The folks out at TLC sent us out a copy of Sister Wives 2 for review, and though this is easily one of the more controversial titles on TLC right now, it’s also surprisingly dull for the kind of sheer alien nature of what you’ll be watching here.

Sister Wives 2 follows the Brown family, a highly unconventional family in their own right. See, the Browns are a family of polygamists, meaning that there’s one husband Brown, and in this particular set of episodes, four wives. They just tacked on a fourth wife recently, and as such, it’s made a whole lot of problems in the home. A bigamy investigation, police matters, and plenty of internal struggles make the Browns’ life a difficult one. But will the sheer power of love–even a wildly unconventional love–be enough to overcome the variety of issues they’ll face?

Leave aside your feelings about polygamy–or bigamy, if you favor that angle–and just focus on the presentation itself. Sister Wives 2 is almost disturbingly boring. I know, it’s hard to imaging a show about polygamy being boring, but the problem is the way it’s set up. Large portions of the show are either the adult Browns sitting around and talking to the camera, or the Brown family doing something, but with a voice over from some of the various adult Browns. Basically, you’re going to listen to these five people talk. And for the most part, agree with each other. Talk and agree, talk and agree…over and over again for about forty minutes an episode. By the end of the first episode, I was getting so sick of that room and that couch where the five Browns are sitting and yammering about their family.

The politics of the situation are of course a bit bizarre–naturally the show is almost vociferously in favor of polygamy, and listening to the Browns talk about how high their morals are while they’re actively breaking laws that have been in existence off and on in one form or another since the mid-1800s or so is a trip in its own right (though the defense they seem to be using is in itself bizarre as only one marriage is a legal marriage while the rest are mere “commitments”)–and naturally, most people have an opinion about all this which is going to color their perceptions about this one. I’m just having a hard time getting past how dull and preachy the presentation is. They might as well stamp on the shows opening frame “WE BELIEVE IN POLYGAMY, AND IF YOU DON’T, YOU ARE AN INTOLERANT BIGOT” for all the preachiness of the show.

Sister Wives 2 is a deeply politicized presentation, and will in turn find you likely polarized in your response. But while polarization does well for inciting discussion, it isn’t exactly entertaining. And that’s the biggest problem with Sister Wives 2: it’s simply not entertaining.

And as such, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives Sister Wives 2 a three out of ten for offering up some heavily biased information and a whole lot of political leanings packaged in a shell of nearly endless conversation.

We all need food. There’s just no other way to put it–we all need food. And while we don’t need much more than bread and water, we’ve learned it’s better to not just get by, but get by in grand style. And plenty of restaurants all over the world have sprung up to supply us. Some restaurants, though, are better than others. And that’s what we’re going to look at with Best Food Ever, a copy of which the folks at TLC sent over for review.

Best Food Ever takes us around the United States, looking at a variety of food, from food carts to sandwiches and diners and beyond with a host of dishes. Narrated by no less a figure than John Goodman, who you can believe really likes his food just by looking at him, you’ll see food you never even imagined existing from all corners of the globe.

For instance, you’ll be introduced to a hamburger in Atlanta, Georgia at a place called the Pullman and Finch Public House. The hamburger there, a two-patty masterpiece with onion, cheese and pickles that’s made from a combination of sixty percent chuck to forty percent brisket, that’s ground on premises. It took fully twelve different recipes to determine the exact mix. And then, even the condiments are made on site. If you want one, you have to go to the Pullman and Finch at ten PM,  every day. And that’s just number ten on the sandwich list.

This is food porn on par with most anything you’re going to find anywhere. Elaborate preparations, rare ingredients, massive servings and even a little dose of the preposterous, you’ll be hearing about everything you can imagine, and plenty of things you can’t.

Naturally, this is something of a niche product. You’re not going to get much action here, or even a whole lot in the way of entertainment. But if you love hearing about restaurants, and finding new places to eat–not to mention new things to eat–the end result is that you’re going to love this. But you’re not going to be able to get around it if you don’t like hearing about food for three and a half hours, which is how long this runs.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives TLC’s Best Food Ever a seven out of ten–it has a great niche, and some of the food is just so preposterous that it’s hard not to be amazed by it all. Still though, you’ll have to be fond of food to get anywhere with this, and if you’re not that big a foodie, then you’ll never get anywhere with it.

Anyone else like cake?  That’s not exactly a difficult question, is it? Most people like cake, and that’s why today’s review is exciting. The folks out at TLC sent over a copy of Cake Boss: Season 3 for us to review, and it will be a wonderful mix of cake, comedy, and even a little drama.

Cake Boss: Season 3 will take us to Carlo’s Bakery, currently the purview of one Buddy Valastro and his rather extensive family, along with some extra employees, of course, some of which come and go throughout the season. And the crew out at Carlo’s Bakery will make some impressively involved pastries. But this won’t just be a cake experience; you’ll get to see how these cakes are assembled from start to finish, as well as some background information and the like. And then we’ll have family drama in there, as well as some good old fashioned comedy.

Cake Boss: Season 3 is a surprisingly rich and varied experience–sure, at the end of the day, it’s basically a lot of footage of cakes getting made–but despite the singular nature of what’s going on here, there are so many variations on the concept that it’s actually a big surprise to see what’s going to happen next. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a cake with plumbing before. Thanks to Cake Boss: Season 3, I will see just that.

