Sister Wives Season Finale: or, how to kill a useless day

Forgive me, please - oh God, forgive me, for I have a nasty filthy habit and I enjoy the hell out of it. I'm powerless over it and it is just such hell, I'm about to join SWA (Sister Wives Anonymous).

I'm powerless over the Fundamentalist Mormon Brown family, who reside not in polygamist-friendly Utah but in Las Vegas. (Long story.) I'm shamefaced over the whole dang crew of them: Merry, Sheri, Dairy and Marvelle-Ann (or something). 

Sister Husband Kody Brown, who has no visible means of support except a fat salary from TLC, is the four-way hub of this mad domestic mess, dashing not from bedroom to bedroom but from house to house - meaning, the four brand-new custom-built homes the Browns purchased in their very own cul-de-sac after running away from Utah for some imaginary crime.

No one has any money in this family, but, sensing the impending meltdown of the entire system, they decide to plan an elaborate Commitment Ceremony (or four-way remarriage bash) costing, probably, at least $10,000.00.

Some 200 people are coming to this affair, if I may use that expression, so the Browns must know an awful lot of other polygs, some obviously from out of state. But this whole Walmart-catered affair, this stacking-green-plastic-chairs-and-rolls-of-white-paper-on-top-of-folding-tables-borrowed-from-the-local-high-school-gym deal, seemed salted with extras, people who would sit there, eat,and look interested while the Browns nervously read out an interminable Mission Statement which ran on much longer than the Ten Commandments. (I mean the movie version.)

But let's back up a little. All we really cared about, after all, was the four wives' dresses. And it's true, I really did have an interest in watching the process of these gowns being individually designed and created for them.

Oops.

For some reason, they picked about the worst person they could find, a young woman freshly graduated from"design school" who had obviously never made a dress in her life. Then they gave her three weeks to design and make four original, formal-quality gowns in three radically different sizes and styles. There were interminable shots of this young woman pinning, and pinning, and pinning the lopsided, saggy, inside-out, fraying, mismatched pieces of fabric on the wives. None of it looked good, and the general atmosphere was one of sweating alarm as the completely-inexperienced designer tugged and swore. Bringing her mother in at the last minute to keep the ship from sinking altogether did not help.

The whole dress story sort of collapsed, and I was actually shocked that it turned out so badly. Two of the four dresses had to be scrapped entirely ("This isn't working. Do you have something in your closet?"). The other two were unfortunate, like bad costumes from a high school musical, but were launched anyway so the enterprise wouldn't be a total flop.

Robyn, the skinniest and most Kody-worthy of the four (see photo above: now why didn't she wear THAT little red number to the ceremony, seeing as how it made Kody's eyes pop out?) picked a nice little funeral dress out of her closet, and Meri, who doesn't have the sense of a goat, went out on a mad spree and found something for $59.00 that LOOKED like it cost $ 59.00, so tight on her that her substantial abdomen and even her belly button pushed through the sheer fabric.

Well, at least the apple green color was good.

Christine, sometimes known as The One I Like, showed up in a sort of burnt-orange medieval maternity bathrobe, with huge pleated billows of fabric blowing back behind her. The tacky gold ribbons here and there did not contribute to the look. My only question is: where do you buy orange crimplene nowadays? Must be vintage, from Craigslist or some-such. Janelle, who currently seems to have the most fans on the show (it varies from season to season, if not week to week) would have looked nice if the amateur seamstress had  known how to sew. There were four or five bustlines at the front of this thing, meandering switchbacks of poorly-sewn, puckered seams that finally bunched up somewhere above her bust, making her look older and actually disguising her recent, impressive weight loss.

(l. to r.: Christine's unfortunate burnt-orange Camelot castoff; Meri's one-size-doesn't-fit-all, sale-rack special; Janelle's almost-but-not-quite royal blue dress, complete with three breasts and innumerable puckered seams;  Robyn's little black Mormon interment ceremony number. Perhaps because they see their husband only once every four nights, these gals know how to make do.)

The Browns really try - they try and try - but they just never get it right. I don't know what it is. Idiocy? Or is it the pressure of living in a fishbowl, of having cameras zoom in on life's every little crisis? No one even thinks of this. To most people, "having my own reality TV show" is the pinnacle of success and happiness. Everything will be wonderful from now on.

