Guilty Pleasures

I admit it; every once in a while Drey actually catches the sadly hilarious WIFE SWAP on ABC.. and I sometimes sit in with her. or we used to, before it got fairly obvious that the show was scripting the outcome a little too heavily.

I know, I know. UnReality TV is total crap, and "Wife Swap" is really bottom feeder material, about as bad as it gets. The thing is, you have to understand how unintentionally hilarious all this stuff gets. Train wrecks have their own special aura, don't you agree? Think I'm overstating the point? Check out the most famous participant on Wife Swap, DARK SIDED HILLBILLY WOMAN!

Unfortunately, you can't find prime material like Dark Sided every day of the week, and the show's premise is gradually losing it's appeal. One episode we DID catch last year was "The Hippy Mom from Virginia swapping places with the Materialist Mom from Rhode Island". This was one of the few that I caught, and the ONLY one where I felt any empathy towards the participants. First of all, the premise was obviously artificial-- take the mom from an eco-friendly, liberal "hippy" home near Richmond, transplant her to the palatial house of a materialistic family in Rhode Island, and take the mom from Rhode Island to live for a couple weeks at the "commune" down in Richmond. Hilarity ensues, yes?

Well, I ended up feeling pretty sorry for everyone involved, and some degree of empathy for the "hippy" family.. they looked out of their depth, innocent and blown away by their noveau-riche, foul-mouthed contemporaries from Rhode Island. I kind of mentally shrugged, and that was that.

Turns out there was a small sequel of sorts. Drey called me on her way back from the Virginia Rennaissance Faire last night, chirping excitedly about bumping into... none other than "Ash and Sienna", the hippy couple from that episode of Wife Swap!! Go figure!



Audrey approached Ash (right, photo above) and asked him if he was that guy from the show, and actually struck up a friendly conversation (they were both very nice). Turns out the show was about as manipulative as we thought it was. The show producers "shopped around" for a "leftist, eco-friendly" couple using Craigs' List. They edited the show to make Ash and Sienna's point of view sound ridiculous and trivial. They edited out the teenaged boy (of the Rhode Island family) relentlessly calling Sienna a c*nt to her face, among other, far ruder responses.

None of this is surprising, we all knew it was set up, but it's great to get it confirmed.