The other day my friend Dora came over to cut my hair and made me tune into “Wife Swap.” (She had the scissors, so who was I to argue?) In case you are, as I was, unfamiliar with this groundbreaking example of cinema verite, “Wife Swap” takes the female heads-of-households from two polar-opposite families and makes them switch places – husband, kids, house, job, the works – and then shows the audience at home what happens.
The night we watched, the two families were on the opposite extremes of the discipline spectrum: one ran their household like a combination boot camp/juvenile detention center, the other like a wet T-shirt-filled spring break fling in Cancun. You can just imagine the fun shenanigans that ensued. It was like a car wreck – I just couldn’t stop myself from watching – and tsk tsk’ing about each family’s behavior: this one was too lenient, the other one was too strict, with the implication, of course, that mine was just right.
And that’s when it hit me – why we can’t get enough of shows like “Wife Swap,” “Nanny 911,” and the like. With just a few clicks of the remote, chances are good that we’ll be able to eavesdrop on a family even more dysfunctional than our own. That’s something I’m going to try to keep in mind as I prepare to spend 13 days on vacation with six other people sharing my DNA and/or address.
So stay tuned. My Fussy Family on Vacation should be good for several new reality series – or, at the very least, blog posts.