But we are beginning to see what happens when the seeds of narcissism, which I believe are present in every one of us, are watered weekly by reality TV's relentless drool. Les Fleurs de Mal begin to sprout, and eventually they take over.

But soft! What's this I see on the horizon? For reasons that no one is willing to explain, TLC is launchng an ALL NEW polygamy show called My Five Wives, trumping Kody's harem by a whole wife.

There have been whispers on Sister Wives lately about Kody "branching out", something he naturally feels entitled to, with or without his wives' approval. The rumor was seeded and watered when a "fortune teller" came on the show (like a Fundamendalist Mormon would go for that!) and predicted Kody would take a new wife, while everyone acted stunned. Now we see why. The pressure is on: competitive wife-collecting! We can't have FIVE wives on one show, and only FOUR wives on the other, can we? 

(These gals are so committed that they actually rehearse between events: note that one of them is away, presumably getting it on with Kody "Big Polyg" Brown.)

Is TLC phasing out the Browns at last? Am I right in suspecting this new show will be edgier and sexier, with younger, svelter wives and a husband who is not a complete boob?

More will be revealed.

Kody practices his second-favorite sport.

Dear sir or madam, will you read my book

It took me years to write, will you take a look

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Sister Wives: hot and bothered in the kitchen!

(I shouldn't watch this program, shouldn't shouldn't, but I do. I found that this recipe somehow best represents the spirit of the show, especially in terms of spiritual nourishment.)

Sister Wives Recipes

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup corn syrup, like Karo Syrup
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 large bag Fritos scoops

PREPARATION:

1. Spread fritos out on a big jelly roll pan turning them so most of the scoop sides
are up.

2. In a sauce pan combine corn syrup and sugar and stir gently.

3. Cook only until little bubbles begin to form. Do not cook too long or it will get
 too hard when it cools.

4. Remove from heat and mix in peanut butter until it melts. Pour over chips on pan.

Good to eat immediately. Sometimes we melt chocolate chips and drizzle 
over the top.

(Emphasis mine.)

Oh OK then. . . ONE more recipe. . .

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise

INGREDIENTS

• saltine crackers
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 package chocolate chips
• 1 cup finely chopped walnuts

PREPARATION:

1. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with pan spray. Place saltine crackers close together covering entire pan.

2. Bring butter and sugar to boil for 2-1/2 minutes, pour over crackers.

3. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate chips on top, spreading as they melt. Sprinkle with chopped nuts.

So what does patriarch Kody Brown say about all this? "As polygamist cooking goes, this cookbook surpasses all the rest. I mean, our house hasn't seen a vegetable since 1983, but our starch favorites can't be beat! Right, Brigham?"

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Three's Company: Polygamy Pushes the Envelope

(An excerpt from an actual Christian web site devoted to "building the family").

Been watching TLC's 'Sister Wives'?

Have you been surprised how loving, and normal, they seem? Would you be surprised to learn there are many non-Mormon Christians who have felt God prompting them to live this way? Maybe you are curious and trying to figure out if this lifestyle truly can work. Or maybe you are a believer in Christ and you are witnessing all of the practical benefits but still trying to figure out how to make sense of this in light of the Bible. But you are asking yourself “Does the Bible, and it's Author, accept this?" Read on.

In the show Kody Brown makes this statement: “Love is to be multiplied not divided.” The idea of marriage, or a union with a male and female, transcends all religious, cultural, and ethnic boundaries. People from every nation or sphere of the world join together and partner with one another in order to build a family. More than 80% of cultures throughout history have also practiced some level of polygamy.

What does God say?

But the real question is: does Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe, approve of this type of family where one man joins with more than one woman? We at Biblical Families, an evangelical organization dedicated to historical Christianity, see that the Bible teaches and approves of this type of idea of love multiplying. Both the OT and NT teach that God is honored by this type of lifestyle.

Throughout the OT many of God’s holy men lived a lifestyle where they multiplied God’s love. Men like Moses the writer of the first five books of the Bible had two women at the same time in a union, Abraham, who had at least two and maybe three at the same time, Jacob who had four in a union, and numerous others like Gideon, King David, and King Solomon. Likewise, in one place in the OT God even presents himself as in a union with two wives (Ezekiel 23:1-5,7,11).


