This may say something unflattering about my personality, but I enjoy watching people’s trauma on television. I don’t mean fictional accounts and I don’t mean watching the news and cheering when a group of miners get stuck in a hole — I mean people who go on, say, What Not To Wear or American Idol (in the early rounds). Their misery is self-inflicted, and I love it.
Last night I finally got a chance to watch Honey, We’re Killing the Kids. I found it to be a scaled-down, less interesting version of Nanny 911. One of the more interesting things was definitely when they digitally aged pictures of the little kids. I was hoping this part would be really neat, but it was a bit of a let-down. The new images didn’t look very… human. You could see what they were going for, but the first set of images — the “Your kids at 40 if they keep stuffing their faces” images — seemed a little off. The kids looked like ogres. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 40-year-old as repulsive as the oldest of the three was supposed to turn out.
I’ll grant that she was not a cute kid, but I think their “before” shots were a little forced and over-the-top. The “after” shots weren’t too bad, you could tell that they were fake, but they looked a bit more realistic.
The reason I didn’t care for it, though? The woman doesn’t stick around. She shows up once a week (for three weeks), gives them their “rules”, and then leaves. The only conflict is when the kids act like brats or the parents fight. If I want to see kids acting like brats or grown adults screaming at each other, I’ll go to Walmart some Sunday after churches let out.
What I want to see, and the reason I liked Nanny 911, was some parental-smack-down. These parents are ridiculous and they need a little more of a motivator than some well-mannered woman coming around once a week to give them “rules.”
Do you know what I want to see? I want to see R. Lee Emery (he’s the Drill Instructor from Full Metal Jacket and the host of The History Channel’s Mail Call) go into a shopping mall or Walmart or something, pick out a family with horribly misbehaving children (or parents), and fix their problems right there in front of god and everyone.
I think it would make for an amazing television show. All of you TV Execs who read this blog can have the idea… all I want are the DVDs and a chance to appear on one of the episodes.
