The other day, I was watching a particularly entertaining episode of "Wife Swap" (the one where upon meeting, one wife declares she hates the other one for sending her canine "family members" away for the week of her stay with the family).
I found myself surprised not only by the fact that the respective husbands seemed to like the swapped wives much more than the wives seemed to like each other, but also by the fact that I found this surprising.
Think about it - these women have offered themselves up to Wife Swap. This means that they have felt so under-appreciated and unloved by their families that they have turned to desperate measures in an effort to fix their household statuses.
Swapping lives with another, presumably very different woman for a week (a very long time in the eyes of a mother) is a rather extreme action to take just to gain a little bit of appreciation.
One has to consider the likely possibility of multiple family problems manifesting themselves in the homes of the swapped wives. Often, these problems are shown as little prefaces to the episode (and sometimes they are shown more clearly when the new wife/mother arrives). Children are bratty and disrespectful or whiny and clingy with their parents, and husbands are dominating and controlling or lazy and selfish with their wives.
I'm not trying to lay the blame completely on other family members, either. More often than not, the wives themselves are very difficult to deal with - they have weird quirks, they have absurd rules, they are leading dictatorships or they are laid back to the point of familial negligence. And everyone's sick of them.
So, they're all probably pretty relieved when they are chosen for the swap, and separated from one another. And hey, just for a week, right? As I maintain, a long time in the eyes of a mother - but not so much in the eyes of her husband and adolescent kids.
Having had problems with the ways of the now-swapped wife/mother, one would expect the families left behind to greatly enjoy the presence of a new person - to view them as a breath of fresh air, and perhaps to view their stay as a blessing and a gift that they'll all be upset to see go after only seven days.
I'll put it out there - I wouldn't even be surprised if I heard that many of the (equally under-appreciated) husbands ventured to sleep with their week-long wives while the opportunity presents itself.
Yet, no. Seven days is all it takes for a family to absolutely despise their new replacement. Fights break out between new-wife and kids, and new-wife and husband. Nobody likes the newbie. They sigh their woes to the camera, they yell and scream their frustrations, and by the end of the swap-week, every member of the family has his or her respective foot up the woman's ass.
There are almost never exceptions, either. Sometimes the drama won't reach levels of relatively great height, but family members still uphold a neutral as opposed to happy disposition towards the wife in question, and always emphatically and repetitively reiterate how much they miss their real mother/wife.
I know the show is being censored. Here is my question - how? Is the channel only streaming the episodes that end up positively for the participating wives? Are the participants on the show told to say certain things? How do they censor shows like this?
(Are they not showing secret sex scenes?)And would censorship say about the whole theory behind swapping wives?
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Comments (19)
It's reality TV. Of course it's fake and staged.
My boss's family was almost on the show. Even when filming the interview with the producer, they were staging arguments and stuff. Totally fake, but still a hilarious show!
Hahaha. Man. My favorite episode is the one where the conservative Christian woman swaps with punk woman? And she has a stripper pole in the living room.
I watch Wife Swap a lot, and barley anything you said in this show matched up to what happens.
One family is one way, the other is another. Usually polar opposites. For example, one family may have strict rules for the kids; making them have loads of chores and do lots of homework, while the other family let's their kids do whatever they want and no chores get done. Or, another common one, one families parents (or just one parent) works a lot to provide for the house, while the other family barely works and spends most of their time with their kids.
The point is by putting these polar opposites together, they can learn things about a different way of living through seeing how another family lives. That's one reason for the rule change thing: one week, the new wife follows the rules of the house, then the next week, she can change the rules. Most often than not, the rule changes ARE a refresher for the new family. So when mom goes back home, they can take what they learned from the other family and make positive changes to their families. At the end of it, the children usually appreciate their mothers more, the husband's their wives more, and life has more balance instead of being one extreme. A lot of women on the show have said that Wife Swap saved their marriage.
Just saying, you may be talking about Trading Spouses. That's different because a new family just gets a new parent and then all hell breaks loose. With Wife Swap, there's more order. And in Wife Swap, there have been times where families don't change in the end, or end up being so angry at the other wife that they walk out of the table meetings and whatnot. It's not all sunshines and rainbows at the end. One woman, who was in a house of people who worked out a lot and was obese herself derailed all the progress the other woman made in her household. The other woman managed to get the family WANTING to work out more, and the husband was even offered an old job that he loved. When she got back, however, she refused to work out with her husband, so he lost motivation, and she made him refuse the job offer. So that didn't have a happy ending.