The NT never alters this idea of love. The theme of love is carried forth by Jesus Christ whose teachings along with the apostles verified this lifestyle as holy, normal, and to be accepted. The God-Man, Jesus Christ, even represents the three types of lifestyles in the Bible. He lived for awhile in a celibate condition, he then died, arose again, and then joined himself to the first church ever birthed in history, the Jerusalem church, which represents a monogamous relationship, and then as other church bodies were birthed he joined or united with them thus displaying a love relationship or union with those multiple members that make up his one body, or family (see 1 Cor. 12:-20,27; Eph. 5:25; 1 Cor. 11:2).

How can this work?

So how can one family have multiple wives in it and there be peace, harmony, joy,
satisfaction, and the blessings of the Lord in that family?

Here at Biblical Families we are teaching and sharing with people how this is possible. In the Christian faith this is not only possible but a very real testimony of the power of grace and the Holy Spirit working in the lives of those that believe. As the Bible says, where the Spirit of the Lord is there will be the fruit of the Spirit which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law (Gal. 5:22).

. . . And so on, and so on, blah blah blah blah blah. I've included the juiciest part of what appears to be a bona fide Christian "family" web site, not only endorsing but encouraging the creepy practice of taking more than one wife with whom you're expected to have multiple children. This article goes on for hundreds of words, quoting the Bible ever more feverishly with each paragraph.

First I've heard of it, myself.

It seems the alarming traditions of fundamentalist Mormons are starting to overflow the container into "Christian" practice. TV shows like Sister Wives (and even Big Love, a satiric comedy/drama) seem to be giving lots of people ideas.

It was a long time ago that the "jiggle show" Three's Company was wildly popular. Not sure if it spawned a host of real-life imitaters or not, but it was, after all, only a sitcom (and those were more conservative times).

I know there is a movement called polyamory. This means any number of consenting adults can live together, with sexual sparks flying in every direction. Let's hope their offspring don't get together, or we'll have a genetic catastrophe. Polyamory is illegal, but every time the polygamy issue comes up, so do they, creeping out most of us to the point of disgust. 

I haven't looked at any polyamory sites, can't bring myself to do it. Once in a fit of madness I googled "marry your pet", and found an actual web site which was, I suppose, tongue-in-cheek (or maybe that's the wrong way to put it).

Some years ago, we had the spectre of a woman marrying herself. Not a bad idea: think what the sex would be like! Contraception guaranteed. It has a lot to say for it, but what happens when it's time for a divorce?

I do wonder sometimes just what's going on here. To be perfectly frank, this strikes me as license for a man to screw a whole bunch of women and still maintain his "faith". I cannot imagine that this practice would allow polyandry, i. e. a woman marrying more than one man, a subject which occasionally crops up on Sister Wives (and which Kody once pronounced "vulgar": a pretty good word to sum up the whole show).

I know I harp on this, it's an obsession and a fascination. In the recent season ender, Robyn had her much-anticipated baby (named Solomon!) at home, moaning in a way that seemed creepily sexual, then popping out ten pounds of Brown baby. One wonders how many more will follow, especially since Robyn has promised Meri to be her surrogate (ANOTHER Brown baby? When will it stop, particularly since the Browns have no discernable source of income?)

Other things crept out. Christine, who seems wholesome and matter-of-fact, isn't. She has probably suffered more than any of the others. A few episodes ago she admitted to marital problems with Kody that she couldn't resolve. In her presence, Meri more or less told her to shape up, that she'd had marital problems too and worked them out on her own, and that's what she was expected to do. Christine had no response to this.

Last week she said she'd been having anxiety attacks and was taking antidepressants. On the Robyn-giving-birth episode she made the baby a cute little sampler which she called a "peace offering" to Robyn: she felt guilty about treating her so badly. Treating her so badly? It made me wonder just what they edit out in these things. At any rate, it helped explain the marital friction and the antidepressants. Sister wives, when faced with towering problems like this, must put up or shut up.

