Sister Wives: Real Plural Housewives of Somewhere in Utah

The exciting race to be the first network to hit the airwaves with a reality show about polygamy is over, and TLC won!

Patriarch Kody Brown describes the family's faith tradition affiliation as "Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints," but don't expect Warren Jeffs Little House on the Prairie dresses or 19th century pompadour and braid hairstyles.

The family wears modest, mostly unremarkable "modern" clothing, though they sometimes put their own "twist" on it (In some scenes, Christine rocks a fuchsia spaghetti strap top over a long black sleeved crewneck) and when they're not discussing religion or polygamy, have more or less normal speech patterns and vocabulary.

Number One Wife Meri has one daughter, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Number Three Wife Chirstine.

Meri has received the Gift of pain-free baby tooth extraction.

Twice in the first segment of the show, Meri tells us that having someone ready to step up and raise your kids in case you die is is "definitely a plus to this lifestyle."

Um, Meri, next time you're on line, try googling "godparents." Those stultifyingly monogamous Catholics have had the contingency parent thing in place for a while.

Janelle, Wife 2, works outside the home. 6 kids. Only wife who wasn't raised in a polygamous home.

Christine, Wife 3, has 5 kids, and pregnant with what we may assume is another one. (Though don't try to tell me that the TLC execs are not praying for quintuplets, at least)

She always knew she'd be a plural wife. As a teen, she turned down single men who "asked my dad about me" because she "just didn't want them."

"I honestly wanted sister wives more than a husband for a good time in my life," she says.

She specifically wanted to be a third wife, because it "sounded the easiest." She didn't want to be a first wife, because she "didn't want to be married to a guy by myself," and she didn't want to be a second wife, because she "felt like (2nd wives) were a little wedge in the relationship."

She informs us that it is said that if there are problems with a 2 wife family, the conventional wisdom is that the solution is to obtain a third, to "even things out."

The kids were home-schooled until 5 years ago. Since then, they've attended a private "polygamist school" school "for our people."

Christine seems to be the principal homemaker for the family. She does not have a toaster, and makes toast in the oven, because
"More people die from toasters than sharks every year."

Her preferred interjection is "Darn it" or "Gosh Darn it."

Throughout the show, references are made to a "big announcement" Kody plans to make to the family that night.

Turns out that he is "courting" a potential 4th wife, a 30 year old woman named Robin, who "grew up in the lifestyle."

The wives acknowledge that they had a feeling that there was someone else, but the "big announcement" is the first time that the children are told about it.

Robin has children from a previous marriage, and apparently there has been some kind of joint play-date at some point, because dad presents the idea by asking the kids if they remember Robin and had fun playing with her kids. How would they like to have Robin's family join theirs?

The response is enthusiastic. One of the younger children doesn't quite get it, so Kody tries again, but it is Christine who gets the message across that Kody hasn't proposed yet, so the whole Robin thing must be kept on the DL for now.

A couple of the older kids acknowledge that it might be "weird" or "different" at first, as they've all grown up with three moms, but no one has any objections.

Meri doesn't deny that "jealousy issues" exist, but hopes she can get over it.

Janelle says that when Kody first told her about it, she had a "spiritual witness" that Robin was special.

This is the "first courtship" in 16 years, says Kody. Adding a foruth will be a "big deal."

Christine cops to being "kind of hesitant," because she "likes 3 wives a lot." She doesn't want to be a boat rocker, she says, and she doesn't want her boat rocked. "If it hapens," she adds, "she just has to be absolutely amazing, otherwise it might be a little difficult."

Robin, who lives four miles away from the family, has been courted by Kody for about 4 months. The number 4 seems to crop up a lot in this story arc. They are shown going on a date. Robin says he's her soul-mate.

Wives in this lifestyle, Kody points out, are comfortable with another wife, but not another girlfriend.

The day after the premiere episode airs, it is reported that the family is being investigated for bigamy. Coincidence? I think not.

Let's just hope this doesn't mean there won't be a Season 2.

My Generation 2010 - An Even Bigger Disappointment Than The Decade Itself

The genre: Mockumentary. A red flag already. The premise: A film crew who did a documentary of 9 high school kids in the year 2000 returns in 2010 to see Where They Are Now.

To begin with, this show was hard to get into. The dissonance between the Austin setting and the generic US mall accents was bewildering, even jarring. I'm guessing that "Austin" was just pulled out of a hat by a writing and production team whose areas of knowledge and expertise do not include - oh never mind.

