Wife Swap

Oh, how I’ve missed the eccentric families of Wife Swap. Their general wackiness can cure any case of the Monday blues. That said, let’s start with Sheila Rush, an avid dog lover, whose husband, Ray, and son, Tyler, felt that they came last in Sheila’s set of priorities.

For Sheila, her six dogs are her entire world. She doesn’t want friends because she wants to have more time with her dogs. She makes her husband sleep in the downstairs guest room, while the dogs sleep with her in the bed. She spends a hundred thousand dollars a year on dog clothes (which seems atrocious and kind of sad, since that much money could probably clothe and feed so many needy people) and $3 a week on dog food. Her dogs eat fine steak off fine china, but her husband and son eat fast food off of paper products.

Sheila made me cringe a lot. She was definitely mean, like a little kid trying not to listen to anyone else’s point of view because she considered herself the only mouthpiece worth listening to. She was just so cold and abrasive and poor Ray bowed to her every demand, even cleaning up the dog poop and watching whatever love his wife had in her go to the four-legged "babies" of the house.

I kept wondering what brought her to this point, what made her so anti-people. You could see Sheila’s seething discomfort in social settings when Rob Bolman took her to a "communal happening" on his eco-commune. She stood with her arms crossed defensively over her chest, looking disdainfully at the eco-friendly partygoers. Someone asked if she wanted to get to know them and she said no. When others at the party came to sit by her, she got up and walked away.

We did eventually learn that she had difficulty with her father growing up and that he had disappointed her greatly. She loved her dogs because they could never disappoint her or upset her. But shouldn’t she love and trust her husband, who submits to everything she wants and doesn’t put up any kind of fight? Her husband acts like a puppy, but she barely acknowledges him. That’s a huge problem. I don’t know how much of it will rub off on their son, either, when he moves out and on his own. He’s told to do his macho things, play football and wrestle, that the man should work eight to ten hours a day, but then he sees his father bow to his mother, sleep in the guest room, and not stand up for himself.

Sheila and Ray admitted at the table meeting that they love each other, but not the way that Rob and Melanie love each other. To me, it seemed like they could barely stand each other. And the big change Sheila allowed Ray by the end of tonight’s episode? Ray got to “visit” the master bedroom and watch a movie with his wife and her six dogs, but then he had to be sent back to his place in the guest room. At least Tyler got to give up football. I found it really ironic that Sheila would tell Melanie and Rob that they need therapy, when it seemed like Sheila had the most issues of all and that she and Ray could use a good dose of marriage counseling, if not divorce. Rob was accurate in saying that Sheila was deeply wounded, but I don’t think that should give her the liberty to verbally abuse whomever she wants.

On the other hand, Melanie and Rob, though they seemed like a nice and sweet and loving couple, did have plenty of odd issues, too. I didn’t understand the dumpster-diving at all, especially when they seemed to be in a nice neighborhood with manicured lawns. It wasn’t healthy to eat out of garbage cans. And what kind of family unit did their son, Skye, have access to? He lived in his own place adjacent to the house, which didn’t seem like such a big deal to me, and he biked around the neighborhood with his parents to get food from garbage cans. They also peed into cups and used the urine to fertilize their gardens. Nonetheless, Skye seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.

I do commend Rob for standing up to Sheila. I also liked that Melanie and Rob seemed to really love each other. Sure, they lived on a commune, mediated a lot, made their own food (I’m not sure I want to know what “reclaimed onions” are) and banned toilet paper, but they genuinely loved each other. I don’t see what’s wrong with toilet paper. That spray thing on the toilet didn’t seem like it could do the trick cleanliness-wise. (I did enjoy Tyler saying how he’d need “a lot of pressure” on the toilet spray and that he didn’t like things near his behind). But they had a healthier marriage than Sheila and Rob seemed to have.

I had a few problems with Ashley Pitney. One, she had this whole theory that real men shouldn't tap dance. Gene Kelly tap danced. So did Fred Astaire. Both were men. Neither one was really a "girly man." Men can tap dance or do ballet. But Ashley seemed to be against that. She wanted her boys to play sports and be tough men. She said dancing was for little girls in tutus, which bothered me. Because both boys and girls can dance, play sports, do whatever.

Ashley Pitney seemed to have a very specific idea of gender roles that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. She waited on her husband and boys hand and foot, which is fine if that's what she prefers. While Alan Pitney gambled online for hours and her sons played video games, she did everything. But she didn’t mind.

Ashley Pitney didn’t know what to do when she was transplanted into the Silver household, where the man waited on the wife hand and foot and the boys enjoyed tap dancing more than sports. Instead of trying to engage in the tap dancing and the music, she made her spiteful comments and tried to change them into her notion of real men.

I know that she was trying to show the Silver boys a different kind of lifestyle, but I felt like she was really aggressive about it. She didn’t try to understand them. She just looked down at them and thought they were girls instead of boys. She didn’t try to understand their take on spirits or psychics; she just balked and called it hocus-pocus. She seemed rude to me. She gave Sam Silver a microphone and told him to start voicing his opinions, but then she gave him opinions to voice (telling him to say, “I won’t do the dishes tonight”). I think she and her husband, Alan, were kind of mean. When the video game console wouldn’t work in the Silver household, Sam and the boys said that it was because the spirits wouldn’t allow it. Ashley screamed at them: “The spirits have not made the game stop working! Y’all have freaked me out for the last time.” That, to me, is not an effective way of discussing someone’s beliefs. They believed in the spirits, and everyone has their own beliefs. She should’ve been more accepting of that. Instead, she was quick to call it hocus-pocus and tell them that they were crazy.

I did like that Ashley introduced Justin Silver to basketball. The Silver boys did need to be more social and find other activities to do. Andrew Silver was kind of caught up in the idea of being a star. His mom, after all, told him that he was destined to be a star, so he was naturally overly into it. Remember the scene at his mom’s creative group? After he finished playing his guitar for the 60-year-old ladies, one of them asked him when he’d written it. He said he’d done it that day in under an hour because he was quick like that. I think he believed a little too hard in his destiny of becoming a star. He wasn’t allowing himself to look at other things because his mom, Sheree Silver, had told him what he was meant to do. If my mom told me that I was meant to be a tap-dancing star, I would’ve believed her.

Of course, Sheree Silver was also kind of odd. But I think she knew that and didn’t think of herself as strange. She was a professional psychic who made her kids listen to relaxation tapes every night to go to sleep. They went to sleep with her reading affirmations to them. Her husband, Sam, painted her toenails and blow-dried her hair every morning. He was a sweet guy, but I don’t know if he should’ve been pampering her to the extent that he was. In a way, he did need a pep talk from Ashley Pitney about standing up for himself, but he did not need her yelling at him that he was a woman, not a man. She was really rude to him at the table meeting, as was her husband. Alan Pitney called Sam “mullet” and told him to shut his trap. He told Sam that he should tell his wife to shut her trap more often. That, to me, was rude.

I understood why Sheree got upset and walked away. But Sheree was definitely out of line when she told Alan that his son Tyler used to be an extraterrestrial in a past life. If she knew they’d be resistant to that, maybe even angry about it, then why would she tell them? Sheree believed in her psychic powers and wanted her kids and everyone in her life to believe in them, too. She didn’t seem to understand that maybe Alan and Ashley wouldn’t enjoy the idea that she called their son an alien. Sheree’s son may have been convinced that he was a soldier and that his dad killed him in a past life, but some families don’t like their kids thinking that kind of stuff. I know I wouldn’t tell my kid something like that, especially if they were as vulnerable as the Silver kids.