Meanwhile, back at the polygamist Vegas ranch (which brings to mind Spinal Tap's Sex Farm),  Meri and Robyn have peeled off by themselves into the kind of tee-hee-whispering-nasty-rumours giggle-fest you see in Grade Five. Quite a bond they have there. Dynamics like this completely fly in the face of so-called true polygamy, lopsiding the energy and affection between the women, which already seems shockingly unevenly distributed. At one point Meri even mistily says she has the kind of bond with Robyn that she never had with any of the other sisters. Oh, that's going to go down real well with them, I can tell.

But this was the kicker. I've heard it before, so it may even be true (though I admit this comes from Perez Hilton):

OMG! One Of The Sister Wives Was Married To One Of The Other Wives' Brother!

Just when you thought Sister Wives couldn't get any more disturbing, here comes the INCEST!


Star Magazine reports that polygamist and reality show stars, The Brown Family, are more about keeping things within the family than we all thought. In a shocking twist, it was revealed that Kody Brown's second wife, Janelle, was brought in as his wife shortly after she divorced her first husband - Kody's first wife's brother!


What the what?


In one BOMBSHELL of a secret, it was uncovered that Janelle was married to Adam Barber in 1988. Adam is Meri, Kody's first (and only legal) wife's brother. The two divorced only after two years of marriage and three years after that, Janelle joined Kody's polygamist fam.


A family insider reveals:

"I know she was originally very upset over Janelle dumping her brother. I think there has been a lot of unspoken tension between her, Janelle and Kody all these years."

I'd say.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

The Sister Wives exodus: a very costly publicity stunt

An obsession's an obsession, am I right? Remember the Dead Munchkin Hypothesis that lasted, I think, five posts? I promise this one won't run as long (though it keeps coming back for more).


I stumbled upon an article that opened my eyes, wide, about the reality show Sister Wives: you know, the one I keep blathering on about. Their much-publicized flight from Utah to avoid criminal prosecution for their "lifestyle" turns out to be more hype than reality.

I don't know what came first: their exodus from Eden to the Promised Land, or this report which claims they were never really under threat of prosecution in the first place.


"In new legal papers in their court case, the Browns are requesting that the law they’re being prosecuted under be dismissed. That probably won’t happen, but they probably won’t get prosecuted at all either. The prosecutors have mentioned that they are trying to get the case dismissed, since all of the wives have entered into it by their own free will and there isn’t any incest, underage marriage or tax or welfare fraud. So Kody uprooted everyone, took his kids out of their school, giving them three days notice (and telling them not to tell their friends goodbye), and hightailed it to Vegas, all based on his own paranoia. He could have just stayed put and ridden it out. At least he created a great new plot line for his reality show, right?"

I couldn't have said it better myself. But is Kody Brown man enough to admit he made a huge, damaging mistake? What would happen if the family decided to return to  their megahouse in Utah? Nothing, probably, by the looks of it. But pride has a way of keeping people nailed in place.

At this point, it looks like nobody's happy with the move. The teenagers are so bitter and angry that I wonder if one of them isn't going to just plain bolt. You can't casually uproot a kid from this kind of exotic background: he won't find new friends readily, if at all. If the stigma of polygamy doesn't get him, the stigma of having a jackass father who flaunts his screwups on national TV will.

Like some bizarre latter-day (!) Brigham Young trailing a host of obedient wives and children, Kody has made all the decisions here, though as usual the wives pretend to be independent agents. The family seems to be on the verge of cracking apart. Polygamy for the most part must happen under glass: it's a bizarre way of life that makes most people profoundly uneasy. Outside the protective bubble, the spotlight can be pretty glaring.

Divorce won't happen, marital breakdown won't happen, but mental health breakdown is already taking place, and will only escalate. For all his patriarchal posturing, Kody Brown is about fifteen years old emotionally. He acts impulsively, not thinking how his dashing off to "my Plymouth Rock" (his grotesque name for Las Vegas) will affect the large circle of women and children whose security depends on him. Narcissism has a steep cost: but never to the narcissist, who inevitably hands off the damage to the vulnerable souls in his orbit.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Peanut Butter Fritos: the Sister Wives Diet

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

INGREDIENTS

1	cup corn syrup, like Karo Syrup
1	cup white sugar
1	cup peanut butter
1	large bag Fritos scoops

PREPARATION:

1. Spread fritos out on a big jelly roll pan turning them so most of the scoop sides are up.
2. In a sauce pan combine corn syrup and sugar and stir gently.
3. Cook only until little bubbles begin to form. Do not cook too long or it will get too hard when it cools.
4. Remove from heat and mix in peanut butter until it melts. Pour over chips on pan. Good to eat immediately. Sometimes we melt chocolate chips and drizzle over the top.

