The frustrating part

This is the best reality-TV-show I have ever seen (the reader can note I didn't say "one of the best", like most people cop out with), and almost everything Jo says to the parents (except a few misandristic "Mr. Mom"-bits) is sensible and wise.

I am particularly amazed at the general 'equality' about this - Jo really cuts down awful mothers as well as praises good fathers. This you almost never see anywhere else in television - it's always man-bashing and woman-pedestalizing, no matter where you look.

So this bit is really astonishing - she really doesn't insult men much, and when she talks angrily to or about a man, we are shown that there is a good reason - and she never lets women off the hook just because they are women or girls. She even defended a boy when girls attacked him, and said that it is unfair (too bad she didn't see THAT is exactly what boys and men get in the larger scheme of things - girls being given unfair advantages, and then men and boys being blamed for everything bad that women and girls do, etc. etc. etc.).

I don't think I have ever witnessed a woman defending a boy or a man against girls and women (in this case, two girls and one woman). That is what made this show the tops in my book. Fairness and equality - empty words usually, but manifested truly in this show.

However, there is one frustrating part about this.

If you happen to live in an apartment building, where the children of the neighbourghood families are indeed 'unruly', noisy, and whose parents are indeed angrily just yelling to them (to stop yelling, heh) instead of disciplining them properly, it's a very frustrating situation.

Armed with all this knowledge, you can't still just go to a stranger (even if it is a neighbour that you are on good 'hello' terms with) and start telling them that they are raising their kids wrong. And yet you cannot help wanting to help them somehow.. you KNOW now how they could get their kids under control and bring more happiness into the family, and yet you are doomed to just sit and listen to the awful racket the kids put up in the hallways, and especially during the 'sauna nights', the even more horrible screaming and tearing and then the (sometimes drunken) adults yelling even more loudly.

That is the most frustrating part of all this.. (the same thing happens when one watches the 'Dog Whisperer' (a bit more misandristic show, even though this time it's a man), and walks outside and sees people being controlled and dominated by their dogs, which can do whatever they wish, and when a dog almost bites your head off for speaking to the owner..)

.. seeing what's wrong and knowing how to correct it, and suffering from the noise and ruckus (violence towards one's door, for example), and being completely helpess to change it.

Otherwise, this is television at its best, and shows that TV _COULD_ be used for informing people and for good purposes, but it's just used to brainwash people and lull them with insignifigant trivia and terrorize them with 'news' and horror movies.

Maybe they should make a reality-TV show about neighbourgs of families who have unruly kids, and how to approach the topic.. (:

Perhaps giving them Supernanny-DVDs or books as some kind of gifts could be the solution. If it wasn't so unnatural and awkward, and raise so many suspicions - it would almost be the same as saying: "Hey, I see you are really awful parents". Who wants to hear that? Heck, even the parents in this show, who have ASKED FOR HELP, don't always swallow it easily!