Wife Swap

There is a disturbing show on every day that I watch with all too frequent morbid facination. It is called 'Wife Swap' and is about two families who swap wives for two weeks. And I don't mean swapping Buckingham Palace for Coronation Street. I mean swapping an East Ender for a Manchaster soccer hoodlum. Ever watched it? Showcase network has some real doozies, but this one is frightening because it is about real families and not scripted the way American "reality" shows are orchestrated. Not that I was a poster girl for motherly or wifely behaviour -- far from it (just ask my kids). No, the thing that rivets is that both wives are convinced they are super- mothers-- even in the face of the dog and cat shit they pick their way around in each other's houses, to cite just one homey example of domestic perfection. Week one each wife has to live by the other's rules -- all detailed in how-to manuals left for the replacement wife; week two they change the rules and run the family their way. On any given show, pole dancers have to make cookies and lesbians have to cater to the household demands of a domineering male. And these are the mothers I am referring to! Typically, the settings are in industrial England and typically everyone smokes, drinks and generally ignores completely, or caters mindlessly to, the bereft children. It is to weep.

The show switches swiftly from one household to the other and a narrator provides the continuity. Kind'a reminds me of the old children's show, 'Hammy Hampster', where the voice-over just made the story up as the animals did their unpredictable thing. "Oh look, Hammy has decided to venture to the riverbank to see what froggy is doing," ...becomes in 'Wife Swap', "Oh look, Jane has decided to pack in cooking dinner to go outside and smoke a joint." It is unbelievable. In another show both parents are councilmen and spend their time wandering from house to house with clipboards asking their constituents if they need anything, while their unattended children forage for rotting food back home. The rationale is that the constituents need more help than the kids. Yes, the Nanny State is alive, well and thriving in Britian. Every show lays out a smorgasbord of filthy houses, rude children, spoiled parents, unruly pets and layabout adults that would rival anything ever written for fiction. Yet each mother is a self-proclaimed Madonna. Ah, such are the powers of self-delusion to which we all succumb.

Usually, each family claims to have "learned" something from the experience -- whether it is that they were right all along, or that maybe it is not child abuse or corporal punishment for a six-year-old to be in bed before 11 p.m. We recently rented a video entitled, 'This is England' and I thought it was a one-off aberration of suburban perversion and lawlessness. 'Wife Swap' confirms it is not. The England of green meadows, gurgling brooks and Mr. Darcy is no more. She has been suplanted by an urban morasse of depressing chaos. But, we have our own jewel here in North America...more about 'Judge Judy' later.................