At least Alan Pitney learned to appreciate his wife more. And he doesn’t gamble as much, since Sheree Silver hypnotized him into stopping.

Finally, we have a new episode of Wife Swap. Yes, it seems to be that ABC has moved it to Friday nights, but hopefully that’s only temporary. At least we have a new episode. And I have to say, I wasn’t disappointed by these quirky families.

I’ve missed seeing the families each week, getting a glimpse into their lives and witnessing how they react to drastic differences from what they’re used to in their households. It’s entertaining and calming to me, for some reason, to know that such unique families exist out there. I always wonder where they find these families and if they’re real. And I always wonder how I’d fare in each of the households.

I’d definitely find it hard to stay in the Browne family. The dad, Trenton, seemed like a sweet enough man who found it hard to discipline his kids. His wife, Christie, liked to have fun with her boys, which meant she drove the getaway car when they toilet-papered neighboring houses. (I wonder if their neighbors got upset after watching this? I never liked the idea of toilet-papering people’s houses or egging somebody’s car. It always seemed juvenile, but then again, Christie prefers to be on the same level as her sons, and all of her sons are, naturally, juvenile.)

I couldn’t stay in their home because of the four unruly boys. When I say unruly, I mean off-the-wall, back-talking and junkyard-living boys who could quite possibly send me running for the highway. You could refer to the old adage of “boys will be boys,” but these boys seemed especially unruly and wild. They’re surrounded by fields and goats without anything to entertain them but each other, and the parents didn’t step in to discipline them. They acted like hooligans and that was accepted. Neither parent wanted to step in and say that they should grow up, but the perfect person to do so was D'eva Robinson, a tough diva obsessed with surface impressions. Yeah, she was a tad too obsessed with plucking eyebrows and making her kids look flawless, but she was the right person for the job of talking back to the Browne boys. She didn’t step down when 11-year-old Benny got up in her face. She got right back in his face. Of course, nothing really changed until D’eva encouraged Trenton to go dancing (and he wasn’t too bad a dancer) and they came back home to find 17-year-old Charlie hosting a hot-tub party for a group of friends.

I got chills when Trenton finally stood up to Charlie. He put his foot down and said that he’d been made a fool of for the last time. When Charlie responded that he “wasn’t sending the kids home,” Trenton said that he would. Thank god. Charlie was letting 11-year-olds party with the rest of the kids. And when D’eva approached the hot tub? She just got stuff thrown at her and was told to go away. I know that, as a child, I lashed out from time to time, but I never lashed out like these boys did. They called the dad stupid and an idiot.

When Trenton stood up to the kids and told them to get out of the house, I was so happy for him. He just needed to push them a little. He didn’t want to see his kids go down a misguided path, but he needed a wake-up call. What happened when his boys got pulled over by the cops for fighting in the back of a minivan after D’eva taught them how to do their own laundry at a laundromat? Trenton jovially said that they didn’t get picked up by the cops, at least, like the other times. So when the time came for Trenton to stand up to the kids, I was thrilled. He didn’t want his kids to turn out bad, but he didn’t want them to lose a sense of fun, either. But when Charlie threw the party and had 11-year-olds in attendance, Trenton finally realized that he needed to protect his home and his kids by laying down some rules.

I think D’eva was the right person to face up to those boys. I loved that she ran after 11-year-old Benny as he drove the car, begging him to stop. She had spunk. She knew that she should get the oldest, Charlie, to embrace the idea of responsibility and then it would trickle down to the others. Of course, D’eva’s whole obsession with being a diva was slightly off-putting, but nobody could take away the credit she deserved in getting Trenton to discipline his kids. So maybe it was a little odd that she legally changed her name to be more diva-like. At least her kids were well behaved.

D’eva’s kids — her two boys and daughter Taylore — were going to be divas and hairstylists. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that Dwayne and D’eva wanted to teach their kids the family business of hairstyling. I was more bothered by Christie’s insistence that by teaching their sons how to style hair, Dwayne and D’eva were teaching them to be “sissies.” Christie seemed so set in her ways. Dwayne shouldn’t have spoken to her about what a real woman should look like and how a real woman shouldn’t wear jeans and a T-shirt all the time. Dwayne’s comments about how a “real” woman should be seemed so cliché and absurd, but he and D’eva seemed perfect for each other and very much in love.

These two families were never going to agree on much at all. I was annoyed that Christie stood up and walked out of the table meeting, but D’eva did question Christie on what kind of mother she was, so I understood why Christie walked out. Criticisms about parenting are bound to elicit some nasty reactions, but Christie walking out made me view her as a stubborn person who wouldn’t let the experience of the show change her.

At least the boys seemed changed. Charlie took on more responsibility, the boys helped out more and Trenton and Christie made more time for romance, even if romance for them meant making out in a car in the junkyard.

I was a little nervous about the Grimes family when I saw them making that answering-machine message — “We’re not in Japan, but we’ll get back to you as soon as we can,” or something like that. I don’t mind musical answering-machine messages, but it was something about Lori Grimes’ eyes. Her eyes were always wide open and she was always smiling and happy. I know that smiley, happy people exist in the world, but those eyes of hers made me nervous. It was a combination of her slightly crazy eyes and her penchant for singing whatever action she was doing, like making cheesecakes or getting kids out of bed. I just didn’t trust her and I don’t know why.

Lori Grimes seemed like a sweet, nice enough person, but whenever she or her husband, Doug, or her kids used the word “training,” that familiar sense of nervousness returned to me. Why do they use the word "training" when discussing how they “teach” their kids? Why not use the word "teach" or "show" or "demonstrate"? Training seems imposing and in some ways that’s what their style of parenting was doing. By controlling everything, including their beliefs, the parents were “training” their kids to act like them.

The Grimes kids weren’t the mindless robots Tracy West seemed to think, but they were a product of their upbringing. They were content kids, as they told Tracy, but they seemed a little bit sheltered. Everything was scheduled. They couldn’t even watch TV unless they chose the programming as a family. Family togetherness is a good thing, but too much can be off-putting. Ragan was allowed to do Irish step dancing because she wouldn’t have to move her hips in any kind of sexual way. Miles wasn’t allowed to drive to school. The Grimes’ were structured. So structured that Miles Grimes got upset when Tracy threw The Brain (odd name for a scheduling calendar, sounded kind of cultish) into the fire. I have to agree with him that throwing it into the fire was inconsiderate.

Thank god she didn’t throw a Bible into the fire. But I understand why Miles got real upset about the family calendar being burned because it showed what their family had done and what they were going to do. But why was The Brain a part of their memory keeping? What about scrapbooks and photos? It seemed strange. The kids were way too attached to The Brain, but throwing it into the fire was probably too drastic. And what was Doug Grimes teaching his son Miles about women’s work?

It upset me when Tracy talked about how Miles was taking on his father’s dependence on the mom to do all the cooking and cleaning because that was women’s work. Tracy West was right when she said no woman should have to be a servant to her family.

That was pretty much the only thing I found endearing about Tracy West. I mean, she was nice enough and not terribly annoying. She liked horror, but that wasn’t really played up a whole lot.