My personal preference is to give a show more than one episode before forming much of an opinion of it. In fact, my usual practice is to let it run for several seasons, unwatched by me, end, and then several years after THAT, sit down and watch the whole series at once.

But this one had such a promising premise that I not only watched the premiere episode, but foolishly allowed my expectations to exceed recommended pre-viewing levels, thus ensuring disappointment.

The first really big lump of it plopped itself down when Steven, the erstwhile "overachiever" with "success" as his watchword, was presented as an utter failure, when my perception was that he had indeed achieved success.

He was in a place he wanted to be, doing things he enjoyed doing.

I am obliged, however, to bring myself up short right there. However content, even happy, he might be with his life, because he had neither become affluent nor chosen a career path that the culture claims to value (even if the value is not necessarily manifested in market terms) he was, in fact, made of FAIL.

Later in the episode, of course, I realized that it was necessary to portray him as a worthless piece of ish, and in a way that would indeed be perceived as such by viewers.

As his backstory was revealed, I was obliged to acknowledge that maybe I was being too hasty - maybe he wasn't all that content and happy. Maybe he was just trying to make lemonade out of the lemons life had handed him, and that I was just chillaxing up on my moral high horse projecting stuff about how he and everybody else SHOULD have this huge Epiphany that success is not about how much money you have, or societal approval (even if the society doesn't put its money where its mouth is).

I was also (a little unreasonably) disappointed in some of the other story lines. The rich boy who forsook his true love apparently motivated by filial piety, and/or loving parental dollars more (I guess we'll find out if Dad threatened to cut him off) and settled for a loveless marriage, ten years into which he still sits around watching videos of his Lost Love and pining, was Bollywoodesque in its predictability, as was the story of the wife he settled for - blonde ectomorph with dreams of stardom who makes it to maybe the second Rose ceremony in Season Two or something of The Bachelor, upon which she forsakes her showbiz aspirations and settles for a loveless marriage to the local rich boy instead.

Ditto the boy who as a high school student, claims his only ambition is to have a family with lots of kids. A decade later, not only is he still unmarried and childless, his only "kids" the ones in the elementary school class he teaches, he's still a virgin, living with and caring for a girl he's in love with, but who is married to and pregnant by someone else (Dawn, known in high school as "The Punk") - and as if that weren't enough, he's sterile!

My inner curmudgeoness hmmphed loudly that all this is evidence that the writers are not averse to taking the easy way out, which does not bode well for the future, but I told her to shut up because she was being unfair.

If some of the characters' stories were too obvious, at the other extreme we have Carolyn the ultra-timid, silent "invisible" girl, (quaintly characterized as "wallflower") who, we are told, hooked up with Steven the "overachiever" and Quintessential Popular Boy on prom night.

While such might be the dream of many an ultra-timid, silent and invisible "wallflower," who might indeed hook up (and get knocked up) on prom night, her babydaddy is so not going to be the Popular Boy. Another night, maybe. But I promise you, the Popular Boy is way too busy on prom night to impregnate the wallflower.

Not to mention that fully ten years have passed, during which she has blossomed into a beautiful, articulate and grown-ass woman, doing just fine raising her child, and suddenly she feels compelled not only to inform a sperm donor who never even knew her name that fertilization occurred, but also plants these daddyhavin' expectations into the mind of a child who has made it to the fifth grade just fine with whatever previous explanation of his parentage she had previously given.

This, too, requires excessive levels of suspension of disbelief. Either this is a call she would have made the first time the kid asks "how come I don't have a daddy like Binky and them?" or at least in the first few months, even year, of telling him whatever she told him, or the call would have been for purpose of obtaining family medical history only, as the result of suddenly becoming aware that this is Important, (but not also becoming aware that here in Modern Today, there are tests that can determine that stuff) and would likely have been made through an intermediary, since her only contact with this person consists of that one hookup, and it is reasonable to presume that had she, (who is, remember, presented to us as having blossomed into this intelligent and responsible grown-ass woman) had any desire to have Steven "be part of her son's life," she would surely have expressed that desire, and informed him of the reproductive event, long ere this.

I'm not even going to commit additional rantage on the whole thing of putting these expectations into her child's head. That might be the kind of thing that MethGranny over on Teen Mom would do, but not the character of Carolyn (unless her initial protrayal is waaay deceptive, and we have yet to learn that she is addicted to meth, or suffering from some severe and untreated mental and/or emotional illness).