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

INGREDIENTS

saltine crackers
1	cup butter
1	cup sugar
1	package chocolate chips
1	cup finely chopped walnuts

PREPARATION:

1. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with pan spray. Place saltine crackers close together covering entire pan.
2. Bring butter and sugar to boil for 2-1/2 minutes, pour over crackers.
3. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate chips on top, spreading as they melt. Sprinkle with chopped nuts.

Meri's Caramel Corn

Meri's Caramel Corn

INGREDIENTS

1	cube butter
1	pound brown sugar (2 3/8 cup)
1	cup white corn syrup INGREDIENT NOTE"
1	Eagle® brand condensed milk
1	teaspoon vanilla
3	gallons popped corn

PREPARATION:

1. Cook butter, brown sugar and white corn syrup in a double boiler. Test periodically by dropping a small amount of batter into cold water. If batter can be formed into a firm ball in the cold water, it is finished cooking.
2. Add condensed milk and vanilla. Boil and pour over popped corn.

Ohhhhhh. . . kay. We might just be on to something here, the secret key as to why the four wives (oh, three: one of them is pregnant and usually thin anyway) have been having a teensy bit of trouble losing weight on Sister Wives.

Don't tell me I'm obsessed with Sister Wives, because I already know. I watch them as you'd watch a train wreck staged for public amusement. Most of you will know that this is a "reality" show which follows the adventures and peccadilloes of a fundamentalist Mormon family in a "plural" (polygamous) marriage. They have about a zillion kids and lots of money from unknown sources, which is why they could afford a massive house in Utah before the proverbial shit hit the fan.


The patriarch, a sort of middle-aged Beach Boy named Kody, is the only rooster in a henhouse initially made up of three wives: but soft! Do I see a fourth wife on the horizon, a much younger, much thinner wife, a rather submissive wife who cries at the drop of a hat?


A soon-to-be-pregnant wife?


Hurricane Robyn was nothing to what happened next. In one of many "duh" moments, the family was astounded to learn that authorities were doing an "investigation" of the family on the grounds that they were breaking the law. Then, oh boy, it was getting-out-of-Dodge time.

Though it seems to me highly unlikely that Kody would have been thrown in jail for something that is widely practiced in Utah (he was more likely being punished and held up for ridicule for appearing on television), he dragged his family out of their relative security and stability all the way to Las Vegas, which seems like the worst possible choice for so-called devout Mormons who won't even let their daughters wear tank tops to school.


The big thing now - there's always a big thing - is that the clan needs a source of income to pay for all the furniture-buying jags they're going on. On one episode they said they were going into real estate, but that rather vague plan seems to have been dropped in favour of something way more hip: opening their own gym.

The gals have been making an attempt to lose weight and get in shape. Though the cameras played this down at first, it's obvious all of them except Robyn are seriously obese, well over 200 pounds.
Janelle easily qualifies as morbidly obese.


It's funny to watch them working out with a hunky male trainer for two months, then getting on the scale and being puzzled to see that they've only lost 2 or 3 pounds. When I looked up the Sister Wives recipe book, the mystery was revealed. Though the examples posted here are, I guess, meant for 20 people, a pound of sugar in a single recipe seems extreme. Even main dishes are heavily based on refined carbohydrates, with not much mention of fruits or vegetables. I didn't have space enough for the Mock Tapioca (and surely tapioca itself is "mock" enough), made mostly of Cream of Wheat. I've always thought of that as a post-op food, sort of like the lime jello they give you the day after surgery.

It amazes me that five adults responsible for a huge gaggle of kids can be so irresonsible as to think they can support themselves with this kind of venture. It just doesn't make sense. All the wives seem stressed, with Christine, the supposedly level-headed one, "confessing" that she had been on antidepressants, hastily adding that she was "half off them", to be warmly applauded by Janelle (and do not get me started on "friends" encouraging you to go off your medication! Only your doctor knows for sure.)


