Wife Swap, Lesson Swap
Wife Swap, Lesson Swap by Roxanne McDonald
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If it isn’t just posturing for television, Wife Swap participants come away with a lesson or two. |
“There’s always room for a little bit of magic,” says the traditional husband, Kyle Thompson as he works with his new/temporary pagan wife, Bella Thompson.
“[I smashed the coven’s plate] because it was only profiting the coven…,” says the seemingly reformed Wiccan husband, Kenny Thompson, to his new/temporary traditional wife, Alison Askam.
Kyle learns to treat his wife more like the high priestess Bella believes she is (and less like the slave she was); while Kenny learns to be more of a “man” for his family, coming home for dinner, taking a leadership (rather than lackey) role.And the parents usually learn to treat their kids the way they wish to be treated: little Ramsey spent a lot of time on the computer, for lack of closeness and quality time with Dad. But once Dad changes and starts doing father-son things, Ramsey confides in him that he would trade playing on the computer alone for playing with Dad…anytime.
The punks and the rednecks trade families—learning all kinds of, well differences. The Mohawks go by the wayside in favor of a cleanly groomed Chunk (yep, that’s his name) in full sweater over dress shirt regalia, for instance, despite how he at first planned to resist with a “f—k Shannon [new mom]” tee shirt and how he commented that life was not as Shannon saw it—all full of flowers and sausages.” LOL is all I can muster to that.
The baseball addiction in the other family is suppressed in favor of a punk rock concerts and forced heavy metal guitars in the house to replace the bball paraphernalia and habits. And what do these two families learn?
That close- mindedness is the ideal defense mechanism and egotism is harder to whittle down than the Mohawk is to cut once you are attached (er, emotionally, politically, or whatever) to it. Okay, to be fair, the baseball family does learn to ease up on the sports fanaticism and the anarchist family does learn to work for a living, and all….
That makes Wife Swap’s record 100% thus far: somebody gets something out of each swap, even if it is only we viewers getting a kick out of watching the health freak/boxing maven Jenifer Alcorn’s face when she witnesses her new husband Eric Booker’s competitive eating—which includes some 20 hotdogs (of all things Unhealthy) in one practice run or getting great joy out of watching Kenny smash the high priestess plate that was profiting the coven more than his family
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