What I didn’t like was the “no boundaries” mantra she upheld. I was really glad when Lori Grimes showed Alaina West that having a soft-porn website is not healthy for a twenty-year-old. Alaina was a rock-band groupie and she was hooking up with older men and putting illicit photos of herself on a website that wasn’t being watched by her parents.

At the table meeting, Tracy West said that kids couldn’t stay innocent forever, but Alaina definitely needed some guidance and somebody to tell her that having that website wasn’t OK, and that hanging out with older men without any supervision was probably not giving her positive influences.

I’m glad that Lori got through to her and that Alaina’s going to try and change her ways and overhaul her lifestyle. And I’m glad that Katie finally got some attention, although I didn’t think a Katie Day was as necessary as a Family Day was. Katie just wanted to spend some quality time with her family. With Lori Grimes’ influence, she and her mom realized that they needed to spend more time together. It was nice to see Tracy West stepping up in her relationship with her daughter.

It was also good to see the West kids pitching in to help their dad, because Mike West did do a lot and they weren’t appreciative. He let them have it and told them they could be more respectful. And he finally saw Alaina’s website and had a heart-to-heart with her. Although, how could the mom let her daughter have a website like that with pictures of her daughter nearly naked in a bed with her friends? It just seemed so wrong.

On a final note, that table meeting was calm, cool and collected. I loved when Lori Grimes called Tracy West “pumpkin” and tried to get her to see that Alaina needed some guidance and support in changing her lifestyle.

I was happy to see Miles Grimes finally get to drive himself to school, though I was a little disappointed that Ragan Grimes didn’t take up the drums. I guess she was too into her Irish dancing and musical theater to give it up. Or maybe she didn’t take up the drum because The Brain told her not to. Either way, it’s probably best she didn’t become a hardcore rocker. God only knows what would happen.

So, let’s talk about this explosive table meeting. I’d heard whisperings about the explosive scene and seen the frantic previews, but I had never seen this episode until the repeat tonight. I’m still trying to figure out what caused it.

First, Kim Carrao leaves the house because cowboy Randy Ridgely is being belligerent. On the way to the table meeting, Randy’s gearing up to fight Kim’s husband Louis. They get to the table meeting. Kim talks first. She accuses Randy of not doing anything she asked. He responds by saying she didn’t do anything at all, and she was a bad influence on the kids. He says she brought a “trough” of candy into the house, which makes Louis laugh (it made me laugh, too, 'cause it wasn’t really a trough, it was just a bowl and he was freaking out over candy of all things), which makes Jen angry at Louis for laughing. “What’s so funny?” she barks at Louis. Then Louis starts telling Kim how much of a prude Jen is; Jen gets heated and scoffs at Louis’ sudden development of a backbone. Then Jen’s going, “Do I look like a prude?” (Answer, in my opinion: kind of.) Jen starts calling Kim "disgusting" and a "slut," at which point Kim throws water at Jen. Randy flips out and throws the table on Kim and Louis. Louis freaks out and goes after Randy, who is all manly and wanting to punch him. All hell breaks loose. People come out from behind the cameras, everyone screams, someone’s telling somebody else “don’t do it.” Then there’s fancy camerawork, the scene blacks out, comes back up to show Louis threatening to sue Randy. More screams. The set workers are holding the guys back. Kim is acting all tough and yelling at Randy. And then a final shot of the table, where all kinds of learning and love are supposed to happen, in dishevelment.

I think I got that right…. And what a mess it was! I wanted to put it all down and go through it, because it all happened so quickly. Plus, I’ve never seen a table meeting like this; it was total chaos.

Before I get into what I thought about it all, guess what I found out? I was looking around to see if I could find anything about these families and, apparently, the families each get $20,000 for appearing on this show! Or at least, the Carraos said in an interview that that’s what they received. I didn’t know that. I figured they just did it for the 15 minutes of fame. I guess some money would have to be paid for the kind of embarrassing honesty that’s demonstrated, but that seems like a lot just to have a camera follow your family around for two weeks. I guess the emotional stress of it all does warrant a pay-out, but still…. It’s all very suspicious to me.

All right, back to these families. First, I’ll say that I didn’t like either one at all. Neither one offered any kind of redeeming qualities. Both seemed downright immature, for as much as the Ridgelys tried to come off as pseudo-disciplined and psycho-structured. I felt sorry for Jen Ridgely. I guess they’re happily married and they love their rodeo-obsessed life. But when she was cleaning her horse and saying that she loved the horse and that taking care of him was better than sex, that made me wonder how happy you can be if washing a horse is your idea of romance.

And the way she tried to make her kids all tough? The girls were 3 and 7 years old. How tough do you have to be at that age? I get that the rodeo business is tough and demanding, but shouldn’t they get to choose whether they want to be in the rodeo business? And shouldn’t they get some kind of childhood innocence? Can’t they play like girls? The older child has to do two hours of chores before she goes to school. My morning when I was a kid was having my mom get me out of bed and onto the bus, and those simple acts seemed to exhaust me. Two hours of morning chores for a 7-year-old seems a little, well, nuts.

I can understand wanting to discipline your kids, give them rules and structure and responsibility, and I will say that Jen’s kids were very well behaved, but at what price? Their family motto is “Refuse to Lose” and the girls aren’t allowed to whine or cry, but isn’t that part of growing up, too? Kids should, in some degree, get to be kids. Poor 7-year-old Peyton already knows that if she whines or shows weakness, she gets busted. She’s supposed to be strong and work hard, but if she doesn’t she knows her parents will be disappointed. And she’s been shoveling up poop since she was 2 years old? I just can’t get over it. They can only whine or cry if they have broken bones or are being taken off in an ambulance? The poor girl even gets timed in the bathtub. Everything is regulated in military fashion. I wonder what kind of childhood Jen had.

Of course, on the opposite end of the discipline spectrum is Kim and Louis Carrao and the freedom they like their kids to have. The kids can stay up as late as they want, run around in the hot tub with their friends while their parents party, paint on the walls and do whatever they want. Did you see Victor Carrao in the toy store? He was such a brat! And he was freaking out, saying he wanted out of the stupid world and that he was going to stick a fork in his stomach.

I don’t know, but is that a normal kid's temper tantrum? I’ve witnessed some temper tantrums and have had my own share as a kid, but I don’t remember ever wanting to stick a fork in myself because I couldn’t get some gum. I definitely agree with Jen Ridgely that it’s their mother's influence. Kim gets whatever she wants from Louis; she even flirts with other men and lets Louis do everything around the house. No wonder Kim’s kids throw tantrums when they don’t get gum.

But if it were a choice between Cowboy Randy and Louis, I’d opt to spend time with Louis. Quite frankly, Randy seemed like a big jerk. When Kim was putting makeup on the girls, he said “that’s what all the ugly girls in America need to make themselves pretty.” That was just mean and rude. I didn’t particularly enjoy Kim, but he was belligerent to her, which is what caused the explosion at the table meeting.

I think Randy was the biggest factor in the explosion. But to be fair, neither family really listened to each other. They were more about throwing accusations and getting angry.

This is the second episode in a row in which we’ve had some kind of meat-related contention between the families. Tonight’s meat of choice was deer. And I never thought I’d have to put these words down, but a main issue of the episode was deer urine.