Meri is cracking up, obviously, and headed for something pretty dire. Janelle hides behind obesity and blandness, her eyes disturbingly blank. Robyn, well. . .Robyn has already had her baby in "real time", little Solomon Brown (a worse name even than Truely, the name of that bald-headed baby who still looks like a space alien after 18 months).

The more the Meri-er, I suppose, until the money runs out.  But with TLC footing the bill, maybe that won't happen. So Solomon may have a little brother or sister by-and-by, springing from Kody's hyperactive Latter-Day loins.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Sister Wives: THE MUSICAL!

While you're waiting for the full ramifications of an all-singing, all-dancing LDS musical in pastel polyester and cowboy hats, let me fill you in on a little bit of background.

I don't know much about Mormonism except that it's based on the visions and writings of Brigham Young, the ultimate religious patriarch who advocated that love should be "multiplied, not divided". (Oops, that was someone else.) Quite a few years ago now, my husband and I went to Utah to see Bryce Canyon and other heartstoppingly beautiful natural phenomena. While in Salt Lake City, we decided to take in the sights.

It was interesting. When we visited the Great Salt Lake, it was almost like looking at a sheet of silver, inert and devoid of all life. But wait! What were those million-legged little things squirming around in the water? There seemed to be thousands of them.

A local happened to be passing by. "What?" he answered in the jovial manner of most of the Utah-ians we met. "Them's sea monkeys."

Our next little frisson of pleasure came when we took a guided bus tour of the city. It wasn't so much the sights as the narration, which was both informed and hilarious. There were two guides: the driver, who'd been doing this for a lot of years, and a young Mormon student doing part of the required missionary work to become a, well, you know, a real Mormon-Morman-type guy.

The driver asked about our hotel room. "Oh, it's great," we said. "How about the beds?" "The. . . beds?" Then we remembered that our room had not one, but two king-sized beds in it. "This is an LDS secret, but those are for the extra wives," he said.

That was nothing compared to what the student said. We drove along a massively wide street, supposedly built to accommodate throngs of wagons as they steamed along their way to the Promised Land.

"See, there's where Brigham Young used to go for a walk with all his wives," he said.

Badda-boom! Holy roller, it was (unexpectedly) funny!

The surprises never ended. We went to the Mormon Museum, an interesting place that was a rich slice of Utah history. That is. . . until I noticed something.

There was no mention at all of a certain practice, now banned to be sure, but so much a part of Mormon history that leaving it out would be like the history of Canada without maple syrup (or coureurs de bois, or Charlie Farquharson).

There was no mention at all of polygamy.

Really. I turned the place upside down and inside out. It just wasn't there. Not even one of those creep-out photos of a patriarch with dozens of wives and children posed like a school photo ("short people in front, please"). Nada.

Fast-forward to the age of "reality" (read: "unreality") TV, a time when polygamy is not only practiced but shoved in our faces. I have unfortunately become hooked on the misadventures of the Brown family (Kody, Brody, Dody, The One I Like, and You-know-that-fat-one). 

Something funny happened here: for whatever reason, probably financial, they decided to make their private lives public in a megahouse in Utah. Even the bedroom door was open, though they always seemed to feature a wife (interchangeable) dressed in flannel pajamas and a thick bathrobe giving her husband a palsy-walsy, sexless hug.

This show is so weird! The family seemed astonished when the shit hit the fan after (or probably long before) the show premiered. They kept talking about how important it was to "come out" and show the public how they lived, in order to promote, I guess, religious tolerance or something. The deeply-entrenched patriarchal values system that kept the wives nailed in place while claiming independence was presented with a slick veneer of modernity and even hipness. Hey, folks, we're just like everybody else, except that the Daddy boffs a whole lot of Mommies!

So the Utah police, or authorities, or whoever, got on the case and began to persecute them, which was a ratings grab for sure, so they had to "flee" (claiming to be "run out of Dodge" by Kody the faux-cowboy) to the Promised Land: Las Vegas.

Yeah, THAT Las Vegas.

