ABS: Fifty-Seven Crabapples for Slimy 'Fants

Raise your hand if you like to watch childbirth! Come on, guys, the juice of life! Babies! Brand new ones still covered in placenta goo!


So TLC has this concept going... let's take normal-looking people and watch them do normal things with no extra drama. Great. No, seriously, that's cool. Sure, sure, I'm all for really pretty people doing really crazy shit and yelling at each other and turning every moment into a project and filling their agenda with so much cream and sugar that their metaphorical coffee cups inevitably overflow and get their shiny floors all sticky just so they can yell at the janitor, but hey, regular Joes doing regular Janes? Sure, I'm in.

A Makeover Story, A Wedding Story - fabulous. But watching babies being born? That's when I need just a tad more than narrativity-layin-low. Unless it's my own baby, you need to help me form some sort of connection, or I'm just going to throw up in my hand when the KY-slicked fetus slides out. I'm not sold simply by seeing the crib that daddy built or some teeny-tiny Uggs. Awww, cute... but still... puke everywhere.
Am I cold and unfeeling? Maybe. But sitcoms and soap operas use fake babies for a reason. Most people don't like gooey infants and anonymous slimy vaginas unless it's:
a. his/her own baby
b. a relative's baby
c. a highly fetishized porno

Fine, tell me all you want that I can't pull the wool over my eyes forever and that I'll think my own sticky baby is the most beautiful sight in the universe. Honestly, I totally believe you. Nonetheless, TLC producers, for refusing to compensate for the fact that you're asking me to emotionally invest myself in someone else's baby without seriously pulling some mad narrative strings and/or maneuvering your dirty producer fingers adroitly inandaround my sensory control panel - 57 crabapples.