While initially I was kind of grossed out/weirded out by a family that together bottled deer pee, I have to say I enjoyed them more than the Hamiltons, the family of pampered princesses. I would never bottle deer pee or eat deer meat, but everybody’s different. And if it were a choice between bottling deer pee and spending an hour shopping with Chastity Hamilton, I don’t know what I’d choose. But I’d probably go with bottling deer pee, as long as I could have nose plugs and cocktails while doing it.

Chastity Hamilton was more than just a typical sassy 14-year-old. She called her dad Tim; it always surprises me to hear children call their parents by their first name. She racked up $200 cell phone bills, was taken on shopping sprees and didn’t have to work for anything. She had no chores, she didn’t offer to help her father when she saw him doing the cleaning and she and her mom made the father do everything — even chauffer them to the mall and carry their bags. Tim seemed happy with it, and maybe he was. He kept saying that he wanted to do things for them because he could, and he liked providing for them and making them happy. But what about his wife going over everything he cleaned because it didn’t suit her? She was a neat freak with high expectations. She thought she was a princess. I’ll say it again: She thought she was a princess. She called the bed she and her daughter shared a “princess bed.” Her husband, because he snored, got booted to his teenage daughter’s room. And, of course, their dog’s name was Princess. They had parties where they made little girls into princesses. (I’m guessing the little girls were from the neighborhood, but where did they come from?) She, a grown woman, wore tiaras and feather boas. Did nobody around her see something a tiny bit crazy about that?

I just didn’t get her at all, and I think I’d have to walk away if I had to spend time with her. I suppose Tim was happy with her, because they’re still married and he cares for them, but she didn’t let him go on his golfing trips because he had “things to do.” He seemed like a sweet man. He took care of them really well. And when Chastity was being a brat, refusing to do the tiny amount of cleaning, and Anita left the house in tears, he stood up to her and told her to just try it. I mean, God forbid she just try to do something for her father. I loved when he told her not to think out loud, to keep it to herself and just try it. It wasn’t exactly throwing down the law, but at least he raised his voice and made Chastity do something. I can see how Angie Hamilton would get upset at the table meeting, because Anita Lowe was explaining how disrespectful Chastity was; Angie’s maternal instinct just kicked in.

But to permit your child to be “sassy”? Everything Chastity did, she did with a biting attitude. I know she’s a teenager and they generally have attitudes and snap and are brats, but Chastity was something else. She didn’t realize how good she had it. And that scene where Anita Lowe took her to the thrift shop — Chastity wasn’t just sassy, she was completely disrespectful and was muttering nonsense. How 'bout when Chastity explained to Anita that she liked that her friends wore clothes with labels because it meant they had personalities? Her mom taught her that. That was gross. When Chastity said that the thrift shop was the worst place in the world, I wanted to pack her up and send her off to the desert without anything and see if she came home still thinking that the thrift shop was the worst place to be. I know she was exaggerating on purpose, but it still bothered me. There’s more to people than their clothes and makeup and tiaras, which Brandie Lowe understood.

Brandie Lowe was the opposite of Chastity Hamilton. Brandie was a hardworking sweetheart who wanted more time with her family outside of the deer-pee business. At least the Hamiltons were decent to each other — except for the way Anita Lowe felt she had to take care of her husband like he was a child. Why did she feel like she had to lay out his clothes for him, start his car and warm up his coffee? She woke up at 2:30 in the morning to do all these things for her husband, and then she had to keep up the deer-pee business in addition to that. All because Rick Lowe wanted the deer-pee business.

I’m glad that both Rick Lowe and Angie Hamilton realized at the end how much their spouses did for them, and that they should start pitching in.

And I’m really glad that they built an outdoor shed for the deer-pee bottling. That seemed healthier than having it in the house. I loved when Brandie Lowe was all emotional because of her makeover. She felt special, and that was a great moment. That made me teary.

Now, if only Brandie Lowe and Chastity Hamilton could hang out and learn from each other, I bet Brandie would be able to teach her a few things.

The best moment, for me, was in the beginning when Rick Lowe was talking about if he had to choose between married life and raising whitetails. Then it showed him looking longingly at the deer while sappy music played…. That was genius. I wonder if he would pick the deer over his wife. Hmm.

It's been a while since I’ve said “ew!” so many times while watching a TV show. My face kept cringing every time I saw the Haigwoods eating raw chicken or raw meat. When I think of raw diets, I think more along the lines of consuming raw vegetables. But raw chicken and other meat? Do people really eat that? It just doesn’t seem safe to me. The raw eggs didn’t bother me so much, although I was surprised that the son, Lee Haigwood, ate 12 raw eggs a day.

I guess it’s just something I don’t understand, but I know I would’ve had the same reaction as Kim Hess-Webb's response. I wouldn’t have eaten the raw meat. I wouldn’t have tried to tell them and their kids that the way they were living was wrong. I don’t think she was OK in doing that. It’s one thing to disagree with a lifestyle, but telling the kids that their parents were trying to harm them was kind of out of line.

Maybe if they were against the raw food diet completely and were only doing it because of what their parents were telling them, it’d be a different story. But the fact is that the Haigwood kids seem to prefer the raw-food diet. Look what happened when they went out to a real restaurant and had chicken fingers: They got sick and were unhappy. But it seemed like they were just having some stomach aches, probably from not being used to cooked food.

I think that Mike Haigwood’s dramatic crying in the bathroom was overly dramatic. I tried to feel where he was coming from, but I couldn’t. He was seeing his kids “in pain” and suffering. He wanted to follow the rules, but not at “their deaths.” Did he really think they were going to die by eating chicken fingers? The Haigwoods seem to live in this super-heightened world where they only have each other.

Lee Haigwood got very upset that Kim Hess-Webb didn’t understand their family, but they're hard to understand. The Haigwoods have put themselves on the outskirts of society. The kids don’t go to school. Barbara Haigwood doesn’t believe in education, so the kids work on the farm and learn only from their surroundings — surroundings which are established singularly by their parents. They don’t seem to know what else is out there.

Robert Webb was right in saying that the Haigwood kids will most likely not leave the farm, and they’ll probably be happy with that life. But what about social interactions? I didn’t see them interacting at all with friends or neighbors. Nobody was around their farm. What kind of life is that? They have no education. I didn’t see them reading a book or doing anything like that. I just worry what will happen to them, especially when Barbara Haigwood seemed so preoccupied with the apocalypse and being prepared for disaster. Is she keeping her kids so close to home because she’s scared of losing them to disaster? If that’s the case, it’s not good for them, in my opinion. They seemed like nice enough kids, but their lifestyle is so absurd that I just don’t know what to think of where they’ll be in 10 years.

Despite all the absurdities, it was interesting to see these two worlds collide. Barbara Haigwood learned a little something about fashion and finally, after seven years, shaved her legs. I thought it was ridiculous that she was going to make Robert Webb get rid of all his clothes. That brings me to another question: How do the Haigwoods wash their clothes? We know how they brush their teeth. I don’t think I would’ve brushed my teeth with the butter/clay mixture they concocted. And they don’t believe in cleaning? It just doesn’t make sense.

I can understand the Haigwoods' having a raw-diet out of a personal desire to keep themselves purified and healthy. But what bothered me was when Mike asked Kim Hess-Webb, “Why would God put anything on this earth that would hurt us?” That just unnerved me. I suppose I don’t understand the raw-diet plan, but the fact that he said that caused me to believe that his diet was more of a spiritual thing that wasn’t really fleshed out for us.

