The Texas mother is from somewhere in central Texas. I'm curious to see where in Centeral Texas this conservative woman is from (one part of the show was filmed at a gay country bar here in Austin). If her bigoted family is from Austin, it'll be odd and out of place seeing as how the town is very liberal. From abc.com:

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 10/9c
Boone Luffey/Gillespie
In the most controversial swap yet, an ultra-conservative Texas mother who believes gays are "depraved" trades places with a liberal lesbian mom from Arizona.

Evil Christian Mom is supposedly really evil, and not just due to editors with an agenda.

Daaaamn! eek! She came off even worse than i thought possible! She was like an Evil Oprah! She was so bad, she could have been acting. Y'know, like one of the Real World kids really slutting it up 'cause they're on TV.

Random points:

1) The sheer train-wreck sight of an interracial couple being so judgmental.

2) If Evil Oprah is so Christian, what the hell is she doing on a craptastic show like Wifeswap? The concept does not exactly scream "Moral Values."

3) Okay, i will give her that the little girl did need a good talking to. Clean up your room!

4) At the end when they asked about any changes to their households, i expected Evil Oprah to say something like "we burned down our house and had it rebuilt. It was a small price to pay to get rid of the gay germs."

Here is the Advocate article.

At the end when "Evil Oprah" was giving lezzie moms the riot act, you could really hear a tone in her voice that certainly did not seem to come from her current world of excellency.

Yikes! I tried to stay up to watch it, but fell asleep after "Lost." Giving up caffeine for Lent is taking its toll...

You gave up caffeine? You are gonna have a monster headache pretty soon. For now, only God knows what I am giving up.

I guess it's a good thing you missed you, you would have probably killed your TV.

One segment was filmed at a gay country bar here in Austin. It's been years since I've been there. I found it very odd that neither city was mentioned. Just "a million-dollar-home suburb in central Texas" and "Arizona".

Well I'm sorry, I can't call her the "Evil Oprah". That's an insult to Oprah who really is "all sunshine and light", kinda like Gaga4Gaby around here. wink Let's call her the "Condi-Clone" instead. eek!

I really didn't see Condi-Clone as being that bad until that "final showdown" at the episode's end. She made an effort (half-hearted, but an attempt) to understand the family dynamic, and did go out of her way to be a positive influence on Nicki and Kris' daughter. I think we saw the real C-C within those interactions.

Yes, there was conflict between C-C and Nicki, but that's because the show put the two strongest personalities together of course. Both women were pretty much unwilling to listen to the other because their core value systems were being challenged by the other. Hopefully they both will learn to be better communicators, and it seems from the Advocate article Nicki is making that attempt.

What I think you don't see in the episode is the timing of different parts. You see Condi-Clone meeting up with her family after the "showdown" on TV, but C-C's words appeared to indicate that she had not met the other Kris yet. They probably gave each couple some reuniting time in Texas before everyone met. During that time, Brian probably told C-C about Kris having him learn some dancing at the gay bar. That would have validated in C-C's mind every negative stereotype and ratched up her homophobia to unholy shrieking levels. (OMG! There trying to convert my husband..... next it's my daughter!!! NO!!!!!)

Thus C-C's "you're a sexual predator" comment was an ignorant knee-jerk defensive reaction to Kris' attempt at showing Brian something new. Totally inappropriate, but you can somewhat see where it came from, and what would have caused it. I think from that point C-C was completely unwilling to see anything positive about her experience and would do anything to make it appear that way. Sad really.

Hopefully many people who watched that episode will look at themselves, and say I don't want to be like Condi-Clone.

Edit: (Yes it is a rose tinted world I live in wink )

[ February 10, 2005, 06:56 AM: Message edited by: BPT_336 ]

I'm all sweetness and light, actually, but I have no problem with sunshine either!

I saw the commercials for this episode and had made a conscious decision not to watch. I know there are people in the US - tons of them - who feel as the heterosexual wife does, but I didn't see any need to subject myself to an hour of her bile. Then my boyfriend called me on the phone and he was watching, so I heard it over the phone and heard about it from him. There was no escaping!

What kills me is that the man and woman were an interracial couple. You know they have to have experienced discrimination on many levels as they've made a life together and it always amazes me that someone who (I assume) has been on the recieving end of such ignorance can be the first person to dish it out to someone else who they perceive as different. That is what's truly "freaky."

At first I couldn't decide who was more self loathing, the lesbian couple that could only cry in response to not being liked or the Gillespies, the interracial Republican couple. Clearly, ABC likes to provoke conflict with the matchups on this wretched show.

In the end I found Kris Gillespie's complete personality change the most disturbing. Someone above mentioned a change in the tone of her voice. Her entire being transformed, from the wanna be Condi Rice into a swaggering mix of fire & brimstone preacher and bulldyke that was spewing anti-homosexual venom. Just bizarre.

I was angry that the lesbian couple's response was a tearful plea for tolerance. What they said about learning and sharing was good, but just wish they could have appeared more confident in their position.

Who in their right mind would want to aspire to the Gillespie's lifestyle, with their forced bible readings, followed by violently zipping their bibles up into black leather cases.

At the end Kris G. was nearly coquettish, snugly with her husband, who was so cuckolded, he really was her wife. Yet I don't think their lips met when she attempted to kiss him/her. I think she was a big closet case dyke, hence her schizophrenic reaction.

I found Condi's "kindness" toward's the daughter to be more of your typical religious nut monomania, or more appropriately, a messiah complex. "I am going to save this poor innocent child from her depraved mother," which then on a national scale translates to, "we must save this innocent nation from the depraved homos."

Yeah i wish Kris and Nicki hadn't of cried so much, but it was obviously very difficult. When Kris said that she didn't understand why people like Evil Kris want to hurt people like her, i wanted to tell her "because she can."

[ February 10, 2005, 05:01 PM: Message edited by: JR in TX ]

Amen. I'm of the position now that if you can't deal, f**k you. I would have loved to see the lesbian couple tell the Condi-Clone and her Trophy Husband to go f**k themselves with a radioactive dildo. I get so damned sick of tearful pleas for tolerance (take a look at Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pelligrini's "Love the Sin") and I go into medium grade rages when I see them on un-reality shows. But that's a whole 'nother rant...