And I said once already there will be a lot of laughs here. But even I didn’t think there would be quite so many. Sure, I had a couple good laughs in the beginning, but it kept right on going, and by the end of it all, I had laughed myself crazy.

This is almost a sitcom more than it is a documentary, but when you get this many laughs into a show about cake, and then top it off by making it an educational experience (yes, you will learn–they have a couple segments worth of cake history, how cake used to be done, what kinds of cakes were big back when, and so on), well, you’ve got something here of the kind of thing you don’t normally see on television. And the kind of thing that will be well worth your time to check out.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Cake Boss: Season 3 a nine out of ten. Though it’s somewhat repetitive in nature–it’s all about cake, after all–they will find so many different ways to present the same thing that it seldom gets old. And that makes Cake Boss something downright delicious to watch from TLC.

The folks out at The Learning Channel, via their press agent at Gaiam, sent out a copy of Eyewitness To Jesus, and it’s going to be a real eye-opener for a whole lot of people.

Eyewitness to Jesus takes the position that a recently found piece of papyrus–a really old version of paper–also known as “the Jesus Papyrus” may be connected to the Bible’s book of Matthew. In fact, the Jesus Papyrus suggests that the entire book of Matthew was actually written–as many believe–by people who actually saw the events in question. But it didn’t take long for questions to arise as to the origin–and the date in which it originated–of the papyrus itself. Thus began a long and winding road as a British journalist set out to prove the actual origin of the Jesus Papyrus.

As you should expect from The Learning Channel, it’s very strong on the information. It’s not so entertaining as a Discovery Channel presentation might have been, but it makes up for it by being very strong with its informative side. You’ll get all sorts of background on how papyrus is made, how it’s dated approximately by comparing a target piece of papyrus to other pieces based on the handwriting on the papyruses in question, and a substantially large number of other items. They will go, quite literally, across half the planet and then some to discover the truth about all this, and you’ll follow along for every stop along the way.

And of course, the question from there is, what exactly is the truth? Well, no one’s quite sure. No one was there to see it. But an analysis of what happened, well, that shows a whole different story. I’m not going to spoiler that particular score, but the end result is pretty impressive all the same.

Sure, it’s got a lot of tendency to be dull–make no mistake, this sucker is so thick with information that they won’t pay a whole lot of attention to the package–but the sheer amount of information here does make up for a little bit of yawn-inducing in the presentation. Eyewitness to Jesus is going to teach you dozens of things you never knew previously, and frankly, might just change the way you look at your entire life.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, hands Eyewitness to Jesus a seven out of ten for doing something really impressive, even if not in a particularly entertaining style.

So the folks at TLC, by way of Gaiam, sent me a copy of Toddlers and Tiaras on DVD, and chances are, my name is now on a list somewhere.

See, Toddlers and Tiaras is pretty much what it says on the box–it’s all about those bizarre child beauty pageants that are so popular, especially down south.  There are various sponsors, various competition styles and various rewards, but one thing is the same no matter what’s going on–the pageants we see here are some of the most genuinely frightening moments of television today.
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So the folks out at TLC shipped me a copy of 18 Kids and Counting, Season 2, and it’s alternately one of the most horrifying and enlightening concepts I’ve seen in a good while.

Yes, I know–the title pretty much gives away the horror and the enlightenment all in one convenient package.  The Duggar family is a wide brood of, now, eighteen children.  The eighteenth was in utero at the time of filming, so it was really only a matter of time, and that’s sort of why they call it “and counting”.

18 Kids and Counting is a story all about a family that’s nothing short of massive.  They even have their own politics–extremely conservative.  So conservative, in fact, that television is virtually inaccessible, the internet only slightly less inaccessible, and the children are all home schooled by mother Michelle.

Of course, there are lots of people who disagree with the show on one level or another–phrases like “irresponsibly large number of children”, “psychopathically conservative”, “stifling environment” come up (my personal favorite involves the phrase “clown car”, but I cant go too much farther than that without being not safe for work).

Watching the elder Duggar children try to deal with a waiter who happened to be a tantric dancer proved to be very, VERY awkward, and you get the feeling that the Duggars would be wildly out of place pretty much anywhere that didn’t feature a pulpit or a hymn sing.  Michelle’s attempt at an explanation as to why they won’t celebrate Halloween, for example, is almost terrifying in itself.  I got the very distinct feeling that she longed to launch into a rampaging tirade about demons and all of Satan’s works but was somehow restrained–by what, I don’t know.  But regardless of this serious awkwardness, you get to see what life is like for this collective on a regular basis.

You’ll also get interesting notes, presented in infonugget or “pop-up video” style, about what you’re seeing at the time.  For instance, you’ll discover how many hours were spent on the eldest Duggar son’s wedding.  Or that Jim Bob, Duggar patriarch, goes through two cans of hair spray every month.

Again, this is one of those incredible niche products from TLC–if you have no interest in gigantic conservative families that look like they’re about to burst into flame or vomit in utter revulsion every time they go somewhere, then you won’t really get any joy in seeing the adventures of the  Duggars.  But if you’re all about gigantic conservative families, well, then you’ll love 18 Kids and Counting.

The Screenhead Ten Scale realizes that this niche product is really, REALLY, niche and thus hands it a six out of ten for doing what it does very well, but probably having only limited interest to most of its potential audience.  This is a series that, by necessity, preaches only to the choir.