Almost as ridiculous is the proposition that the girl labeled "The Brain" reacts to the casting of a particular politician as on-camera talent by abandoning her lifelong passion for science and becoming a lawyer who helps banking companies write laws that ensure that banks will receive additional revenue.

This makes me think that the deadline was looming really large, and everybody on the writing team had been really busy with something else, so there was only one story idea in the hat for Brenda, and they just had to go with it.

About the only believable character is that of Falcon, the "Rock Star," who has become a wigga who does production and post-production for bands that have not become commercially successful.

Oh, well, yeah, there's the obligatory "Jock" who sacrifices a promising career in the sport he loves as the result of a belief-based choice to participate in the implementation of business decisions favorable to the interests of key industries. Sadly, that's believable.

Even as, against my better judgment, I went ahead and allowed all these opinions and views to harden like two coats of Sally Hansen's finest, I realize that they could all come back and bite me in the butt.

But I accept only very limited responsibility, because, if they are going to do that, if all my perceptions are just so, so wrong, then the writers should have given me some hint of that.

It would be hints of that, you see, that would flame the spark of my interest, and bring about the presence of a strong desire to see Episode 2.

Not only did the premiere lack cliff-hangers, try as I might, the only real intriguing unanswered question that I can recall has to do with the rich boy forsakes true love to please/obtain money from parents story: because the rich boy is white, his true love is Latin American, and the girl he settled for is the blonde ectomorph, with the Texas setting, the obvious rush-to-judgment is that his parents had a strong preference for a white daughter in law.

BUT - we later find out that the Jock, who is African-American, is his best friend since childhood.

So does the show plan to take us on a journey through the various levels and permutations of anti-Otherness in Texas - that his parents believe that being BFFs with someone from a different ethnic group is OK but marriage is not OK? Or that the parents simply have an aversion to Latin Americans?

I mean, if they want to go there, that is actually pretty realistic. Ethnic divisions, especially those in a demographic majority/minority context, do tend to increase in intensity according to the size of the minority, with the largest ethnic minority in a given region frequently taking the brunt of impact.

For example, at least until recently, if you went to a small town in Alabama, you would typically find a mainstream demographic, or majority population, of Euromericans, or white folks, and certainly the largest, indeed frequently the only statistically registering minority to be African-Americans, a group with which the majority Euromercians have had a longstanding division.

People from Latin America or Asia, as long as there were only a few of them, might experience markedly lower levels of anti-Otherness-driven impact.

In contrast, if you went to a small town in Texas, where again, you might find that Euromerican majority, the largest ethnic minority might well be Latin Americans, and even while there might be a significant level of anti-Otherness directed toward African-Americans, it would be more intense toward Latin Americans.

Add to that the very real prevalence of the belief among some Euromerican groups that social integration, friendship, and between members of different groups, is acceptable, but marriage is not. (Though clandestine sexual activity between white males and females of other ethnic groups, whether consensual or not on the part of the latter, has a long history of quiet acceptance).

Like I said, if they really wanna go there, given the cultural context, it would be believable for Anders' parents to approve of his friendship with Rolly the Jock, but strongly disapprove of the idea of accepting Brenda the Brain as a daughter-in-law, even if they did not disapprove, at least as strongly, of his dating her in high school.

As we see, however, all that seems just a smoosh complex for any TV show, much less a network "mockumentary" whose premise encompasses a decade in the lives of nine different people, which means that Rich Boy's parents disapproved of Brenda is almost certainly for some other reason - maybe her family is poor.

Economic segregation is every bit as marked and and comprehensive as racial apartheit ever was, and in many communities (though not typically ones in Texas) has surpassed ethnicity-based social segregation, which is still pretty comprehensive and marked in its own right.

Or - and here I am clearly sailing off on the wings of imagination - one or more of Brenda's relatives has a history of having committed some crime or other, for which they spent some time subsumed into the judicial system, even generating a revenue stream for the prison industry!

Now THAT would indeed have some cultural reflection possibilities, if the crime were something like shoplifting, or even sticking up a convenience store.

That's because two of the characters were impacted by business decisions made by the Enron company, with one even sacrificed as an acceptable target of opinions and feelings that would, if applied consistently and on a larger scale, be considered anti-business!