I kept saying, "noooooooooooooooooooooo" as they crammed things haphazardly into their truck, which kept breaking down. Don't do this to the family! Why not stay and face the music? You can flee and claim persecution and try to get public sympathy, or you can stay and take responsibility, in full realization that the reality-viewing public would NEVER allow the law to "split up the family" and make Kody go to jail for his sexual peccadillos (which is, by the way, a sort of Mormon armadillo).

But they ran, and now everything's in a mess. "Split up the family"? Instead of one massive house (with Robyn on the side, her separate kennel a few doors down: I guess Kody needed an airing every four nights), they have FOUR big houses, two with swimming pools, and no discernible source of income. Except maybe reality TV.

I think it's Janelle who had to give up her career doing "???" and has groused about it non-stop ever since, saying she's "used to being busy" and now doesn't know who she is. For some reason she has never done anything in the areas of child care or cooking or household chores. She's just sitting there. She could be peeling potatoes, but no. She "can't find work", and her identity is shattered. But think of the massive amount of work required every day to keep everyone clean, clothed and fed. Why doesn't she just pick one of the four houses at random and roll up her sleeves? But for some reason she's in a sort of special position, maybe because she just doesn't like to clean toilets. This I will never understand. Or is she, after all, Kody's favorite? Did we all think it was Robyn with her flat stomach and hormones and tears? Pshaw. Maybe Kody likes to jump up and down on Janelle's. . . bed.

(Note in the photo below, how Janelle, far left, is almost completely hidden. Fat is stigmatized; polygamy isn't? As a matter of fact, even her head looks smaller than the rest: I think her entire body has been shrunk down, then relegated to the corner.)

Robyn, well. . . most of the ink spilled lately has been about Robyn, Kody's demure new wife, she who cries at the drop of a hat, has a cuter and slimmer figure than any of them, and is now (surprise!) pregnant. The blown fuse of the other three's expired fertility seemed to give Kody license to look for a fourth table leg so he could continue to dine on a richly-varied sexual diet.

This show is so weird about sex. Though in a way, the show is about sex, or at least patriarchal sexual arrangements that most people would find distasteful, everyone kind of pretends it isn't happening. Kody admonishes the fifteen or so teenagers in the family that they can't be "sexual" until they graduate from high school, or turn thirty, whichever comes first. Telling a teenager not to be "sexual" is like telling them not to blink their eyes. It's practically a recipe for shame as they try to cope (alone) with bodies that don't always co-operate. This is not to mention yet another of the dozens of contradictions in the household: they can't be "sexual", when Kody can roll around with four different chicks, of his own choosing of course, and get them pregnant into the bargain.

This past episode featured the Brown family, now trying to maintain four large houses in Las Vegas on no income, going on a furniture-buying binge. For a fundamentalist family who supposedly lives for their faith, this clan is awfully materialistic (and hardly ever mentions God or prayer or anything spiritual, except for having their kids join a Presbyterian youth group "as a social outlet").

TV has become something of a freak show, with two-foot-tall doctors delivering babies not much bigger than they are, people cramming their houses up to the ceiling with foul garbage, and (even) so-called mediums with grating voices telling gullible clients, "Oh yes, I see him standing right there in front of you!" while their eyes brim over with gratitude and hopeless hope.

Network TV isn't much better, with shows like Pan Am and The Playboy Club trying unsuccessfully to coat-tail on Mad Men's phenomenally original influence. (And by the way, why in HELL'S name do we have to wait until February to see Season 5 of Mad Men? Whose brilliantly shitty idea was that? Don't they realize how much momentum they will lose by then? The show is committing suicide, but only because its creator Matthew Weiner is having a prima donna hissy-fit over commercial time.)

So. . . the one truly watchable show is being withheld, with perhaps fatal results. I will admit that my habit of watching Hoarders and Sister Wives and junk like that is about as healthy and justifiable as eating massive amounts of movie popcorn saturated with salt and "golden topping".

But when SW runs out of steam, which it might when the last wife finally passes through menopause and the seventh house explodes, there's always Sister Wives: The Musical!, featuring those merry wives of Kody doing high-kicks and pole-dancing in a joyous celebration of how love should be "multiplied, not divided".

Until the law arrives, and subtracts them all.