Atlantic Monthly

“Value systems are smashed into each other, like atoms in an accelerator, on ABC’s Wife Swap, where the producers find the most extreme pairings possible: lesbian mommies with bigots, godless cosmopolites with Bible thumpers. On one February show, a Pentecostal family, the Hoovers, was paired with the family of a former pastor, Tony Meeks, who has turned from God to follow his rock-and-roll dreams (mom Tish rocks out as well). “I feel by being there,” Kristin Hoover said, “I was able to remind Tony that God still loves him and is not finished with him.” The episode took seriously the Hoovers’ commitment to homeschooling and their rejection of contemporary culture (a rejection not taken to the extreme of declining an invitation to appear on reality TV). Compare this with the tokenism of “born-again Christian” Harriet Hayes on NBC’s dramedy Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Harriet’s but a cipher, a rhetorical backboard against which ex-boyfriend Matt Albie can thwack his heathen wisecracks.”