So if they wanted, they could contrast how the child of a parent who has stolen a chicken is perceived vis a vis the perception of the child of one who has stolen the coop - white collar vs blue collar crime, etc etc.

But that is unlikely, too, since that would lead us down yet another "Do they really wanna go there?" road, and get into some pretty heavy topics, many of which would simply not be a good fit for commercial network TV.

Maybe it was the Brain thing. Maybe Anders' parents didn't feel that Brenda was a good choice as a marriage partner because they feared that with her Brain, she might not wish to be a full-time parent and homemaker, and that was important to them, or that she would become bored with Anders, which would probably be a pretty good call, had Brenda not pretty much shed herself of the whole Brain thing by ditching science for law school and ending up helping rich men make more money because some suits in another board room made a decision that as it was intended, resulted in rich men making a whole mess of more money.

Plus, ten years post-high school, Brenda continues to carry a such a big torch for the unremarkable Anders that she not only hasn't married - she "doesn't date." If she were really that much of a Brain, wouldn't she have figured out by now that her high school boyfriend is something of a dud?

This brings us, at long last, to the real meat of this episode. Well, the pit, really.

See, one of Brenda's co-workers decides to set her up on a blind date. She agrees to go, it is implied, because the documentary cameras caught her gazing wistfully at a picture of Anders the Dud, and she wants to throw us off, you know, so we won't think she still hasn't gotten over him.

Whoever this co-worker dude is, it'll be interesting to see if he turns out to be a recurring character, because he clearly has an abysmally low opinion of Brenda, because the dude with whom he fixes her up is a total asshat. "I have a small penis," he leans forward to confide, less than five minutes after Brenda sits down. "But I know how to use it," he adds, and then offers Brenda the opportunity to speak, something she has yet to do, since asshat has been sitting there rattling off one proof after another that he is not somebody with whom even a moderate Brain-owner would want to have so much as a nodding acquaintance.

But it's his table manners that Brenda cites to the co-worker in the de-briefing scene. He put his olive pits on the bread plate.

Let me preface this by stating how much I resent being in the position of defending even this minute detail of the behavior of the Blind Date From Hell character.

Though I agree it is riddled with aesthetically-challengedness, if the restaurant did not provide a plate specifically to contain the pits, putting them on the bread plate is pretty much the conventional Western dining etiquette wisdom.

I didn't happen to catch whether before putting them there, he removed them discreetly and unobtrusively, but that's what is supposed to happen.

The rule says "remove by the same method it went in" but in the case of olive pits, even if they went in with a fork, discrete and unobtrusive removal is more likely to be achieved by pretending to dab delicately with one's napkin, then swiftly removing the pit with the fingers of the other hand, using the napkin as a shield, having first (discreetly and unobtrusively) pushed the pit up to the lips/front teeth area, so that the fingertips do not need to enter the mouth). Ew.

Here's Why: There may have been a time when it was a common practice for people to hold their napkins up to their mouths when inserting a food-laden fork, but in Modern Today, this is so seldom if ever done that it would call much more attention than just holding a napkin up to dab, which is done all the time, thus exponentially increasing the likelihood that no one will notice that you removed something from your mouth. (That is, until they see you put it on the plate, whether bread or olive pit).

Unless it is a very casual restaurant with paper napkins that you can ball up, hiding the pit in your napkin is extremely poor manners, because a human being who has just as much value and worth as you do is going to pick up that napkin when they clear the table, and another one is going to unfold it, and neither is on this earth, or working in the restaurant, to have stuff that has been in your mouth tumble out into their hands. Re-Ew.

I don't know if I will bother watching Episode 2 of this show or not. Having committed such a massive word-dump on it, you might think I would be really eager to discover how wrong - or right - my initial impressions prove to be.

You might be right, maybe I should see some more of it, if only for that reason, but that's kind of the problem. The show itself hasn't given me any reason, or even particular desire, to tune in next week.

Real Housewives of DC Makes White Folks Real Mad

In keeping with franchise tradition, not one of them appears to be an actual housewife.

At least so far, any casting office hopes that Paul Wharton might emerge as DC's answer to Da-wight have been stultifyingly dashed. He comes off more like a 5th Housewife version of last season's Alex McCord: so abysmally lacking in skankitude that you wonder if he signed up for the wrong show by mistake.

