Wife Swap ‘Aint No Modern Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice
Wife Swap ‘Aint No Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice by Roxanne McDonald
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Sometimes Wife Swap seems like a weaker version of Trading Spouses, which offers a cash stipend whereas Wife Swap does not and which features some of the nuttiest people on television. Sometimes Wife Swap seemingly leads us closer to watching full out Peyton Place small town swinging on TV. |
The premise is, of course, as the title suggests: two wives from different states or cities trade places in each other’s homes for two weeks. The first week, the implanted wife must do as the Smiths do, eating, working, scheduling as the real mom does. But in week two, the new mom gets to run the family and household as she would back home. So when one family is a Christian country-bumpkin cluster of nine with a mother who insists on home schooling, on sanitizing everything all the time, and on keeping all kids of all ages with her at all times, and the other mom is an excessive worker on the phone all the time, buying her kids sh-t instead of hugging them or taking the time to do their hair, you know the changes are going to be more than unsettling.
The real estate mom puts the kids in
school, the little ones in day care, takes the older ones shopping, and insists on not only getting jobs for the two teen girls but enforcing their first dates by driving them to the pop shop and leaving them in the company of two fellow Christians.
The stay at home earth mother who has a major germ phobia that would run circles around Seinfeld’s, for example, takes the kids OUT of school, buries the real mom’s cell phone in a paper coffin in the back yard, and insists that her mayun be pampered and cared for by his woman as God intended.
The whole religion tension thing is usually an instant uh-oh for me, as I can see neither delight nor resolution in the centuries-old argument. But earth mother isn’t a bible-thumper and cell phone mom isn’t an antagonizing agnostic or atheist. The emphasis is instead on learning to let go for one and learning to live in love and closeness rather than in Guess or Gucci and G-Men or X-Men games as a replacement for the oft-requested mother love.
So when the successful real estate agent, the bread-bringer for the house, says that she has decided to stay off the phone when with her family, and that she is going to do her daughter’s hair for her instead,
you are somehow engaged, entertained, and even a little bit moved… even if none of these people are swivel-headed psychotics who profess to be one with God but smash and scream their way through checks for fifty grand and two families – as did the ogre, C., on Trading Spouses. Money or lessons? Or both? It’s your call, viewers.
Reality TV Links Wife Swap–ABC Links
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