I watched 'MILF Manor' so you don't have to, but frankly, you have to see it to believe it
- TLC's new reality series "MILF Manor" premiered on Sunday, January 15.
- The show features moms in their 40s and 50s, whose dating pool is composed of ... their own sons.
"MILF Manor" is TLC's latest play into wildly uncomfortable reality television and perhaps one of its most brazen. The show, pitched as "eight hot moms" trying to find love in "men half their age," already crosses the boundaries of current sexual norms. Its deeply predictable twist ratchets up the stakes, though, and turns the show into a completely different beast: those men "half their age" are the titular MILFs' sons.
"MILF Manor" wants you to think it's a show about destigmatizing relationships between older women and younger men. But it's actually a show about young men and their mothers being forced to recognize each other as sexual beings in the most uncomfortable ways possible.
It would make Freud turn over in his grave.
The initial introduction between mothers and sons is awkward enough, with plenty of stilted flirting, jokes about both a mother and her son calling another young man "Daddy," and embarrassed and embarrassing reactions. But "MILF Manor" proves that you can always dive deeper into the pits of almost-but-not-quite-incestuous hell, revealing that the mother-son-duos will share a room and therefore have to either negotiate with or navigate around their family members for any bedroom-based encounters.
In the most unabashedly transgressive gimmick of the show so far — and one teased in promos of the show — the mothers have to pick their son out of a shirtless lineup while blindfolded to win the best bedroom in the house. Watching some of the mothers remark on the quality of the contestant's muscles, the entire game is filled with the omnipresent threat that they'll accidentally make a similar quip about their son — the one man they're absolutely not supposed to find attractive.
Here are a few other things that happen in the first episode of "MILF Manor": Mom Kelle flaunts her flirtation with Pola's son Jose in front of his mother on the beach. Kelle's son Joey, a 20-year-old and youngest of the bunch, whines when she brings Shannan's son Ryan back to their shared bedroom on the first night, crowds him out of the room, and complains that he's "cockblocking" her. In another memorable bar conversation, Joey swallows loudly in horror after Kelle puts her arm around Ryan and tells her son, "This is your dad."
Later in the episode, Soyoung's son Jimmy waxes poetic for 20 seconds in a confessional about how much he wants to oil up and massage Pola's feet, fantasizing about painting and subsequently sucking on her toes. To give Jimmy credit, he seems to be the man the most willing to lean in, telling April J.'s son Gabriel that they "can't be vanilla, we got, like, moms here" before asking Pola out on a paddleboard date.
On that date, Pola and Jimmy goof around on their boards, culminating in Pola lifting Jimmy up with her feet on his chest in an airplane-like pose. While Jimmy remarks that he's "comfortable, you know, being on top of her" in a confessional, Pola later reminisces in her own confessional about doing the same pose with her son as a child, saying that she loves "to do that with kids." The episode then immediately cuts to Kelle saying that she's glad Pola is out of the way on a date so she can chat up her son, Jose.
Writing about these moments feels like a bit of a fever dream, even after watching the episode through twice. Watching them play out on-screen is an entirely different experience, and not one that can be replicated in a recap: it's impossible to summarize every uncomfortable glance between sons, cringeworthy daddy joke, or comment between mother and son judging the others' romantic style.
Ultimately, "MILF Manor" is beyond parody, creating a transgressive spectacle that you need to see to believe — and unfortunately, I don't know if I can look away.