Or maybe he's there to tell Mary ("Michaele was in her perfectly coiffed riding jodhpurs and boots.") that clothing items do not sport a hairdo.

Clicking around the internets, "Cat," the one who kept bragging about her husband being the Lord High Photographer was just sad. She reminded me of Kelly on RHNY, who seems to get way too much of her sense of identity from having once been married to a famous photographer, who in turn, reminds me of Brody Jenner, who reminds us every 15 minutes that his biomom once dated Elvis.

She seems to be one of those love her or hate her characters - her admiration for a beloved political figure was appreciated by the predictable half of US viewers, while her comment that "all British children aspire to be American children" seems to have resonated a little less with the rest of the world, some even going so far as to disagree with her outright, asserting that British children are quite pleased to be British and do not long to be another nationality.

I tend to agree with those who have questioned whether the show will really be a good cultural fit.

In fact, I predict it will require extensive post-production to keep it from being labeled as "inflammatory," which might not be good for either the franchise or the network.

Stacie has already made herself a mess of enemies.

For a person of color to mention the existence of racism is extremely displeasing to many US white folks, who receive a very real psychological benefit from the belief that both slavery and apartheid happened some time during the early Pleistocene era, and have long been completely absent from the heart of all white Americans with the possible exception of a couple of toothless crackhead Aryan gang members who are now safely behind bars now anyway, so African Americans should, if I may quote approximately 7 squillion internet comments "get over it."

In fairness, people, including white folks, watch these shows for the skankiness and schadenfreude, not to be reminded of bandaids on sucking societal chest wounds or herds of elephants tromping around the TV, both tall orders for any show set in Washington, even if the only cast member with any claim to a "political connection" is the dude that takes PR stills of the current on-camera talent.

I guess Bravo gets props for going there at all.

My guess is that they were maybe targeting an older audience, and hoping that the prevailing viewer reaction would be more in accord with an offline comment I overheard: a polyester-clad matron in a small southern town referred to the DC ladies as "real classy," and went on to declare that they represent her "ideal America."

I'm skeptical that any generation will bestow upon these Housewives the mantle of "ultimate aspirational character" bestowed on Lauren Conrad and The Hills gang.

At least we jaded Snark extremists get our usual helping of the delicious characteristic Real Housewife staple of people with dramatically annoying personalities acting really trashy while tossing around not-so-subtle insinuations about how superior they are to everybody else. ;)

Cat and Stacie may have their share of fans and haters, but the unquestioned stars of the show are "The Salahis."

We may not know the name of the covert Bravo operative who returned from that 1st reconnaissance mission into the mean salons of Washington with orders to sniff out Hamsters Most Likely, who discovered this pair of prizes, but we do know that whoever s/he is, that will be one hard-to-top career triumph.

Ditto for the marketing genius who thought up Operation Party Crash, and double ditto if the same person cast the Salahis in it.

It was a Cultural Fit Powerball, with just the right Golden Drop of subliminal Retsyn (ouch. Obscure allusion to 60s breath mint commercial? Really?)

And now, a moment of silence to acknowledge the awesome power of television - even really bad television. No other force, man-made or natural could so instantly transform a couple of lacklustre practitioners of petty sleaze to Defcon 5 Level Public Enemies.

He, whose principal resume bullets include a spurt of short-term employment related to implementation of business decisions on behalf of some US "key industries," and an equally non-stellar attempt to run the family wine business, the latter culminating in a lawsuit-embellished family squabble, appears to excel only at playing polo.

Michaele, a retail cosmetics counter clerk by profession, had hoped to obtain wealth and fame by becoming a fashion model, but believe it or not, not every blonde ectomorph who auditions is cast, and she will be neither the first nor the last pretty girl who, after an accurate evaluation and assessment of her own natural talents and aptitudes vis a vis the marketplace, accurately determines that her best chance of acquiring a large bank balance is marriage to an already-wealthy man.

The current chorus of US viewers flooding the internets with outraged calls for their imprisonment, tarring and feathering and extermination by live burning are predictable (and I'm gonna guess also predicted) and consistent with the culture, but that any two people of such spectacular mediocrity would inspire such a tsunami of any sentiment among any population is such an incongruous absurdity - and such a monumental feat of marketing, that I predict it will be the opening chapter in textbooks on the subject unto the 7th generation.

It's also, judging from these first episodes, anyway, the DC franchise's one chance at getting high enough ratings to placate the suits in the accounting department.