Ricochet Television, the company that brought us “Supernanny” and “The Real Housewives of New York City,” is now searching for “The World’s Strictest Parents.” At the same time, they are casting some real-life, out-of-control teens. The plan is to send the kids to live with the strict parents for two weeks, so we viewers can eventually watch them whip each other into shape.
If you want to sign up, you can go online, or wait for auditions to come to you. This past weekend producers were in Salt Lake City, the local newspaper says, looking:
for parents who are academics, farmers, conservatives, have unique interests, those with devout religious beliefs, eco-friendly parents and parents with unusual circumstances.
Types of teens producers seek include urbanites, liberals, defiant teens, “hippies,” slobs, affluent teens, the technically savvy and those with unusual circumstances.
Perhaps I shouldn’t go on the record with this, but I will probably be watching. I am fascinated by the “my family is out of control” genre, in the “they HAVE to have edited this for maximum shock value” kind of way. A few months ago I spent a cross-country Jetblue flight watching a marathon of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” waiting for one of those mothers to have a warm teaching moment with their children. There wasn’t one in five hours.
Bad parenting, I can’t help noticing, is the only kind of parenting on television. An anthropologist with just our TV programs to go by would think that most of us at the turn of this century have no children, and that those we do have tend to go poof when they become complications (What happened to Molly in “Heroes”? Or JD’s son in “Scrubs”? Why doesn’t Chloe ever call the baby-sitter on “24″?) The smattering of kids allowed to stick around are being raised by self-involved, clueless, overly permissive (or overly militant), absent (or hovering) parents. This is true whether the characters are fictional (”Gossip Girl,” “Desperate Housewives”) or “real” (”WifeSwap,” “Jon and Kate Plus Eight”).
