Here’s an idea: Let’s round up Sen. Wayne Allard and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and all of their social-conservative friends who push the cynically named Defense of Marriage Act, and lock them in a room to watch the latest CBS reality series, “Tuesday Night Book Club,” premiering at 9 tonight on KCNC-Channel 4.
That would open their eyes to who’s really threatening the institution of one-man, one-woman marriage.
It’s not the gay couples, who have formed committed unions and are raising families, sanctioned or not by states or ministers or anyone else.
It’s not the single parents working doubly hard to keep jobs, homes and families running. It’s not even the plural unions like those depicted in “Big Love” or “Three of Hearts.”
No, the threat to holy matrimony seems to be coming from the unfulfilled, unfaithful, unhappy spouses in Scottsdale, Ariz., who agreed to star in an “unscripted” but heavily edited and directed hour-long show. Maybe there’s something in the Scottsdale water?
Blame it on the supposedly dry heat.
Clearly the women of Scottsdale represent a cultural subgroup we can identify as the miserably married. They are practitioners of the one-man, one-woman standoff that keeps marriage counselors in business. Legally hitched, materially well off and superficially fine, this segment of the culture is adrift no matter what their marriage license says.
“Tuesday Night Book Club,” an eight-episode docu-soap, follows seven women through their daily dramas and ennui. Mostly, this reality gig is about the lack of communication they experience in their marriages and their misguided approach to coupledom. Funny, not everything can be fixed by widescreen TVs or wife-swapping parties. (Just ask “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” per Bravo.)
The seven unfocused, unmotivated and mostly uninviting women confide to their book club friends – and a viewing nation – all the shortcomings of their lives and marriages in stark terms, each hour chronicling one week of their mostly affluent, overindulged suburban lives.
Clearly, all the granite countertops, personal trainers and Bentleys in the world cannot make up for the emptiness of their lives.
They pour another drink, admit they did not read the week’s book assignment and start yapping.
Soon it’s on to the next day’s lineup of vacuous shopping and whining. Perhaps the most interesting couple is the one dealing with addiction. The husband is in recovery, just recently returned home from rehab. Only after his problems with alcohol are discussed do we learn that his wife has her own form of addiction: She can’t stop bringing small animals into the home, regularly adding to the menagerie that already includes a skunk, various rodents, and cats and dogs in the marital bed. Each addition pushes her husband “farther down the totem pole.”
It doesn’t take a couples counselor to spot most of the problems and spiteful dynamics on display.
Will the married-too-young, needs-to-be-divorced woman finally move on with her life? Will the serially adulterous wife eventually find there’s little long-term comfort in infidelity? Will the competitive, constantly bickering and disrespectful newlyweds get a grip? And will the desperately lonely doctor’s wife realize there’s a reason her husband is not sexually interested in her? (Hello!)
Maybe what we need is a constitutional amendment outlawing the sort of voyeurism that could drive big ratings to “Tuesday Night Book Club.” Of course, there’s as much chance of that happening as there is of the current anti-gay marriage legislation going forward.
The compulsion to watch this sort of bad behavior will always be with us. Reality TV isn’t going away. Neither are bad marriages.
With luck, the politically motivated urge to outlaw certain types of marriage will fade as quickly as this voyeuristic series.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
