MAUREEN CALLAHAN: MILF Manor is the most repulsive, exploitative, hate-to-hate TV show of all time

Has there ever, in the history of reality TV, been a more cynical and seedy undertaking than ‘MILF Manor’?

Trust me: I’m a fan of the genre. When done right, there’s nothing like reality TV for psychodrama, interpersonal relationships, morality shifts, transactional behavior, physical endurance tests, plot twists, and Machiavellian gameplay. No less a gold star content creator than Mike White of ‘White Lotus’ fame is also a reality TV super fan, competing on ‘Survivor’ once and ‘The Amazing Race’ twice.

“Part of my job and my way of life is studying people and looking at motivation and character,” White told The New Yorker in 2021. “I still feel like, even on the most contrived reality show, people are human. and they’re more interesting than some of the better written dramas. And for me, as a drama writer, I aspire to do what reality TV already does. To create characters that are amazing and dimensional and do weird things and grab your attention. .

And there’s nothing stranger on TV right now than TLC’s “MILF Manor,” which promises “a dating experience like no other.”

That’s certainly one way of putting it. The show’s dizzying premise: Eight older moms and their Gen Z kids get together in an oceanfront mansion (the moms and kids share bedrooms) and engage in all sorts of sexually awkward and vaguely incestuous scenarios.

“MILF Manor,” with its cheap production values ​​and bright, flat lighting, feels like it’s operating on a soft-porn budget, and I doubt that’s accidental. We are witnessing both the apotheosis and the nadir of reality TV, incest in the bubble as if it were no longer a taboo, at least among a certain cohort of reality TV producers and very sad people desperate for any degree of fame.

“MILF Manor,” with its cheap production values ​​and bright, flat lighting, feels like it’s operating on a soft-porn budget, and I doubt that’s accidental.

“I don’t think any of my kids realize that I have an extremely high libido,” April Jayne, 59, tells us, even the names are pornographic, in a confessional. The only rational response to that is: My God, ma’am, let’s hope not. Why would any of her children want that information? Which, of course, they now have, along with much of the United States.

To see the mainstream media treat this show with any degree of normality, let alone claim that this crap is a vehicle for feminist self-actualization, is an affront to all of us. People Magazine: ‘Milf Manor’s Kelle Opens Up About That Shocking Twist: ‘An Experience I’ll Always Be Grateful For.’

Few things are as daunting as fame for fame’s sake, and this requires complete denial of what’s really going on here.

Pola, 48, says she is looking for a marriage proposal. Stephany, 46, says that God is very important to her and that she is excited to be on ‘this wonderful journey’. Kelle, 51, calls herself “Disco Mommy,” telling us in the first episode that if her 20-year-old son Joey “continues to block me this whole time, it’s going to ruin the experience.”

As noted elsewhere, Tina Fey saw this coming. In 2008, her sitcom ’30 Rock’ created a show-within-a-show called ‘MILF Island’: ‘Twenty MILFS’. Fifty eighth graders. Without rules . . . [a] facing Erection Cove.

Sure, the guys in ‘MILF Manor’ are of legal age, oh what a low bar, but most of them barely look post-teen. He feels adjacent abuse.

“I’ll be in the hot tub at 10,” Kelle announces in that opening episode. ‘Sorry ladies, I might be sleeping with her child!’

Is there enough post-show therapy to undo this damage?

Of course, the producers of the show and the network itself hide behind the fig leaf of ‘female empowerment’, shifting the social acceptance of older men with much younger women. It sounds altruistic, but it’s downright derogatory. Consider the inevitable: a mother curling up in her bed with someone else’s child, her own child in the same room. This is a real eventuality, as teased in next week’s episode.

“I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about,” production executive Daniela Neumann told the Washington Post. Nobody is doing anything wrong. And these are all consenting adults. I don’t really get it, but I think anything that sparks a conversation is a good thing.

Sure, the guys from ‘MILF Manor’ are of legal age, oh what a low bar, but most of them barely look post-pubescent. He feels adjacent abuse.

There are love to hate and hate to hate reality shows. ‘MILF Manor’ is the latter, pitting shirtless sons against their blindfolded mothers, who rub—indeed, pat—them in an attempt to identify their offspring.

Rule number one of content creation: Don’t insult the intelligence of your audience. Neumann told WaPo that all the cast members had a blast, but Sunday night’s most recent episode prompted the departure of a mother-son duo, who apparently couldn’t take the sleazeiness of ‘MILF Manor’. So really, if you’re going to create the most repulsive and exploitative reality TV show to date, and this is in a web built on morbid obesity, polygamy, and the love life of a 23-year-old woman trapped in a body. from an 8 year old girl – just show us some respect and own it.

There are love to hate and hate to hate reality shows. ‘MILF Manor’ is the latter, pitting shirtless sons against their blindfolded mothers, who rub—indeed, pat—them in an attempt to identify their offspring.

That ‘challenge’ was crowned by a game called ‘Wall of Secrets’, in which mothers and sons had to guess which sexual revelation, published on said wall, belonged to the other. A sample:

‘I had an orgy of 7 women’.

‘I got conjunctivitis from eating a **.’

“I slept with my son’s best friend.”

Few things are as daunting as fame for fame’s sake, and this requires complete denial of what’s really going on here.

“I’ll be in the hot tub at 10,” Kelle announces (above) in that opening episode. ‘Sorry ladies, I might be sleeping with her child!’

That last confession, by the way, seems to have destroyed the relationship between that mother, a 50-year-old woman named Soyoung (again, these names were made for this show) and her son. Even the other guys agreed that ‘Jimmy found out his mom fucked her best friend’ was over the line.

do you think

None other than The New Yorker weighed in, calling “MILF Manor” “perhaps a rock bottom,” for reality TV, coming across as “downright pornographic.” It’s hard to believe the show’s conceit that neither the mothers nor the children knew each other had signed up to spend a month in Mexico filming a reality TV show, but then again, it’s hard to believe that any sane and psychologically healthy person would do this in all

Seriously: if you can stand in front of a cheap bulletin board, read a Post-It that says, “I had a 7-woman orgy,” and say out loud, vaguely proud, “That could be my son,” or tell someone. another mother. that her son ‘said he’s got a big c••k’ and doesn’t care about collateral damage, you’re a whole new breed of reality show contestant.

‘Some of the boys here,’ says one mom, ‘are very immature.’ I wonder where they got it.