Why Sister Wives Is the 'Most American Show'

TLC's Sister Wives may have dropped off your TV radar after 19 seasons on the air, but if so, Monica Hesse believes you're missing out. Some of you out there "wouldn't be caught dead tuning in to this dumpster fire, you have better things to do, etc. etc. Congratulations on your brain cells," writes the Washington Post columnist. But for her, the show—which started as a window into a fundamentalist Mormon polygamist family, then became a portal into its explosion—offers a model "for interpreting relationships and America."

• "I'm telling you, the answer to every political pollster's question of the Trump era—how will the residents of flyover states deal with COVID, with vaccines, with transgender issues, with health insurance, with poor retirement savings—is explored in one Sister Wives episode or another. It's got every possible archetype. It's the most American show."

When it started in 2010, Kody Brown had four wives: Christine, Janelle, Meri, and new wife Robyn. After 15 years of drama, breakups, and tragedy, Christine, Janelle, and Meri are now living their own lives separate from Kody and Robyn, but they continue filming because Sister Wives is their main source of income. They don't all get along, but they're still "bound by joy, grief, struggle, memories," writes Hesse. And isn't that America? Aren't we all trying "to envision what it could look like if we could ever put it back together"—"to remember that a family is still a family and a country is still a country no matter how much you hate each other, so you just have to grit your teeth and try again next season." Read the full piece here. (More Sister Wives stories.)