I have to say that the Webb boys were adorable. I agreed with Robert when he wouldn’t let them see a chicken get slaughtered. That just didn’t seem appropriate, but Barbara did find a better way to teach them about raw food by having them plant their own vegetables.

The whole thing was just bizarre. Neither family seemed to understand the other. Kim ending up leaving. She was yelled at a lot, she upset the kids, and Mike Haigwood wasn’t very kind to her. I know she didn’t eat the raw food, but Mike Haigwood was an emotional mess that kept going off, either crying or yelling, so it seemed. I understand that Kim didn’t really open herself up to the experience and said what they were doing was wrong, disgusting and messing up their kids. But he wasn’t presenting his lifestyle to her in a way that maybe would’ve made sense to her.

We did learn a lesson from Lee Haigwood, at the very least. If you need to calm down, there’s nothing like eating a raw egg to ease your nerves.

Is it me, or is this show seeming to follow a pattern of throwing together faith followers and non-faith followers? Every week, there’s been some kind of spirituality divide, and it’s usually been a really wide divide, not just minor differences driving a wedge between them. It usually causes a big blow-up, loads of drama and some moaning about preaching and morality. I always get the feeling that nothing really changed, but why should it when it’s about something as intrinsic as spirituality? That can’t be changed in the course of two weeks. But tonight there was something different about it, at least with Tony Meeks and Kristin Hoover.

Tony used to be a pastor. I liked when Kristin asked how he went from pastor to punk, and Tony replied that it wasn’t a large jump. It’s interesting that both Tish and Tony Meeks had religious upbringings and wound up on the other end of the rebellious spectrum. There has to be some middle ground where they can come together. Having keg parties all night long, giving up your life savings for your band, keeping your kids up till 3 am, making them wake themselves up — all of this seemed detrimental to them as a family.

Benji Meeks (who was so adorable!) confessed that he thought his parents paid more attention to their punk-rock band than to him. He sounded so miserable when he said it, but then when Kristin Hoover said they had to put away the video games and have a family night, he started bawling. Tony didn’t have to lay a guilt trip on Kristin and say she made a kid cry. But I think if they were really interested in other things besides their punk-rock band, then they would do it. And why do they need to have beer on tap 24/7? They’re adults and they’re parents. Tony likes his alcohol. Boy, does he like his alcohol. I understand the connection between punk rock and beer, but there should be a limit. When you have kids, you should learn to grow up and put limits on yourself. I don’t mean they have to give up alcohol and punk rock altogether, but they should make some changes. I think Kristin telling Tony to take down the bar and use the wood to make the family a place where they could play some games was a good start.

I didn’t agree with Kristin homeschooling Tony’s kids and making them draw pictures of the crucifixion. The story she told them was definitely meant to scare them, and they shouldn’t have been told a story like that without their parents in the room. That scared me, the way she was talking to them and telling them about murder and jail and Jesus. She seemed like a nice person and she was there for Tony when he lost his job and needed support. But I got the sense that she was only going to want to change you into sharing her faith, in a sense indoctrinating you. I’m glad that Tony was able to find comfort in Kristin’s support, but that scene in which she was in the room with his kids and teaching them biblical principles unnerved me.

What unnerved me more was this guy Steve Hoover. He seemed so stiff, and I didn’t buy that he learned to relax more. Maybe he did. He let his girls bang on their instruments and didn’t mind the noise. But he was so resistant throughout the whole thing. I understood his resistance when it came to wearing pants (is that really part of the Mennonite religion?), but I’m not all for him making Kristin do all the housework without him lifting a finger. She has to make homemade bread and pies on a moment’s notice? I have a bread maker, but I don’t know how to use it. I’ve never made a homemade pie before, either. And he puts a crib in front of her room so that it’s the first thing she sees in the morning? I know he rejected the idea that he put the crib there as a psychological way to get Kristin to want to have more kids, but come on. Why have the crib right there when you don’t have a baby? He wanted more kids, he made that known, and Kristin didn’t want more kids.

I don’t think Steve and I would get along, but he and Kristin seem to be very much in love and this experience seemed to push them closer together. He at least reserves one night a week for Kristin and that’s a small step in the right direction. And the Meeks family? Well, Tony got fired and decided to put all of his energy into the punk-rock band. He’s letting God back into his life and spending more time with the kids, but I don’t know about the band thing. It cost him his job and they put their life savings into it. Wouldn’t you want to have a fallback plan, something that can take care of your kids if the band doesn’t work out? I know I would.

I’ll be the first to say it: I don’t know much at all about nature worship. I try to keep an open mind about things. If someone wants to worship a tree, I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’ll try to figure it out, yes, but sometimes you just have to give up and let people be. The Sweaney-Ernst family is one of those families I could easily roll my eyes at for their oddness.

I could react like Stephanie Starling did to the idea of a fairy tree and talking to vegetables — she burst out laughing and started instantly mocking them. But I’d rather just look at them as people who have a strange devotion to nature. I wouldn’t call it a hobby because it means more to them than just a hobby. I wouldn’t say that I’d join them in their rituals, but I think it’s an interesting way to bring a family together.

I don’t agree with what seemed like Carol and Laura’s push to have their kids just as devoted to nature as they are. What really bothered me was the fact that the parents needed separate bedrooms in order to discover themselves. As parents, they’re supposed to allow their kids to discover their individuality. But instead of doing that, they just pushed them into nature worship, squeezed them into one tiny bedroom and ignored anything that could become an interest outside of nature worship. I understand that they considered it a religion and that religion is a personal thing, but they weren’t allowing their kids to grow up. The oldest, the long-haired Sterling, said that he wanted to get out into the real world, but it was hard. Of course it was hard: His parents didn’t let him explore other things. They had their own rooms and stayed there while their kids did the chores. Free time seemed to be spent in the garden or with the fairy tree or doing rituals or doing their homework.

Laura Sweaney-Ernst thought that team sports were evil. She got all emotional watching Justin Starling in the motocross race because they were desecrating the earth. She didn’t want to teach her kids to be aggressive and become obsessed with winning, but I don’t know if what she was doing — ingratiating her kids into her form of worship — was a more liberal way of being.

And then there were the Starlings, a family that lives on their son Justin’s dream of being a motocross champion. Their father, John, reminded me of Will Ferrell’s speed-obsessed race-car diver in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. John was enthusiastic about the Starling mantra, saying that they lived big and dreamed big. He boasted about living the American dream because he had lots of money and a nice house.

But focusing on Justin’s motocross without encouraging outside interests, specifically his educational pursuits, will probably be a bad thing. Justin himself said he didn’t need education and he just wanted to be a motocross champion. Someone needs to show him that education’s important, especially if he keeps getting into accidents that leave him so bruised. He may, god forbid, get into an accident that leaves him permanently out of the motocross world, and then what will he do? But what could be expected of Justin when his parents were so singularly gung ho about him following his athletic dreams?

Justin’s father, John, wasn’t a model of mature behavior. He acted like a child sometimes, initially when he embarrassed Laura in front of his friends at a party and then when he and Justin walked away from Laura’s lecture about digging through trash and abandoned Samantha and her interest in photography. They paid her back in the end when Laura organized a photography exhibition for Samantha. John finally realized that they were focusing too much on Justin and not enough on Samantha.

