The Boob Tube

Have you heard the one about the man who goes to the Rabbi complaining that his house is too small? Each week, the Rabbi tells him to put an additional farm animal in the house until it is filled with chickens, goats, and a cow. Finally, the Rabbi tells the man to empty his house and put the animals back where they belong. The next week, the man returns, “How can I thank you, Rabbi? My house is so big.”

That is exactly how I feel about TV these days. After the watching the Soprano’s premiere on HBO, my husband and I decided to stay tuned for HBO’s new show, Big Love. Bill Paxton plays a Mormon husband with three wives, three households and seven kids. After fifteen minutes, my husband said, “This is too exhausting. I can barely handle one wife, why would I want three.” And with that comment, I turned the television off and watched my husband slip into a deep slumber. I couldn’t really argue him. One husband was plenty-the thought of having three? No, thank you.

However, I began to wonder, would my life be easier if there were two other wives to help carry the load? I decided to tune in the next week. The three wives, Barb, Nicki and Margene, do get along better than one would imagine, except for their jealousy issues. This I find a bit unrealistic. After a long day of wiping my daughters’ butts and enforcing time-outs, would I really mind if my husband wanted to spend the night with his other wife? Would it be so horrible for one or two nights a week to have the bed to myself with complete control of the remote and covers?

It was the weekly staff meetings between the wives that freaked me out. Everyone has their to-do lists for the handyman, grocery store and who knows what. They were so busy giving each other biting looks and snappy words that hardly anything got done. At this point, I became immediately exhausted. This was the reason I left my sorority in college and began hanging out with Vietnam Vets at the local bar.

I decided to tune into something a bit more familiar, The OC Housewives, a docu-soap about five housewives who live in Coto De Caza, an extremely wealthy gated community in Orange County. Even though I happen to live down the road in Laguna Beach, I have never been to Coto. How different could we be? It turns out that OC Housewives follows women who are just like me: a Playboy bunny turned real estate mogul (Jeanne); a kept woman who is bored (Jo); and a trophy wife who is an extreme athlete (Kimberly).

Kimberly is the one I related to the most, because she used to live on the east coast and feeds her kids organic vegetables. That was until she shared that after she turned forty, her husband decided he wanted a lingerie model for a wife. So, she got a boob job and went from an A cup to a D, because as she says, ‘who wants to have surgery twice?’ I’m thinking she could have benefited from the Big Love model and gotten her husband another wife, a lingerie model. That would have freed up her time to do more surfing, an activity that I find a lot more fun that hanging out at Victoria’s Secret.

“How can this show be real when they all look so fake?” exclaimed my girlfriend Samantha. She’s my only friend who watches television like me, with obsessive tendencies towards particular shows. “I’m sticking with Desperate Housewives,” Samantha added. “At least Bree drinks a lot of wine and Lynette has control issues with her husband. Those are problems I can understand.”

She’s right. Desperate has a more wife next-door feeling than The OC Housewives and Big Love, but it just doesn’t give me that same sense of relief. When the other shows end, the chickens and goats are gone and life feels so light and free. Sure I have to get up in the morning and start that exciting mommy routine all over again, but at least I don’t have to worry about my husband’s other wives telling me what to do, what color of lingerie my husband wants me to wear and most importantly, who I will be sleeping with tonight.