There Goes Honey Boo Boo

My own adventures with travel television watching are well-documented here on the blog, and usually involve one of the many versions of Law and Order. You can't argue that channel options are severely limited while on the road, and here's a guest post from Scienter weighing in on what is clearly the result of some truly desperate times.  

I’ll admit it up front, I’ve never watched an entire episode of Toddlers and Tiaras.  Even watching part of an episode preview makes me think about how Pageant Moms are setting their daughters up for a lifetime of self esteem and body image issues in a desperate attempt to live vicariously through a little girl made up to look like a grown woman.  Maybe I’m being too harsh?  Nah. 

I was on work travel last week and had some time to kill in my hotel room.  After clicking through what felt like 6,000 variations of ESPN, I found Here Comes Honey Boo Boo on TLC.  Remember when TLC stood for The Learning Channel? I didn’t catch the episode from the beginning, nor do I know the back story of Honey Boo Boo.  But this show was like a train wreck that I couldn’t stop watching, even though I could feel my IQ slowly dropping.  This must be satire, I thought.  Maybe these people are actors!

I didn’t catch the whole episode, but I saw enough to get the gist.  Alana (“Honey Boo Boo”) had the misfortune of being born to June, a 32 year old woman who puts her daughter into pageants.  Her sisters are teenagers and one of them is in her third trimester, which is why Honey Boo Boo calls her “the pregnanciest.”  The middle sister seems a bit obsessed with farting.  TLC clearly was trying to portray this family as quite ignorant and unintelligent, and they did a top-notch job.  

 Do rednecks really need subtitles?  Yes, sometimes they do. 

I got the impression that lots of the lines were scripted, especially the things that Honey Boo Boo herself said.  That said, she seems like a sassy, relatively un-messed up child (at least for now). I thought it was cute that her family bought her a pig to cheer her up after losing at a pageant. 

I tried to get through this episode, I really did.  But after seeing a teenage girl ask if farting at the dinner table was acceptable, I called it quits.  Either that line was scripted, she was serious, or she was being sarcastic.  If it was either of the first two, I weep for humanity.