At the table meeting, there was a lot of screaming. (Although surprisingly not from Carol Ernst, who admitted to having an anger problem that he had managed to control after many years. Who knew the quiet, submissive, tree-hugging Carol Ernst was hiding a secret rage problem?) Both sides had legitimate points. The Starlings needed to focus more on Samantha and less on motocross, and Laura needed to loosen up the reins and let her kids just be kids, which could mean letting her boys shoot some hoops every now and then.

When I first saw Nicole Bimonte, I didn’t think she was 12 years old. She looked a lot older. And she acted like a complete brat. She didn’t have any rules, so, of course, she was raising hell, being immature and throwing fits. She jumped up and down on her floor, causing the chandelier in the kitchen to shake. She was monstrous - and I’m sure this was the point of showing the various scenes of her. I don’t know what it’d be like to be around her 24/7. I wouldn’t have been able to stay around her for very long; I would’ve walked away from her, probably off to some quiet place where I could recover.

But her parents weren’t stopping her behavior. They were letting it happen. Lori Bimonte doesn’t like structure or rules. She keeps clothes in the kitchen, which befuddled me. I get that it was supposed to be weird, but didn’t the kids have bureaus or storage containers of some kind where they could put their socks and shoes? It seemed barbaric to have them living out of a kitchen. Socks in a kitchen drawer? The kids bathing in the sink wasn’t so awful, because I know that happens. But why were they living out of the kitchen? It looked like a pretty nice house from the outside and seemed to be in a decent neighborhood, so I didn’t understand why they were in such chaos.

I guess Lori liked chaos. She was always off getting her nails done or getting tanned.(Loved when martial arts-obsessed Lekili Hubbard was forced to get her nails done and said she felt handicapped by the ridiculously long nails.) She didn’t even stay to watch her son in karate. She let Nicole stay on the Internet until 5 pm, and she knew about Nicole's overly explicit website. Did anyone else notice that she listed herself as 16 on her website? I don’t know how Lori could’ve known about Nicole's website and not stopped it immediately.

At least she admitted at the table meeting that the website and abuse of Internet usage was causing her concern. I think without Lekili Hubbard’s influence, Nicole could’ve continued some seriously bad behavior. She was already having 20 people over on a school night without telling her parents. She had control of that house, but by the end, she had let go of some steam thanks to Lekili introducing her to karate.

Karate helped Nicole release some of her anger. (Was it just normal preteen anger, I wonder, or something else we didn’t know about?) She was getting along with her dad, taking an interest in photographs of her parents, helping out with the cooking and cleaning. I’m not sure if that was just an act for the cameras, but it seemed like Nicole had taken a turn for the better. Plus, Lekili Hubbard introduced them to Feng Shui, explaining how Nicole’s room was over the kitchen, which represented “fire,” and she needed “water” to calm her down. (Frankly, I think Nicole needed more than a water fountain to soothe her inner angst.) All in all, Lekili Hubbard’s influence on Nicole was positive and probably saved her from getting into severe trouble.

On the other end, there was Makanani Hubbard, the opposite of the spitfire Nicole. (Did you notice during the credits that Nicole Bimonte ran up a $700 cell phone bill, and her father smashed her phone with a hammer as punishment?) Makanani was sweet and quiet, a 19-year-old girl with martial arts-focused parents who thrived on structure and control. She had a boyfriend that her parents didn’t approve of and refused to acknowledge. She did what she was told and endured the hold that her parents had on her — monitoring everything from the amount of time she spent sending emails to whom she was going out with to how much time she was on the phone. These two girls, Nicole and Makanani, were like night and day. But both had difficulty relating to their fathers, which changed over the course of the episode.

Makanani was finally able to tell her dad that she wanted to be trusted enough to be with her boyfriend. She said it made her sad that her parents refused to meet her boyfriend, yet she knew everyone in her boyfriend’s family. It was a grown-up, mature way of voicing her feelings about the situation.

Of course, she was 19 years old and Nicole was 12, so there was a huge age gap and there should have been differences in behavior. But seeing them in a controlled fashion in this hour, I could see the danger both in letting Nicole run rampant and in making Makanani suffer through such strictness and rigidity. I’m glad that they learned some lessons.

I was very happy to see Makanani living on her own with her boyfriend, and the Hubbards having less martial arts and more quality time. But the greatest thing of all was seeing Nicole less monstrous.

So, I have to say that for a second I really did think that Dani Koopman was going to walk out on Stephen at the table meeting. I was kind of expecting it. The previews kept alluding to this, and I honestly thought that it would happen. I didn’t understand why, of course, because it seemed to escalate without warning. Dani’s personality seemed erratic, as if she could just walk out on her husband.

In the beginning, she did make the announcement to the audience that she was done making sacrifices. She said she was done being a mother and that she wanted to focus on herself and her modeling career. She seemed like she had the potential to just walk out on her husband with the cameras rolling, if only to make a point. But she came back, continued the table meeting and everything was revolved.

Now, I don’t want marriages to end on national television. But it was exciting for a moment because nothing like that has happened on the show, to my knowledge. There have been scuffles and threats to leave the table, but I can’t recall that anyone has threatened to walk away from their marriage.

Honestly, I didn’t think the Koopman marriage was in big trouble. Dani didn’t say anything about her marriage being in trouble until the end, when she thanked Wife Swap for saving her marriage. I stopped and tried to think back, but nothing was mentioned about them in any kind of trouble. She was a model, he worked long hours and then had to come home and fix the holes in the wall that his kids created. She wasn’t a disciplinarian and let her daughter Amanda skip school whenever she wanted. They differed on their parenting views, but the differences didn’t seem marriage-ending. Stephen seemed like a sweet enough guy, and though Dani seemed self-involved, she was still with her family. She may have been busy trying to be a hip, cool parent, but she was at least there with her kids and her husband. She wasn’t off somewhere with somebody else.

So I didn’t understand why they were in such trouble. Maybe it was just something she said at the end. Or maybe we didn’t see enough of them to understand that they were having severe problems. Or maybe it was just assumed that they were having problems since they were on national television trying to fix them. Whatever the truth, I found Dani’s thank you to Wife Swap for saving her marriage to be a bit off-putting.

In addition to Dani’s near walk-out on her marriage, there was another interesting thing about this episode. Dani swapped places with a grandmother. So, instead of just inheriting a household with a husband and kids, she found herself in a household with 34-year-old widower Jae, his two girls, his aunt Ruth and his father Len.

It was an interesting dynamic to witness. And while I have great sympathy for Jae for losing his wife, at some point he has to step up and start taking care of his kids. He can’t continue to let his parents take care of his daughters, especially when they need him so much. His girls aren’t being allowed to express themselves and dress how they want to.
Instead, Brianna and Justina have to work long hours at the ranch, cover themselves up, and let their grandmother decide what clothing is morally appropriate for them. I thought it was such a wonderful moment when Dani took the girls to get their hair styled. Justina was so happy that she cried. She said she finally felt pretty.

It was about time that Justina and Brianna be allowed to grow up. And what was so wrong with the dresses they wore at the photo shoot? Len was outraged to the point where he walked away. I was glad that Jae went after his father to defend his choice. He was learning to trust his own parenting skills and to trust his daughters. Brianna, especially, seemed grown up when she explained to Jae that if they left and walked out of the photo shoot, they wouldn’t learn anything and it would be pointless. I think Jae can be a good father, but even at the end he wasn’t really growing up.

