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Mothers-in-law have been a source of entertainment since the beginnings of moving pictures, if not before that. People love to complain about their MILs, and some classic sitcom characters have set the MIL template for generations. Now, a new reality series from Brazil will pair people up with the mothers-in-law they don’t exactly get along with.
STRANDED WITH MY MOTHER-IN-LAW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: We see a drone shot of a small island, and we zoom in on the hatch to a bunker. There, presenter Fernanda Souza says, “Ms. Netflix tasked me with a tough mission. Create a new reality show.”
The Gist: The six couples who are participating on Stranded With My Mother-In-Law think that they’re participating in couples reality series on that island, with a prize worth just short of $100,000. What they don’t know is that the mothers of one of each couple’s participants are lurking nearby.
Souza actually introduces us to the mothers-in-law first. It’s your usual assortment of MILs, most of which don’t particularly like the person their son or daughter married. In one case, her son has been married to his wife for 18 years and his mom still doesn’t think she’s right for him. In another case, the mother of a woman who married her husband a year ago is upset that he never took the time to meet her in person — they still have never met. Another MIL thinks her daughter’s husband is lazy. Another thinks her daughter-in-law has too many tattoos.
After the couples engage in some first-day risqué chit-chat, including an oh-so-mature game of “Never Have I Ever,” they’re presented with their first challenge the next day: Go row out to a jetty and get a treasure, then come back and unravel ribbons on a pole until a spike falls down. The first two couples to finish get VIP sleeping quarters; the second two get more plain sleeping quarters; the final two get a more “rustic” room.
The treasures? The mothers-in-law, of course! The couples, some of whom have members that are afraid of the water, need to row rafts to the jetty, get their moms inside, row back, and the three of them have to work on the untangling.
But there’s another surprise in store for them: When the challenge is over, the people leaving aren’t the mothers-in-law, but their kids! Yes, that means that the moms and the son- or daughters-in-law they don’t get along with will have to live together and work together to win the prize. Meanwhile, the group that got sent off will be secretly watching the proceedings from an underground bunker, able to at times influence the results.
Photo: Netflix
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Stranded With My Mother-In-Law is sort of like a low-grade Survivor, but with this supposedly funny twist.
Our Take: The entire concept of Stranded With My Mother-In-Law is essentially “they hate each other, but can they work together?” It’s actually a concept we’re surprised a reality producer either here or in England hasn’t thought of already, given how often we see “mother-in-law letters” flood advice columns online and in print. It’s not like people being annoyed by meddling mothers-in-law is a new concept; it was an essential element of most sitcoms in the ’50s and ’60s.
There definitely could be some good, worthwhile emotional moments in this series, where some of the in-laws come to some sort of understanding with each other and maybe even (gasp!) start liking each other. But for the most part, this series is designed to emphasize throwdowns between the contestants and their MILs, as the scenes for the upcoming season emphasize.
Your enjoyment of this show will depend on just how much conflict you can tolerate. It’s pretty apparent that the show’s casting people found particularly, um, dramatic mothers-in-law to cast, ones that seem to blow small slights out of proportion and/or have extreme opinions of the people who married their kids. They’re all entertaining, of course, but we know that these moms are there to take over, not to mend fences.
Sex and Skin: Nothing beyond shirtless men and women in swimsuits.
Parting Shot: Severina, the mom who is meeting up with her son-in-law for the first time says she didn’t put her daughter through college so “she could go bunk up with some 40-year-old father who doesn’t have a career.”
Sleeper Star: We’re still not sure what Severena’s beef is with her SIL, Thy, aside from the fact that he hasn’t met her in person. But it also seems like this is going to be the most explosive pairing of the show.
Most Pilot-y Line: One of the mothers-in-law, Marcia, apparently guilted her son when he didn’t visit her after she “had surgery,” i.e. had a mole removed. Wow, that’s some second-level mom guilt right there; it sent chills up our spine hearing it.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Let’s face it, when you saw the title Stranded With My Mother-In-Law, you weren’t expecting to see a group of people who liked each other, did you?
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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