I Could've Been Someone

I freely admit that I’m a reality television junkie, so it should shock no one to know that I set my Tivo to record the premiere of “Secret Life of a Soccer Mom” on TLC last night. Yes, it’s a bad title, but I thought maybe it was some sort of docu-drama series about being a stay-at-home mom. If I’d actually watched any of the commercials (versus fast forwarding through them), I might have known better.

The premise is this: A mysterious black moving van shows up at your house and you, soccer mom, get inside it without knowing what’s in store. In a bizarre twist, Tracey Gold is waiting for you. Perhaps what’s weirder than the fact that she’s hosting is the fact they don’t treat her as if she’s a celebrity – they never even say who she is.

The former Growing Pains star proceeds to make you feel bad about the career you gave up to stay home with your kids. The implication, of course, being that raising kids is fine, but it’s not like it’s an accomplishment or anything. But wait! Tracey Gold is offering you a chance to BE somebody!

All you have to do is make your family believe that you are going to the spa for a week (you know, like usual) and then Tracey Gold will whisk you away to a job the producers convinced someone to give you on the basis that you used to work in that field however many years ago. I suppose the idea here is that if you fail, at least you won’t have burdened your family with your stupid dreams.

Once you arrive at this job with your camera crew, you will have one week to prove that you can easily pick up where you left off career-wise. Your pseudo boss will then give you ridiculously hard assignments and your co-workers will make it clear that they have no faith in you. Oh, and Tracey Gold will reappear sporadically to show you clips of how incompetent your husband is as a single parent.

At the end of the week, you’ll be carted back home (in the aforementioned moving van) and forced to come clean with your family. Then, if you’ve done well, your pseudo boss might make a surprise appearance and offer you a full-time position…but you have to start Monday. Will you choose to return to your obviously unfulfilling life of children and housework or will you dive back into your career as if being a stay-at-home mom was merely a temporary illness from which you’ve been cured?

Sorry, I won’t be tuning in every week to find out. Although I would like to see the 6-month follow-up show where the moms describe the nervous breakdowns they suffered as a result of making a major life decision in a matter of hours in front of a film crew. Yes, that I would watch.