Dani grew up somewhat and retired from modeling; but Jae didn’t do much besides let his girls have some free time to relax. He didn’t move out; he just moved his couch into his father’s office. I hope that some day he moves out of his parents’ house and gets a home of his own. His daughters may have some more freedom (to get their hair done as they choose), but they really need some time alone with their father.

I’m always fascinated by the real-life struggles of little people. I’m not little myself, but at 5 feet, I’m not exactly tall. I have a hard time reaching things on the top shelves in my kitchen and in grocery stores. I always have to stand around and wait until someone tall comes around to help me. That’s absolutely nothing compared to what the Allemon family in tonight’s episode deals with on a daily basis. It’s a challenge for them to do ordinary things like flip light switches, reach cupboards and countertops and drive a car. They have to adapt to an “average-sized world” and make adjustments so that they can function normally.

Diane Allemon has helped her kids adjust to their challenges. On the flip side, she and husband Bernie haven’t given their kids much discipline or responsibilities; but she had to raise her kids in an environment where small things were difficult and where they got looked at funny on a regular basis. So I understood why Bernie wanted to shed the discipline and the chores and be their friend, and why Diane wanted to have a fun room where they could dress up in costumes and just enjoy their family time. I understood her devotion to her family. Diane and Bernie have to exist in an average-sized world that doesn’t adapt for them but makes them adapt to it. The Allemons are laughed at and stared at, so why wouldn’t they want to protect their kids from the pressures in school? Why wouldn’t they want to be easy on them, not expect too much from them or push them to do chores around the house? They wanted family closeness because family was safe and good for them.

The Allemons do have a close family bond, and Diane was upset about leaving that and entering into the Johnson family, whose bond comes from their love of competition and being the best. The Johnsons spent much of their time doing their own thing — whether it was working out or wrestling or watching television. Their disconnectedness was hard for Diane Allemon to swallow, especially when she cooked them dinner and everyone abandoned her and went off to their own corners. She was crying in the kitchen, and Scott Johnson didn’t seem to care or offer any comfort. He seemed mad that she had come into his home, ripped down the body-focused pictures of his wife, eliminated sports, and made a mess by saying the kids didn’t have to do chores.

In their quest to be perfect-oriented competitors who always win, the image-focused Johnson family has avoided being made fun of. Melissa Johnson is a natural figure competitor (which I hadn’t heard of before, but apparently it’s like bodybuilding without the need to be super-muscular). She gets up at 3:30 in the morning to train for her competitions, and her husband helps by painting her body (an odd option for husband-wife bonding). Her husband, Scott, has some anger issues. He always looks slightly pissed off, like he’s about to flip his lid about something. He certainly flipped his lid when Diane stole the TV remote, and he couldn’t watch the sports game. He stole his kids' paint brushes and stormed around the house screaming for it. I don’t see why he couldn’t just go off and watch the game someplace else, but it was probably more of a control issue.

Ben Allemon was cursing and complaining about doing chores, but I’m glad that Melissa Johnson was able to teach Bernie about giving his kids a sense of discipline and structure. Bernie seemed reluctant to discipline his kids because he didn’t want to lose them as friends, which was sweet but had to be modified. There’s nothing wrong with a few chores and some kickball.

I’m also glad that Diane Allemon showed the Johnsons that they didn’t have to win trophies to feel good about themselves (although I’m not sure if that lesson will stick). I found it hilarious that she made them dress up in bear costumes and go to a sporting event to support their teams as mascots. That gave them a glimpse of what Diane had to go through on a daily basis as a little person. She told them that they shouldn’t care what other people thought about them, and that wasn’t something their own parents would tell them.

I wish that Melissa Johnson had learned a lesson about not being so concerned about her self-image, but I don’t think she learned that lesson. She did learn to create a more carefree environment for her family and even installed a fun room in the basement, so at least her kids achieved something in the end.

Finally, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the Allemons dressing up as leprechauns for St. Patrick’s Day. Melissa Johnson may not have considered that something to aspire to, but I didn’t see anything wrong with that. Given the choice between being in a figure competition that measures my muscle tone or dressing up as a leprechaun for St. Patrick’s Day, I’d take the leprechaun option in an instant.

When I started watching this episode, I cringed. I knew what was coming. The evangelical Lawrences wouldn’t take to the tattooed, bald-headed, free-thinking, Bible-hating Jinxi. And the proud atheist Caddels wouldn’t take to the Jesus-loving, Bible-toting, overly controlling Karen, otherwise known as Big Mama.

Big Mama, it seemed, went into the situation to “save” the Caddels. When she was investigating their house, Big Mama saw a photo album and called the Caddel kids “offspring of the devil.” I didn’t think that was respectful or understanding. She saw the stripper pole and all the racy artwork and was immediately judging them. That was what happened with these families. They immediately started judging each other and putting up a defensive wall.

Right off the bat, I knew this wasn’t going to work out well. Religion is a personal thing, and these families are from two sides of the extreme. I didn’t see how they would be able, in two weeks, to really open up to each other. Although at the end there was some understanding, it didn’t seem genuine. Yeah, Steve Caddel broke down crying because he felt guilty about mocking Big Mama’s religion and throwing the Bible into the trash. They hugged and forgave each other, and Steve let Big Mama take his family to a church social. He said he had a different opinion of Christians than before, but I didn’t buy it. I didn’t really see either family learning about each other’s beliefs or how they worked as families.

Neither the Lawrences nor the Caddels were really willing to open themselves up to something different. The Lawrences were steadfastly devoted to their evangelical ways, and the Caddels were not going to budge on their atheism. But instead of trying to learn from each other, they immediately pointed fingers, mocked, tried to force beliefs and ideas onto each other, refused to listen, put up walls and just let an experience go by without actually trying to understand each other.

The Lawrences gave Jinxi Caddel a Bible the second she walked into their home. Yeah, it was a nice gesture, a gift to welcome Jinxi into their family. But that gesture was pushing their lifestyle onto Jinxi without considering who she was or what she would be like as a person. They were trying to send a message about who they were as a family. Giving someone a Bible without knowing them is, to me, being too aggressive and insensitive.

But I didn’t agree with the way that the Caddels, especially the father Steve, treated Big Mama, either. Yes, Big Mama was all about worship and saving yourself. Yes, she tried to get the kids to pray without them believing in it. But to mock her religion in front of his kids? He was teaching his kids to be disrespectful of someone else’s beliefs. I think Steve crossed the line when he said things like “great, more Christians to mock” when Big Mama said they would be going to a church social, and “great, more firewood” when Big Mama gave his family Bibles. Every step of the way, Steve was not respecting Big Mama. And yes, she was out of line when she tried to get his son to pray to God because “that’s what the rules were.” She shouldn’t have used the rules of Wife Swap to indoctrinate Steve’s kids and get them to be saved. But Steve shouldn’t have been disrespectful and teach his kids to be disrespectful.

And while I’m all for self-expression and being yourself, I think Jinxi crossed the line when she took down all of the religious items in the Lawrence household. She was being closed-minded. If she just stopped for a moment and found out about them, maybe she could’ve understood their devotion to their religion, instead of simply rejecting it.

