Trading (insane) spouses.

If you Google “crazy religious lady,” you find that the Trading Spouses meltdown is your top hit. For those who missed it: Enjoy.

Is there an MP3 mashup? But of course.

Thanks to the invaluable Television Without Pity. Which, I notice, also gets an acknowledgment in Laura Lippman’s latest novel, “To the Power of Three.” Those folks are onto something.

Posted at 10:59 am in Uncategorized |
 

11 responses to “Trading (insane) spouses.”

  1. basset said on November 11, 2005 at 12:11 pm

    I assume that “Trading Spouses” is some kind of lowest-common-denominator tv show. Never seen it.

    That being said… someone explain to me just what is going on in that scene and why that woman is acting that way.

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  2. Nance said on November 11, 2005 at 12:25 pm

    As a member of the lowest common denominator, I’ll take a crack at that:

    The concept of the show is to swap two mothers and make each spend a week in the other’s house. Obviously, the biggest dramatic effect is gained by mixing up total opposites. In this case, the swap-ees were a New Age hippie mom and a 450-pound religious nutcase. She was highly unnerved by spending a week among evidence of astrology, hypnotherapy and, of course, the hippie family’s big solstice throwdown. At the end she totally freaked when she came home — acted like she’d been on the Bataan death march. That thing she’s tearing up is the letter each mom writes, detailing how they must spend the $50K prize money.

    The network did an editor’s note at the end of the episode, detailing the expenditures (which included $20K for the Jesus mom to have gastric bypass surgery), and noting that upon further reflection, Jesus mom had decided to take the money, after all.

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  3. mary said on November 11, 2005 at 2:53 pm

    I hope there was some allowance in the 50k for her to get that front tooth problem fixed as well. Nothing like a missing front tooth to really slam home the idea that someone is a crazy hick. No one could pretend to be insane and be as convincing as she was. Rachael Dratch come to mind again, though. There’s that character she plays on SNL with the messed up teeth and the baby arm coming out of her head that bears a passing resemblance to the religious crazy lady. She is short about 325 pounds, but other than that….

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  4. Lex said on November 11, 2005 at 2:53 pm

    Now that I pretty much have stopped watching TV altogether (no time), I don’t get to TWP often … and boy, do I miss it. I used to particularly like the guy who did recaps on HBO’s “Six Feet Under” — he mixed in all manner of Biblical references with his snark, to excellent effect. The woman who picked up for the final season was very good, but that guy was in a class by himself.

    To Nance’s other readers: TWP has a history of money problems, so if you follow one or more TV shows religiously, do them AND yourself a favor and read whatever TWP has to say about your show(s). You’ll be glad you did.

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  5. basset said on November 11, 2005 at 11:42 pm

    so why do people as intelligent as you all seem to be watch that crap?

    (boy, am I in for it now… someone’s gonna take that as confrontational, threatening, or something else negative and be all over me. but I’m serious. what’s the attraction?)

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  6. brian stouder said on November 12, 2005 at 6:18 pm

    “so why do people as intelligent as you all seem to be watch that crap?”

    See – if we’re really honest – most of what’s on teevee is simply “pass time” crap.

    Do you have a favorite professional sport? Well, really it’s crap – contrived drama, over-paid prima donnas, and unending plugs and pitches to sell us swill.

    Do you love C-SPAN? most of the time, you can tune into someone delivering a speech and mutter “what a load of crap!” and continue channel surfing.

    News on teevee? Take away the spin, curve-ball leaks, minute-filling lost blondes and car chases, and you end up with very little, eh?

    By way of saying – “judge not” (etc) what others watch, if you watch teevee. I have a friend who loves to say “I watch very little TV” – and then goes on and on and on about his favorite shows.

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  7. Nance said on November 12, 2005 at 8:44 pm

    Sometimes it’s as simple as: Feeling exhausted, too lazy to change the channel.

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  8. basset said on November 12, 2005 at 8:48 pm

    “pass time crap” is exactly right. I don’t avoid watching it to feel superior or anything – I avoid watching it because it doesn’t interest me. just looking for some insight on why y’all do, maybe I’m missing something.

    don’t feel judged, that’s not where I’m coming from. and I’m not one of these “I don’t watch TV” weenies either, although I guess I look like one when someone makes a tv-show reference in conversation and I don’t get it. if I tell someone I’ve never seen “Seinfeld,” they assume I’m trying to pull intellectual rank on them. not at all, I just haven’t seen it.

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  9. brian stouder said on November 12, 2005 at 10:00 pm

    I’ve never seen this spouses show, but a few years ago I loved the Anna Nicole show!

    Amazing Race pulls me in nowadays, along with lots of stuff on the Food Channel and Home & Garden TV.

    On the Food Channel I saw something I’d never seen before – Paula Dean used a whole stick of real butter to fry her bacon! (lately I have come to the realization that her liberal injection of butter into every recipe is a sort of calculated wantonness, much like Anna Nicole – albeit in other ways!)

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  10. mary said on November 14, 2005 at 8:21 pm

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen Trading Spouses before the crazy religious lady episode. There’s another show, Wife Swap, on a different network, that I’ve seen once. My son spotted the crazy religious lady while channel surfing, and we stuck with it to see what was going on. I watch plenty of time waster TV, although I suspect it’s less than many people. I’ve never seen Survivor or Seinfeld or an episode of Friends. I saw The Apprentice a couple of times. I will watch Law and Order reruns, Iron Chef, and Jeopardy pretty regularly, as well as The Daily Show and recently, Countdown with Keith Olberman on MSNBC. I can’t handle the local news here, but I do generally see what NBC or CBS is calling news. I’m not a snob about TV, I just consider it more of an appliance than a source of enlightenment.

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  11. seawater999 said on November 29, 2005 at 12:33 am

    That woman is NOT a Christian. She is demon possesed. She doesn’t KNOW God (Jn 17:3). She has a form of godliness and talks empty dead Jezebel religious words, –but she definitely doesn’t have the Holy Spirit in her.

    Give me a break! No Christian is going to bark and growl and say “Get the Hell outta my house in Jesus’ Name”. No way.

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