Look! Up in the sky! It's a poem! It's a gnome!

[arib]

It's "Shalom in the Home!"

Yeah, I finally got around to watching the pilot of Shmuely Boteach's new family-therapy-based reality show.

amd I'm critiquing his techniques the same way I critique stuff on ER.

(in a nutshell, his assessment and insight is surprisingly good, but I question some of his interventions, and I think one or two of the things he did in this episode kinda poked holes in the client system-practitioner relationship.)

(also, from a religious standpoint, he wasn't so makpid on shmirat negiah*, but there are enough valid reasons why he wouldn't need to be that I'm not making a fuss.)


* translation- dilligent about the laws pertaining to touching members of the opposite sex.

Comments

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

His voice grates on my nerves.

[arib.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of some of my camp counselors from when I was a kid and attended a summer camp run by a Hassidic group.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

Whiny and bitchy? I'm so sorry. I'm sure he's saying good or ok stuff, but his voice just kills me.

[arib.livejournal.com]

More the word choice and timbre.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's the timbre. I have issues with voixes. I had a professor with a voice like that and I had the hardest time not tuning it out.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

voices too!

[saigon-ch.livejournal.com]

I guess I never noticed his voice...Now I'm going to have to find a rerun on and listen to it!

[archgirl06.livejournal.com]

I haven't gotten to see this yet (don't get the channel).

In other news, I want to hear about your night!

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

I started watching it and gave up half-way. I strongly suspect that reality is less bad than it appears, but it feels to me like he comes into a situation with an agenda, and works the situation to suit his own ideals, rather than necessarily what's best for the participants. (I presume that the problems are pre-selected on the basis of the optimal solutions fitting his worldview, so the shoe-horning is not as bad as it looks. But it felt to me _a lot_ like the show's (or at least the first episode's) pitch was "Our Intrepid Rabbi was so traumatized by parental divorce as a kid that he has made it his mission in life to get people un-divorced. For the chiiiildrun." And ooh, he's so ethnic! The only way I can stand it is by reminding myself often that the people must have opted into it, or they'd not be on the show.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

As with most "Reality TV" things, it is more with the "TV" and not so great with the "Reality". Not unexpected.