Teh One Who Knocks
08-10-2012, 12:53 PM
By Mark A. Perigard - The Boston Herald
http://i.imgur.com/z7igc.jpg
What does TLC stand for these days?
Totally Lame Clods?
The network’s latest unscripted series, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” stars 6-year-old Alana Thompson — who first came to notoriety in the cable network’s odious child beauty pageant show, “Toddlers & Tiaras” — and her rural Georgia family.
There’s a lot of material to mock here.
The Thompsons eat cheese puffs for breakfast.
They go to the Redneck Games and belly-flop in the mud.
They believe breaking wind is the ideal way to lose weight.
OK, there’s no getting around that last one. That’s truly weird and gross.
Yes, the family — including father Mike “Sugar Bear,” pregnant 17-year-old Anna “Chickadee,” 15-year-old Jessica “Chubbs” and 12-year-old Lauryn “Pumpkin” — won’t be opening a Mensa chapter any time soon.
But TLC oh-so-desperately wants you to feel superior to this family.
One small but telling way in which the network tips its hand: At one point, stay-at-home mom June is talking to the camera for some typical scene set-up and starts sneezing. The camera lingers on her.
Any responsible producer — and, yes, reality shows do this all the time — would have the decency to cut, let her regain her composure, and start over.
The family’s accents are thick, but the captioning that runs underneath most of them (at least in the review screener) is moronic. It’s not like they’re speaking Serbian.
Alana, like her fellow “Toddlers” co-star Eden Wood, star of the recent blink-and-miss-it reality show “Eden’s World,” is a child deluded about her greatness. She looks like a little people’s version of Shelley Winters in “The Poseidon Adventure” and shows off her midriff to a disturbing degree.
Despite her collection of trophies, “Boo Boo” is still hunting for that elusive “grand supreme title,” which apparently comes with a mega tiara.
Her pageant experience tonight leaves her sobbing and raises the question of how much she is being pushed into this strange subculture.
Yet despite all of TLC’s crafty maneuvering, this is a family that likes to laugh with each other. The rest doesn’t seem to matter.
TLC should be ashamed of itself.
http://i.imgur.com/z7igc.jpg
What does TLC stand for these days?
Totally Lame Clods?
The network’s latest unscripted series, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” stars 6-year-old Alana Thompson — who first came to notoriety in the cable network’s odious child beauty pageant show, “Toddlers & Tiaras” — and her rural Georgia family.
There’s a lot of material to mock here.
The Thompsons eat cheese puffs for breakfast.
They go to the Redneck Games and belly-flop in the mud.
They believe breaking wind is the ideal way to lose weight.
OK, there’s no getting around that last one. That’s truly weird and gross.
Yes, the family — including father Mike “Sugar Bear,” pregnant 17-year-old Anna “Chickadee,” 15-year-old Jessica “Chubbs” and 12-year-old Lauryn “Pumpkin” — won’t be opening a Mensa chapter any time soon.
But TLC oh-so-desperately wants you to feel superior to this family.
One small but telling way in which the network tips its hand: At one point, stay-at-home mom June is talking to the camera for some typical scene set-up and starts sneezing. The camera lingers on her.
Any responsible producer — and, yes, reality shows do this all the time — would have the decency to cut, let her regain her composure, and start over.
The family’s accents are thick, but the captioning that runs underneath most of them (at least in the review screener) is moronic. It’s not like they’re speaking Serbian.
Alana, like her fellow “Toddlers” co-star Eden Wood, star of the recent blink-and-miss-it reality show “Eden’s World,” is a child deluded about her greatness. She looks like a little people’s version of Shelley Winters in “The Poseidon Adventure” and shows off her midriff to a disturbing degree.
Despite her collection of trophies, “Boo Boo” is still hunting for that elusive “grand supreme title,” which apparently comes with a mega tiara.
Her pageant experience tonight leaves her sobbing and raises the question of how much she is being pushed into this strange subculture.
Yet despite all of TLC’s crafty maneuvering, this is a family that likes to laugh with each other. The rest doesn’t seem to matter.
TLC should be ashamed of itself.