As for the cheating, I doubt it. These families have kids and cameras following them around 24/7. Chances are, their kids would catch them if they tried. And if their kids didn't, well, they usually get pissed at each other in the first 48 hours, so I doubt they would want to cheat on their spouses with a stranger they dislike so much.
And, as someone said already, it's reality tv. Yes, it's fake and staged.
@jenigrins@xanga - Oh, I remember that! Loved that one. Haha. I'm not a Christian, but a stripper pole in your living room? C'mon now! lol.
@SeeBeeWrite@xanga - Always but it doesn't mean it isn't bad, just entertaining when I have nothing to do or nothing to watch.
@jenigrins@xanga - HAHA My favorite is the one with the pagent girl that gets christmas gifts every day and her mom does her homework. Then there was a big scandal where the family turned around and tried to sue ABC because they took the girl out of all the honors classes and into special ed classes. The family was saying everything was staged, blah, blah.
i don't think it's censored much. the producers just deliberately match the wives with families they are more than likely NOT going to get along with. the families are always complete opposites. hence, fighting and resentment ensues..and the family appreciates their regular mom/wife more. people in general just hate extreme change. that's pretty much the point of the show.
@c0ntrabasso@xanga - nooooo!!!!!! i KNEW it
Wow, I'm sorry but I think you've COMPLETELY missed the point of Wife Swap. The show isn't really about "under appreciated" spouses, although some of them are certainly under appreciated. It's just about switching up wives from families with completely different values/morals/outlooks on life, etc. I don't think that most of the wives are necessarily "relieved" to get away from their real families. Likewise, the wives are not meant to be a breath of fresh air but rather something to take the families out of their comfort-zones.
Are you sure you're not thinking of a different show? And to answer your question, I highly doubt that there are many "secret sex" scenes on Wife Swap. I think it's mostly fake.
hm... i disagree although i will admit I only read like the first 3 paragraphs of that. But IMO wives don't just sign up because they feel underappreciated; sometimes that's a part of it, but more often it's because
A) they think they're good parents and want other families to experience their parenting style
B) They don't have a lot of money and you get like 10,000 at the end of the show I think
C) Various given reasons- last time I watched the mother feared she was becoming too much of a mother hen and wanted to give her kids some space and learn to live without following their every move.
I think the main reason the husbands like their "2 week" wives better than their wives like the 2 week wives is pretty obviously the fact that they spend time with them. You're going to know a person better/be more understanding of them once you've lived with them for 2 weeks. The wives only meet for about 2 hours and are made to give themselves advice which is obviously going to get people riled up a bit.
I'm wondering if you've only watched this show once, however, because it's not just for a week- as far as I know, it's always 2 weeks- one week under old rule, one week under new rule.
* to add- of course it's censored! it's reality tv. they film multiple people for 2 weeks, and it takes up 40 minutes of your time. You'd be loco to think they don't cut anything. everything that happens is real, i think, and some come out less positively than others. they obviously try to end on a more upbeat note bc that is the point of the show.
My favorite episode is with the "EVERYTHING'S UNGODLY" woman.
My friend's family was on wife swap, and it definitely wasn't a "let's resort to reality TV to solve our familial strife!" sort of decision. It was just a "hey, this could be interesting" whim. From what I heard from her, most of the situations and emotions were exaggerated with strategic directing and editing, so it's hardly a show to watch with seriousness on your mind. Lighten up and laugh at the madness.
They get payed.
@Salivarysatisfaction - Is that the fat one who was mad over the Wiccan lady or whatever, she was, and ripped up the letter?
Are we talking American Wife Swap or English Wife Swap?
Both are reality tv and of course have been edited together in whatever way creates the 'best tv' for the audience, but also, I know that when American Wife Swap airs in England, there is actually a disclaimer at the start of the show that states that some of the scenes are directed and acted to create more drama!!
@roxybabe1623@xanga - Yea.
I never watched the show but I think it is eww and lame. it is definetly something mario would never do to princess peach since she is a stuck up royal pain in the ass.