| TLC's 'Sister Wives' promises surprising look at polygamy | |
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DERRIK J. LANG The Associated Press The Springfield News-Leader - Springfield, Missouri | |
Los Angeles -- The Duggars have 19 children and counting. Kate Gosselin has eight kids. Kody Brown has four -- wives, that is. TLC, the network responsible for exposes of super-large families such as "Kate Plus 8" and "19 Kids and Counting," is turning its reality TV attention to another kind of domestic abundance: polygamy. "Sister Wives," premiering Sunday at 9 p.m., follows a fundamentalist Mormon family composed of one daddy, three mommies and 13 children living under one roof. "It just felt like our story needed to be told," said Brown, the affable patriarch who works in advertising and lives with his family in Lehi, Utah. "There's a lot of stereotypes out there that are actually perpetuated by the press. I wanted to make sure the world understood that we're polygamists, but we're not the polygamists that you think you know." The series follows Brown, 41, as he brings fourth "sister wife" Robyn, 31, and her three children from a previous marriage into the brood. (He is only legally married to first wife Meri, 39.) Brown and the wives, who said they are not members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, wanted to give a public face to polygamy. "We come from a closed society," said third wife Christine, 37. "That was one of the reasons we wanted to do the show, to open up our society, just so people can see what it's like. Because of that, I think that there is a lot of fear that comes from doing things like this. We just want to show our family. We don't even want to go into our church life." Instead of examining the religion that inspires the Browns' lifestyle, "Sister Wives" focuses on their mostly mundane household as Robyn enters the mix. There's no "Big Love"-style salaciousness here. The Browns are far less chaotic than the fictional Henricksons from HBO's polygamy drama, and parts of their lives are off limits to reality TV. "There's boundaries that we've established," said Brown. | |
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news-leader.com Originally published September 25, 2010 | |
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