I don't think any extra drama is needed. On one episode a knife was brought out and "Stu" the rabbit's life was under threat. I think this was dramatized a little to much, probably as a result of director intervention. I do not think this is necessary. What I like about the show is it is REAL, it is helpful to the parties involved and it is unique to American TV.

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.)