Married By Mom & Dad. Tis a sentence that should strike fear into the heart of just about anyone, right? And yet, TLC found four suckers willing to let their parents (and step-parents) to choose their future mate. I...I just can't with some reality TV, ya'll. A is a reality TV addict so we all get roped into watching some of her current obsessions at least once or twice a week. I went in-depth about my feelings on that "Married At First Sight" show and fucking ridiculous it was to marry a stranger and then be shocked when it don't work out the way you pictured it. But "Married By Mom & Dad" is ten times more ridiculous. The premise is as it sounds, the parental units "interview" and then choose someone for their thirtysomething children to be tied to til death (or, realistically, til 2017 or so). I highly recommend the first episode of this show if you're on the verge of giving up on dating and want to make yourself feel better and/or encourage yourself to stay in the game. Because trust when I say you are a lot more well off than anyone on this show. These four people are just lonely and lazy as hell. Most have their careers together and claim they're still single because they've "tried everything", but methinks they just have terrible taste in the opposite sex, or they're not the catches they believe themselves to be. Sure, some people are just unlucky in love, but I don't get that vibe from any of these folks. I adore my mother but under absolutely no circumstances would I allow her to pick a mate for me, nor would she take me up on any such offer (thank Fonz).
We met three families on the first episode of MBM&D; a family grieving the suicide of one of their sons and looking to marry off their only daughter, a Sommelier who pings the gaydar and is reuniting his long divorced parents (complete with new, possibly male step-mom) so they can find him a wife, and a Southern belle who was cheated on and apparently just stopped dating after that (we didn't meet the fourth family on this episode). And all of the families are tailor-made for reality television. The suicide family have a weird obsession with not picking a bald or particularly tall man for their daughter (this is their own stipulation, not hers). The dad repeatedly states that he's looking for a carbon copy of himself for his future son-in-law, and yes it sounds as creepy when he says it as it does to read it. The Sommelier's parents have not seen each other in years and talk about meeting each other "for the first time", despite the fact that they have two children together. The step-mom is...mannish and strikes me as a granola type who would run a nudist camp. The father is getting off on the whole process, telling the son that regardless of how he feels about the women, he will marry the one they choose. Dad organizes the meetings with the women to be like job interviews, complete with a full page of sexual questions like how often they would like to "touch" their partner and what kind of sexual appetite they have. He also wants to know how much debt they have and how they acquired it. His ex-wife, being somewhat sane, steps in to save the women from the invasive questions and rightly tells him such things should be between a husband and wife, not a wife and her potential in-laws. The Southern family is the most eccentric of all. Derald (seriously, that's her dad's name...Derald) is an odd duck who road trips down to his daughter's house so they can go pick out a wedding cake, and this is before he's even interviewed a single potential husband. The meeting the cake maker had with these people had to be the weirdest shit she's ever been a part of. She asks about the groom and is told there isn't one, then let in on the whole experiment. After that, she brings out cake samples for tasting and Derald jumps up out of his chair and knocks it onto the floor before proceeding to do what can only be described as a convulsion-like dance he calls "The Cake Dance". His daughter tells the camera that her dad loves cake, but the way he jumped up you'd think he'd not seen a piece for fifty damn years. He does the cake dance three more times in the segment. He and his wife go to the home of a potential suitor and the man opens the car door for mom, which both parents make a note of. The suitor says he used to be a valet so it was second nature to him to open doors and the parents go off on a tangent about how great it is that he's a dancer (they heard "ballet"). Mom further makes a fool of herself when she tells him, "So in your video you said you wanted to be married since you were 22. You're quite a bit older now. What happened?". Like...wtf does that even mean? Dude handles it very well but the question was ridiculous. The kicker about this show is that it would appear none of these people actually make it down a damn aisle, or at least the editing would lead us to believe as much. The Sommelier's chick turns out to be in it for the TV time, the Southern belle and her dude make it to the altar but not to the I Do's, prompting Derald to inquire as to who called the whole thing off, and the other chick ends up not being thrilled with who is chosen for her, only to be told by dad that it ain't her decision.
This kinda shit is why marriage holds zero value for my and future generations anymore. I'm all for choosing not to marry and all that, but part of the reason for my feeling that way is that marriage isn't what it used to be. It's not respected, it's not cherished as it should be. Marriage shouldn't be a decision made lightly and it certainly shouldn't be made on national television by people who are themselves on a second or third marriage. Everyone has their list of what they would like to have in a partner and what is and is not negotiable, but we often do not end up with the type of person we think we will. There are things science and our parents cannot predict or will to happen. Who our parents want us to marry is usually not who we want to marry, but the choice in who we spend our life with is our own. Or at least it should be. A friend once told me you love who you love and love knows no race, religion or anything else. You can't predict attraction, you can't predict compatibility. I've dated women that a scientific test would never have matched me with based on things like religion. And yet those relationships have been the ones that have made me a better man. Had I taken the road these people are on of letting someone else make my decisions, yes, my decisions would've been better, but at what cost? The bad decisions make us who we are as much as the good ones do. I wouldn't trade my bad decisions for anything. Call me old fashioned but no matter how annoying the dating scene can be, I'd still rather take my chances and woo and be wooed than be forced down the aisle with someone I know nothing about. All that said, hopefully TLC's latest round of fame whores will be able to find their own mates someday.
