Stream It Or Skip It: ‘MILF Manor’ On TLC, Where Women In Their 40s and 50s Date Hot Young Guys — With An Icky Twist

When TLC announced that they would be doing a show called MILF Manor, everyone on Twitter immediately brought up MILF Island, the fictional Bravo reality series depicted during the second season of 30 Rock. We think even TLC joked around about it. But the ads for the show promised a twist. They tried to keep it secret; they didn’t even send critics any screeners. But if you look at the title, do you think the big twist was all that hard to figure out?

MILF MANOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of a villa in La Paz, Mexico.

The Gist: Eight women, all in their 40s and 50s and single, walk into the villa wearing their sexiest gear. They’re all surprised that, despite the fact that they’re told that they’re going on a dating show where they’re supposed to hook up with hot younger guys, all they’re meeting are the other women. They have all been in previous marriages and other long term relationships, and they all have at least some kids who are adults. Let’s just say that Soyoung, April J, April W, Charlene, Shannon, Pola, Kelle and Stefany have lots of life experience.

They get texts on special phones that it’s time to meet the guys they’re going to date. A partition is removed and — horrors! — they find out that the men are the adult sons of each of the cast members!

The mother-son combos are told that they’ll be roommates at the villa, but there will be challenges that show which mom knows their sons best; the winners will get to stay in one of two mack-daddy suites for a night, where they won’t need to leave a sock on the door to tell each other that the room is, um, occupied. In the first such contest, the moms have to feel the men’s bare pecs and abs while blindfolded and identify which one is their son (ewwwwww!).

As the guys and the women mix and mingle, there are the discomforts you’d imagine there would be, with the moms being judgmental of the women their sons are hooking up with and the sons just generally being icked out by the sight of their moms making out with strange guys.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? MILF Manor is Love For The Ages, but a whole lot smarmier.

Our Take: The only thing that’s somewhat redeeming about MILF Manor is that you have to admire the lying and manipulation the producers had to do to get these mother-son pairs to Mexico to go on a dating show without the moms or the sons getting wise to the fact that the moms will be dating the sons (the ones that aren’t their sons, of course — things are already icky enough). Listen, the sons are young and horny and were pretty gullible. But the moms? With all that life experience? Surely, some yellow flags went up in their heads when they heard that they’d be bringing their sons to Mexico with them.

Anyway, as far as the show is concerned, the ick factor is pretty high here, mainly for the all the the factors stated above. We think the producers thought this combination of parental protection, having moms see their sons making out with other women and vice versa, and the whole idea that these middle-aged singletons are DTF would create sparks unheard of on reality TV.

But what actually ends up happening is that most of the contestants, both the women and men, are pretty boring. One or two of the women, like Pola and Kelle, really seem like they’re open to the possibilities and Kelle seems like the show’s designated shit-stirrer. But for the most part, this group on both sides of the ledger haven’t brought much personality to the table, at least in the first episode.

So that leads us to the ick factor. How much of that are viewers willing to take? We’re betting not much, given just how gross we felt after the first episode. We’re not enjoying the discomfort we feel when, for instance, Kelle brings her first targeted guy into her room and her son is right there. We hear the word “cockblocking” a lot in the first episode, and to hear a son is c-blocking his mom and vice versa is the highest level of cringe. We can’t imagine seeing this for however many episodes the show runs without it becoming overwhelmingly slimy.

Sex and Skin: Right now, there’s just a lot of making out. Given it’s a TLC series, any sex between contestants will likely be more implied than anything else.

Parting Shot: Kelle says “I like to win” during a talking head interview when she says that she will get Pola’s son Jose, whether Pola approves or not.

Sleeper Star: We’ll pick Charlene because she’s from New Jersey. It also seems like she’s the only one among the women that has a career that’s not either a dancer or a fitness instructor.

Most Pilot-y Line: You mean more Pilot-y than the men being the sons of the women?

Our Call: SKIP IT. MILF Manor is cringe TV at its worst, and the cringe factor isn’t balanced by a cast with any remotely interesting personalities.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.