With 17 Massachusetts high school girls knocked up this summer in what some authorities are calling a “pregnancy pact,” maybe NBC’s idea isn’t so far-out after all.
Years ago, home economics teachers sent girls home with sacks of flour they were required to tend for a week, carrying them everywhere and keeping them safe. More recently, plastic dolls with simulated tears replaced the flour sacks, but the idea was the same — to teach young people just how demanding parenthood is and disabuse them of the notion that they are ready to try it.
That’s essentially the premise of NBC’s “The Baby Borrowers,” borrowed from a British TV hit, debuting this week with actual infants subbing for the bags of flour.
When the NBC series was first announced (originally slated for February), critics were appalled. Most of us imagined the worst. Like “Kid Nation,” the controversial CBS project that sounded like “Lord of the Flies” in a New Mexico ghost town, “Baby Borrowers” turns out to be both more supervised and less harrowing than advertised.
Yes, you feel slimy for even glancing at it. But, no, “The Baby Borrowers,” which premieres 8 p.m. Wednesday on KUSA-Channel 9, isn’t as creepy as it sounds. It could be educational for some naive teens.
Consider the fact that the actual parents who lent their children to the producers for this project were across the street, watching on monitors, and able to enter the house to talk to the teen couples at any time. Consider, too, that nannies were on-site, although instructed not to intervene except in the case of an emergency, which happens in one episode when a baby wakes up, crying, to an empty house.
Consider that some of the participating young couples seriously wanted to marry and have kids in a hurry.
Add the fact that NBC allied with organizations fighting to prevent teen pregnancy, and the series begins to sound almost excusable.
Social experiment or summer “reality” filler? Naturally, it’s both, (TV likes to cover its assets) and that means, for every serious discussion of parental responsibility, there’s a scene showing teenagers eager to play house, or bickering under the watchful gaze of television cameras. Think “Big Brother,” with diapers getting in the way of good times.
Crafty editing gives the show a narrative arc — certain individuals who appear brattiest, most self-absorbed and least likely to be good parents come around over the course of six episodes, while some who at first seem like naturals fall apart under pressure.
That pressure provides an array of sight gags for zoom shots: babies throwing up, having accidents, screaming and refusing to eat make for great, unselfconscious camera subjects.
The five couples quartered in adjacent suburban houses spend succeeding hours with toddlers, then tweens, then unruly teens and, finally, seniors who have various needs.
The series was filmmed last August over three weeks.
Another saving grace is that there is neither prize money nor eliminations. Nobody gets voted off the cul-de-sac. Any failures are caused by the participants themselves, who then mope, process and supposedly grow from their mistakes.
Of course, it’s difficult — and probably a mistake — to believe in the staying power of these barely post-pubescent couples, in spite of everything they say.
Likewise, it’s difficult and ill-advised to take the “reality” aspect of the series too seriously. The “Baby Borrowers” producers promise that, in addition to the real parents, there were medics, therapists and everyone shy of the National Guard standing by.
Still, you’ve got to wonder about the people who willingly handed over their offspring for a television reality show, even if it is also a well-intentioned social experiment.
Joanne Ostrow’s column appears Tuesday, Friday and Sunday: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