What was really interesting was that Jinxi had come from a strict Mormon background and wound up a free-spirited, tattooed adult. She didn’t really go into it, except to say that she wanted her kids to have more freedom, more choices than she had. Then there was the fact that the Lawrences were “born again,” which meant that they had some kind of past that we didn’t know about. But neither family really asked any questions about each other.

I was left thinking at the end that neither one really knew the other at all and had forced quick hugs and exclamations of forgiveness for the sake of having closure. The only thing that they seemed to switch off on was the ridiculous Man Law that the Lawrences had. The Man Law, in the Lawrence household, had the women cooking and cleaning, treating the men like kings, while the men did their manly things (sitting around watching TV and waiting for food). Cleaning toilets, according to Derryl, was women’s work. If he told me to clean a toilet, I think I might have thrown things at him.

I think some good things did happen. Jessica Lawrence was able to get out of the house and hang out with boys, even though her father wanted her to be a virgin until she was married. And the Caddels finally allowed their son to have a set of drums, despite the fact that it had to come out of their tattoo fund. (How many tattoos did they need that they were spending $35,000 on them?) Plus, Jinxi realized that she had to spend time with her kids, and the Lawrences learned to loosen the stiff reins on their kids. And finally, the Lawrence boys had to do some cooking and cleaning. It was great to see Big Mama being treated like a queen.

All in all, I was kind of disappointed that these two families only superficially learned from each other and didn’t really get to know each other more deeply. But at least the kids seemed to get something out of the experience.

I’m a big fan of happy hours and having fun, but Frankie Roy needs to figure out some kind of balance, because her house is a mess. I would’ve reacted the same way Angel did when she walked around the Roy house and saw: dog poop with mold on it, mold in juice glasses, a dead rat on the carpet. Any one of the above would be gross, but all three of them spell a whole lot of filth that no family should be living in. Dead rats and dog poop are not good to have around the house, and I’m not surprised that J.P. doesn’t want to bring girls home.

Frankie is proud of having a fun house where her kids don’t have any rules except to go to bed at 10 o’clock, but she has to step up a little bit more and at least pick up dead rats from the floor. And she lets J.P. play computer games for six or seven hours a day, which is so not healthy for him. J.P. said he wanted his mom to be harder on him about his schoolwork. He just wants to be pushed a little, and Angel did that for him.

But Angel telling him that she’d pay for his first semester of school if he continued on to college seemed just a little bit condescending to me. I understand where the gesture was coming from and that she wanted to inspire him to get motivated about his education, but there’s another way to motivate him other than offering to give him money for school. His parents are supposed to be encouraging him and giving him the tools and help he needs to move on to college, so when Angel told him that she’d pay for his school if he made it there, it felt like she was being uppity about it and making his parents look like they can’t afford to pay for his education.

Angel Maness is a know-it-all, and she likes the sound of her own voice. She makes her husband Blake ride in the backseat of the car because she doesn’t like his driving, and she picks out his clothes for him. And who picked out his clothes for him before Angel? His mother. So Blake’s never dressed himself, and Angel pushes him around because she’s controlling. I can understand why Angel saw the dog poop and made a face; but when it came time to tell her what kind of mess she was making of her own family, she wasn’t receptive. She makes her husband and son, Blake Jr., wear bracelets that say, “Failure’s not an option.” She makes her son train, but what’s he training for? He’s 11 years old. He should be having fun with other kids his age.

I felt for Frankie at the table meeting when she confronted Angel about how she pushes Blake around. Frankie told Angel, “You’re condescending.” And Angel responded, “I’m vocal.” She’s so vocal that her husband feels safer talking to a cardboard cutout of his wife than talking to his actual wife. He won’t talk back to her. And he felt all kinds of anxiety when he was told to shop for himself. He’s just a mess, and neither one will understand that.

When Frankie tried to talk to him about how Angel is pushy with their son Blake Jr., Blake Sr. went off; and then Frankie started cursing, and all hell broke loose. Blake even called 911 and wanted Frankie out of the house. I’m not even sure how the fight escalated to the point of Frankie's spending the night in a hotel. But the next day they made up and apologized, which seemed kind of forced. I think they made up for the camera’s sake, and it wasn’t very genuine.

I’m just glad that Frankie took up some cleaning at the end of the hour, and that her family really wanted to keep the house clean after Angel left. I wasn’t surprised to see that Snowball the rabbit was sent back to the pet shop, and I think it’s kind of weird that the Manesses kept the cardboard cutout of Angel so that Blake Sr. could yell at it.

I think the families learned something about each other. And now J.P.’s excited about going to college to get a degree in video-game design, and he’s banking on Angel’s promise to pay for his first semester. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure Angel’s going to pull through with that promise.

OK, so I don’t want to judge or criticize the Yonts family for putting their daughter in beauty pageants, but I just don’t get the whole child-beauty-pageant thing. I understand the competitive side of it, but when you’re putting your daughter on a runway dressed like a doll and trained to wink and charm the judges, I’m not sure how much of a choice that is. She’s too young to know what else is out there, what else there is to do. How can she know what she wants when she’s 5 years old and has been competing in beauty pageants since she was 3 months?

Ramona Jan said it best when she said: “Hannah’s not being forced to be in the pageant, but it’s the only life she’s ever known.” She’s basically been put into costumes and told to strut her stuff since she was an infant. She’s 5 years old and she’s being taught that she should think about what people are thinking about her. The Jans put $8,000 a year into her pageant competitions — a quarter of their income. I just think it’s kind of sad when a little girl can’t grow up to figure out who she is because her parents have decided to start her off on this obsession with her appearance. Kim’s all about “healthy competitions,” and they assume their daughter enjoys what she’s doing, but how do they know?

Hannah’s too young to know anything. When Ramona Jan was in charge of doing Hannah’s makeup and hair for the beauty pageant, Hannah won because someone else stepped in to do her up. At the end of the pageant, she admitted, “I was very worried because I didn’t want to go up on stage looking like crap.” A 5 year old worried about how she looks, and cursing? That’s probably a sign that she’s not being raised as a well-rounded child. Another bad sign: there was a sweet moment when Hannah was brushing Ramona’s hair. Five year old Hannah told Ramona that her hair was pretty. Ramona said that she hadn’t washed it in years and Hannah said that she knew that and made a disgusted face and suggested Ramona wash it. A 5 year old telling a grown woman that she should wash her hair?

I’m pretty sure Hannah’s becoming more image-obsessed by the second. She freaked out when Ramona banned matching clothes and said that her sister’s clothes had too much green in them. She cried about there being too much green. I get that the Yonts want Hannah to have self-possession, but she’s not allowed to explore other things. Her crowns are all she has. I want to know why Kim Yonts is so obsessed with what other people think. That’s no good, and she’s passing it on to her daughters. Poor Maddie, Hannah’s little sister, had to retire at age 3 because she wasn’t winning pageants.

And then there was the great debate about television. Ramona thought television was an addiction and should be illegal. Kim Yonts liked television and had her family eat fast-food dinners in front of the TV. I love television, so I don’t agree at all with Ramona on banning TVs in the household. I get that she’s worried about Lucy becoming too addicted to TV, but what does Ramona do instead? She gets caught up in her artwork and lets 10-year-old Lucy cook the meals and her husband Andre do the housework. Is that any better? I found it hilarious at the end of the episode when Ramona tried having TV in the house, but Lucy admitted to not being able to turn away from it. They turned the TV into a fish tank. Who turns their television into a fish tank? It just seems so wrong.