It's 2009, the end of a decade which -- when it comes to television -- was defined in large part by reality shows. By now, most of us reality fans have become a bit jaded. Backstabbing, catfights, rants, breakdowns - there's just not much shock value left anymore. So after Valleywag ran this story about public reaction to one man's behavior on (of all shows) "Wife Swap" a few weeks ago, it got me thinking about how this particular guy had disturbed and outraged so many people.
If you've never seen the show, it's a basic enough concept. Two women, usually from very different families and very different parts of the country, trade places and move in with each other's husbands and children for two weeks. The housewife swaps with the career woman. The mom of a sports-obsessed family moves in with a brood of bookworms. The hour is often filled with plenty of head-butting, but usually everyone goes back to the farm/penthouse/commune/mansion richer for the experience.
On the January 30th episode Gayla Long, a Missouri wife and mother of four whose family loves fast food, ATVs and paintball, swapped lives with life coach and weight-loss hypnotherapist Renee Stephens who lives in a tony San Francisco neighborhood, spends $40,000 a year to send her two young children to a French bilingual private school, and, along with her husband, is die-hard about environmental issues and staying healthy. Obviously, this wasn't going to be a match made in heaven, but things took an unexpectedly bad turn when Renee's British venture capitalist husband, Stephen Fowler, began acting downright cruel to Gayla. He continually humiliated her in front of his kids, insulted everything from her hometown to her language skills, told her he earns more in a week than she does in a year and even banned her from setting foot upstairs. One of the "Wife Swap" gimmicks is letting the wives implement new rules for their new homes (Renee, for example, put a moratorium on paintball and set up family French lessons), but bratty Stephen refused everything Gayla suggested, like letting the children ride go-carts and getting the family to sing the national anthem. After launching multiple attacks of verbal abuse against Gayla, it was Stephen who called in the show's producers to try to end the swap, eventually causing his temporary wife to move to a hotel.
Guess what? Viewers didn't like it. They blasted Fowler on all kinds of web sites, message boards, and blogs. He's been labeled the worst husband in the world and someone even posted his home address on a reality TV site, prompting Fowler to threaten a lawsuit. Yet another angered viewer launched a blog called stephenfowlersucks.com, which itemizes everyone Fowler insulted during the episode. (Overweight people and military members topped the list.)
So back to that question of why this guy struck such a nerve with so many of us when we've surely seen similar or worse behavior on TV multiple times over. Maybe it's because his cruelty was so uncalled for. We reality viewers may be used to seeing people resort to bad behavior when, say, they're competing for a million-dollar prize or for the love of a big-haired '80s rocker, but just for the sheer joy of being as mean as possible and making someone feel horrible? Well, that's just taking it too far. In the end, it sounds like Stephen Fowler did indeed learn a few lessons, albeit after the cameras stopped rolling. He posted an apology on his wife's web site, she's asked him to seek professional help, and he's resigned from the boards of two environmental non-profits so, he says, his behavior won't reflect badly on them. As for Gayla, she's probably thrilled to be done with her nightmarish foray into reality TV, and I'm certain she didn't leave her heart in San Francisco.
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