I’m coming round to the opinion that Wife Swap (mentioned here before) is actually very good television. Having just watched an episode on ABC, I can say that the Americans have executed it with finesse.
In this episode a sun-gazing, raw-food eating, vegan PETA campaigner from Arizona swaps homes with a wife from Arizona whose family hunts and eats game. In one classic scene the husband of the hunting family comes home to find that the vegan hasn’t cooked any dinner because she “forgot” to take the meat out of the freezer. He grabs his rifle, goes outside and shoots a rabbit, which he then butchers and presents for cooking.
To her credit, the vegan doesn’t make a fuss and is not judgemental about their hunting lifestyle. She just bursts into tears every time she thinks about the poor little animals happily running around with their friends and family when they are cruelly shot.
The hunter gets it right when he points out that the vegan is taking the weight of the world on her shoulders. She has a kind of substitute catholic guilt complex and is always stressed and upset, despite all the yoga and sun-gazing. She agrees with him, saying that there needs to be a balance, and it can’t be good for people or animals who think about things too much.
Much is made of attempts by the hunter’s wife to get the veggie family to eat meat. Despite the fact that the daughter has been a vegetarian since she was three and therefore probably didn’t have much real choice in the matter, it’s clear that she is now a committed vegetarian and these efforts were doomed to failure.
Both sides of the hunting family were cajoled into going handing out leaflets for PETA, with similar success. Perhaps someone should point out to the vegans that PETA kills animals…
Ultimately, though, both families learnt something from each other. The vegan dad is now spending more time with his daughter, and the hunting family… well I’m not sure they really did learn anything. They should have picked up some parenting tips (letting your hyperactive ten-year-old son eat a pound of sugar at breakfast is a bad idea) but it’s not clear that they made any changes. The vegans, meanwhile, are now eating cooked food and talking to each other more.
It wasn’t quite the bloodbath I was hoping for, but it was interesting to see how well people with such different lifestyles and opinions can get along.