I rarely watch television. I don't have a DVR, so any shows that I want to watch I either have to 1) stay up late to catch it, 2) wait for reruns and hope I have more energy or 3) wait for the season's DVD to come out.
Granted most of the shows I really enjoy are on Bravo, so catching reruns aren't hard. However, shows like The Office and So You Think You Can Dance just have to wait.
Last night I made an exception to my rule. Actually I got sucked in. I saw a preview for the Baby Borrowers. My mom was interested in it and a couple weeks ago my friend Steph commented on it. I lost some sleep to catch this show.
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, let me explain. The Baby Borrowers is a reality show on NBC. Five teenage couples (I use the term couples loosely as they're still teenagers) are put up in a house to play house. Most of these "couples" want to have kids and think it'll be easy. Five real families donate their children to this experiment. For 3 days and 2 nights the teenagers care for the children. They experience what it's really like to have kids.
The parents of the kids watch on monitors to see what's going on with their children. Each house has a secret nanny for when someone needs to step in.
After the 3 days and 2 nights, the actual parents come to give a review to each of the couples.
Last week they got babies. You want to see a meltdown on national television, get some arrogant teenager, make them lose precious sleep from a crying baby and then make them go to work. I thought two of the girls were going to actually need some therapy in the form of a good slap to the face. They got nasty. Welcome to the world of babies! It's like totally not like about you anymore, you know?
What surprised me is that the teenage boys really stepped up to the plate and took care of the babies. I was impressed with them.
That's where I stopped liking the show.
This week the teenage "couples" got toddlers. Most of the toddlers were around age 2. We've got meltdowns, potty training, etc. Some of the "couples" got twins or siblings. It was like a double whammy. It was like Press Your Luck. No whammies, no whammies, no whammies. Then the little cartoon whammy comes on stage they lose all their money. In this case they lost sanity. This phase almost broke every "couple."
What shocked me was how horrible some of the girls treated these children. One girl, Morgan, should attend some classes on acceptible handling of another human. Also, perhaps a class how to change a diaper. This girl is unreal. I know she makes for good television drama, but I was mad. She dragged a kid across the floor by his hand. Then at the parent's review, the parents congratulated them. Their son wasn't taken care of, it makes you wonder what kind of parents they are.
The whole thing actually ticked me off. Here's my reasons:
1) These teenagers range in age from 18-20 and they're shacking up. I'm sorry, but if my 18 year old daughter had been dating her boyfriend from, you know, like 8th grade, I still wouldn't be okay with them living together at 18.
2) The language these kids use around the children is unacceptable. You don't drop the f-bomb around a small child because you're ticked off they didn't make it to the potty. That's never okay in my book.
3) What kind of parents drop off their 2 year old child, who doesn't understand what's going on? After seeing some of these kids and how they treated the kids, I would've walked across that cul-de-sac and taken my child back. Yet most of these parents laughed.
4) It's not real. There is a reason the love you have for your child is the way it is. It's undescribable. If you didn't have this love for your child, you would act like those arrogant teenagers.
While I think it's a great learning experience for the teenagers, it just seems to go against most of my values. While there were times when the potty training accidents happened that I laughed at the teenagers responses, I'm totally disappointed in this show.
Maybe they need to do this more as a follow-up to Engaged & Underage on MTV. Now you're 19 and married, are you really ready for a family. Rather than picking some snotty college freshman who think kids are like totally easy and like I can still like, you know, like go get my nails filled and like grab some like Starbucks on the way to like lunch with like my friends.
All I can say is I'm glad next Wednesday is the 16th and Project Runway starts again. That's some good TV.
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