Has there ever, in the history of reality TV, been a more cynical and sleazy enterprise than ‘MILF Manor’?
Believe me: I’m a fan of the genre. When done right, there’s nothing like reality television for psychodrama, interpersonal relationships, morality shifts, transactional behavior, physical endurance tests, plot twists and Machiavellian gamesmanship. No less a gold-star content creator than Mike White, of ‘White Lotus’ fame, is also a super-fan of reality television, competing on ‘Survivor’ once and ‘The Amazing Race’ twice.
‘Part of my job and my way of life is studying people and analyzing motivation and character,’ White told The New Yorker in 2021. ‘I still feel like, even on the most contrived reality show, the people are human and they’re more interesting than some of the most well-scripted drama. And for me, as a writer of drama, I aspire to do what reality television already does. To create characters that are surprising and dimensional and do weird s**t and capture your attention.’
And there is no weirder s**t on television right now than TLC’s ‘MILF Manor,’ which promises ‘a dating experience like no other.’
That’s certainly one way to put it. The show’s queasy premise: Eight older mothers and their Gen Z sons gather in one waterfront mansion — moms and sons sharing bedrooms — and engage in all kinds of sexually uncomfortable, vaguely incestuous scenarios.
‘MILF Manor,’ with its cheap production values and flat bright lighting, looks like it’s operating on a soft-core porn budget, and I doubt that’s accidental. We are witnessing both the apotheosis and the nadir of reality television, incest on the bubble as no longer taboo — at least among a certain cohort of reality TV producers and very sad people desperate for any degree of fame.
The show’s queasy premise: Eight older mothers and their Gen Z sons gather in one waterfront mansion – moms and sons sharing bedrooms – and engage in all kinds of sexually uncomfortable, vaguely incestuous scenarios.
‘MILF Manor,’ with its cheap production values and flat bright lighting, looks like it’s operating on a soft-core porn budget, and I doubt that’s accidental.
‘I don’t think any of my sons realize I have an extremely high libido,’ 59-year-old April Jayne — even the names are porn-y — tells us in a confessional. The only rational response to that is: Jeez lady, let’s hope not. Why would any of your sons want that information? Which, of course, they now have, along with much of America.
To see mainstream media treat this show with any degree of normalcy, let alone claim this garbage is a vehicle for feminist self-actualization, is an affront to us all. People magazine: ‘MILF Manor’s Kelle Opens Up About That Shocking Twist: ‘An Experience I Will Forever Be Grateful For.’
Few things are as dispiriting as fame for the sake of fame — and this requires a complete denial of what’s really going on here.
Pola, 48, says she’s looking for a marriage proposal. Stephany, 46, says God is very important to her and she is thrilled to be on ‘this amazing journey.’ Kelle, 51, goes by ‘Disco Mommy’ and tells us in the first episode that if her son Joey, age 20, ‘continues to c**k-block me this entire time, he’s going to ruin the experience.’
As noted elsewhere, Tina Fey saw this coming. Back in 2008, her sitcom ’30 Rock’ created a show-within-the-show called ‘MILF Island’: ‘Twenty MILFS. Fifty eighth-grade boys. No rules . . . [a] square-off at Erection Cove.’
Sure, the boys on ‘MILF Manor’ are of legal age — oh, what a low bar — but most of them look barely post-pubescent. It feels abuse-adjacent.
‘I’ll be in the hot tub at 10,’ Kelle announces in that initial episode. ‘Sorry, ladies — I might be sleeping with your son!’
Is there enough post-show therapy to undo this damage?
Of course, the show’s producers and the network itself are hiding behind the fig leaf of ‘female empowerment,’ flipping the societal acceptance of older men with much younger women. Sounds high-minded, but it’s utterly contemptuous. Consider the inevitable: a mom hooking up in her bed with someone else’s son, her own son in the same bedroom. This is a real eventuality, as teased on next week’s episode.
‘I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about,’ production executive Daniela Neumann told the Washington Post. ‘No one’s doing anything wrong. And these are all consenting adults. I don’t really understand it, but I think anything that provokes conversation is a good thing.’
Sure, the boys on ‘MILF Manor’ are of legal age – oh, what a low bar – but most of them look barely post-pubescent. It feels abuse-adjacent.
There is love-to-hate reality TV and hate-to-hate. ‘MILF Manor’ is the latter, pitting shirtless sons against their blindfolded mothers, who rub them down – feel them up, really – in an attempt to identify their offspring.
Rule number one of content creation: Don’t insult your audience’s intelligence. Neumann told WaPo that every cast member had a great time, but Sunday night’s most recent episode teased the departure of one mother-son duo, who apparently could not abide the sordidness of ‘MILF Manor.’ So really, if you’re going to create the most repulsive, exploitative reality TV show to date — and this is on a network built on the morbidly obese, polygamy, and the dating life of a 23-year-old woman trapped in an 8-year-old girl’s body — just show us some respect and freaking own it.
There is love-to-hate reality TV and hate-to-hate. ‘MILF Manor’ is the latter, pitting shirtless sons against their blindfolded mothers, who rub them down — feel them up, really — in an attempt to identify their offspring.
That ‘challenge’ was topped by a game called ‘Wall of Secrets,’ in which mothers and sons had to guess which sexual disclosure, posted to said wall, belonged to the other. A sampling:
‘I had a 7-woman orgy.’
‘I got pink eye from eating a**.’
‘I slept with my son’s best friend.’
Few things are as dispiriting as fame for the sake of fame – and this requires a complete denial of what’s really going on here.
‘I’ll be in the hot tub at 10,’ Kelle (above) announces in that initial episode. ‘Sorry, ladies – I might be sleeping with your son!’
That last confession, by the way, seems to have destroyed the relationship between that mother, a 50-year-old named Soyoung — again, these names were made for this show — and her son. Even the other boys agreed that ‘Jimmy finding out his mom f***ed his best friend’ crossed a line.
You think?
No less than The New Yorker has weighed in, calling ‘MILF Manor’ ‘perhaps a rock bottom,’ for reality TV, seeming ‘downright pornographic.’ It’s hard to believe the show’s conceit that neither mothers nor sons knew each other had signed up to spend one month in Mexico filming a reality TV show — but then again, it’s hard to believe any sane, psychologically healthy person would go through with this at all.
Really: If you can stand before a cheap bulletin board, read a Post-It that says, ‘I had a 7-woman orgy,’ and say out loud, vaguely prideful, ‘That could be my kid,’ or tell another mother that her son ‘said he has a big c••k’ and not care about the collateral damage, you are an entirely new breed of reality show participant.
‘Some of the guys here,’ one mom says, ‘are very immature.’ Wonder where they got it.
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