Abba Zabba

There's a cable network called TLC. It used to stand for "The Learning Channel". They showed educational programming: science, nature, maybe some children's programs, etc. But a few years ago, their corporate parent apparently decided that the old approach wasn't working, so they totally re-did the format. I don't know if TLC still stands for "The Learning Channel". Maybe it does. But there's certainly nothing educational on it anymore. It's all fashion shows, home design shows, and other reality shows of all kinds. I guess TLC is still beating The Discovery Channel, which seems to exclusively air medical oddity shows like "Born With Two Heads" or "The World's Fattest Twins". But it's still pretty awful.

I realized all this last night when I accidentally put on TLC. The show was called "Honey, We're Killing Our Kids!" I applaud them on the title, which references a series of stupid kids' movies from about 15 years ago. (I'm sure Rick Moranis would be very excited about this, if he hadn't fallen off the face of the Earth.) Each episode, a doctor tells a family how to improve their lifestyle. The one I saw focused on diet; maybe they all do. It's a good idea, considering the child obesity rates in this country.

But it's also a reality show, which means that everything's over-dramatized. There's the ridiculous title, which the doctors repeat several times. At one point, they showed computer-generated images of what the two daughters will look like at age 40, to show how bad their current lifestyle is. I thought the images looked fine. One of the future daughters was a little chubby and wearing unflattering glasses, exactly as she is now at age 10 or so. The other looked like a mug shot, and the woman wasn't wearing any makeup, but she looked pretty average. The parents reacted in shock. Then, before the commercial break, the announcer said "Stay tuned, as we show the parents new pictures of what their daughters will look like at age 40, based on their new healthy diet!" That's one sensitive computer simulator they've got. I didn't stay tuned, but I'm sure that by eating fresh vegetables, the future daughters managed to get more stylish clothes and put on some makeup.

There was also a scene where one daughter tried drinking milk for the first time, then ran to the bathroom and started vomiting. It was shown over and over. That may have had something to do with the fact that non-infant humans aren't biologically supposed to drink milk, and more than half the world's population can't actually digest it. Naturally the "doctor" associated with the show didn't say any of that. I'm sure there was a lot more than was objectionable about the show, but around that time I turned it off so I could watch the worst show in the history of television. Because that's the way I like to spend my evenings.