Wednesday 23 December 2009

Wife Swap: The last episode

I'm not sad to see the back of Wife Swap; a tired old format, indeed, but no more so than say 'I'm a Celebrity...' which chugs on unabashed. I understand why they culled Wife Swap; they should have done it about five years ago. I'm still angry about Big Brother, though. That's not a format problem, but a producer problem.
So will Wife Swap go out with a bang or a whimper? Let's see.
Tori is a 'lady who lunches' (i.e. spends her husband's money). They have 5 houses, but no romance. She swapped with Sam, who has seven kids! Wow, that's a lot. They seemed poor but happy.
Sam started crying because Tori had a nicer kitchen than her. Tori started crying because Sam only had 2 grand coming into her house a month. Both the women reminded me of each other quite a lot, which doesn't make for the most explosive episode. All Wife Swap seems to do is confirm sexist roles, and that being a housewife is total drudgery. I know they seek out the 'extremes' but it's sad to think that so many lives are still defined in this way, and that people don't even question it.
The 'rich' husband said 'what my wife does in a day is a mystery to me.' How sad.
The one good thing about Wife Swap is, of course, there is always SOMETHING to learn from another family's way of doing things, some saving grace. The 'rich' wife sounded like a right snob saying she could learn nothing from the council estate mum. She could learn to spend some time with her husband, for a start. Plus she looked AS rough as the council estate mum, even with all that cash. 90 grand aint that much anyway between a couple plus a family. That's less per head than what I live on if you divide it by 4.
Tori made a twat of herself at the table meeting. She was really looking down her nose, which was unbecoming. The husband she got to swap with was a nice bloke; she got lucky if anything.
I don't blame Sam for walking out; Tori was just plain rude. If someone has to come in and tell you to spend time with the little people you've given birth to, you're the idiot, Tori, money or not.
And so ends Wife Swap. Which is fine, but can we have the brand new spangly fresh-idea programming now?

1 comment:

Emma said...

I watched this episode for the first time on E4 last night. I thought the 'poor' wife was a lovely person, i was expecting the typical 7 kids, council house stereotype. She had empathy and seemed to be a genuinely nice person, i would be glad to count her as a friend if i knew her, the 'rich' wife was a disgrace to our gender and i'd be embarrased to admit if i knew her, what a waste of space.....