I’ll admit that I haven’t watched the last few episodes of Breaking Amish since I found out how faked it is. Plenty of reality shows are scripted or in some way not entirely truthful but the extent to which this show was fabricated kind of ruined it for me. I thought it might still be entertaining but the “look how crazy these straight-laced kids are going!” appeal had totally disappeared. However, the empty space in my life left by Honey Boo Boo has yet to be filled and this week I’ve decided to return to Breakish Amish and see how I feel after taking a break(ing amish).
Bad jokes aside, it seemed that I had missed a lot by not watching the last few episodes when I began this one. Kate drugged Sabrina and accused her of being a witch? There’s flip cam video of her doing this? Why haven’t I been watching?! But, then a title came on the screen saying that there has been no footage found supporting these accusations. Apparently, it was just a scam that Sabrina and Jeremiah pulled so they could move into the same room. So I haven’t missed much. These kids are just as mean and back-stabby as they were last time I watched the show. Now that it’s been revealed that the show is fake, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the cast is just a bunch of trashy people who at one point were Amish. And they’re not fun trashy, they’re just gross.
Jeremiah tries to blackmail Abe by saying he’d reveal Abe and Rebecca’s secret. What’s the secret? Is it the fact that Abe and Rebecca allegedly have a child together? No, it’s just that Abe and Rebecca “knew each other” before the show. Oh they “knew each other,” all right. This cop-out secret is certainly not enough to blackmail anyone over, especially when someone is being accused of drugging and harassing another cast member.
As the episode went on, I found myself liking the cast less and less. Their conservative attitudes about everything, while initially explainable by the fact that they’ve just left the Amish community, are less palatable now that I know that they’ve been out of the community for a while. Having sex is completely scandalous. Kate is legitimately afraid of witchcraft. Rebecca calls a speedo “women’s underwear.” Gag me. Some of these attitudes might be fabricated to make the cast seem more “Amish,” but I can’t help but think that they actually think a lot of these things.
Right as I was starting to think about turning the show off in disgust and scrap this whole review, something kind of nice happened. Abe proposed to Rebecca and the affection between the two actually seemed genuine. It probably seemed genuine because they’ve been together for a while but after the barrage of unpleasantness that was the first third of the episode, it was refreshing to see two people not being terrible to each other. Their attitudes may get on my nerves but these two seem like okay people. Or at least more okay than the other cast members, which is all I can ask for at this point.
It took until the end of this episode for it to get to a part that actually captured me. No matter how fake the show is, there’s no doubt that these people left the Amish (or Menonites) at some point and when they talked about being shunned by their communities, the show finally felt real. It’s become very obvious when the show tries to cover up the cast member’s pasts but this was the first scene I couldn’t call bullshit on. However, one real moment doesn’t make up for the fact that the revelations about this show have really lowered the stakes. It’s not good enough to stand as a scripted show and without that element of realism, it’s hard to care about what’s happening. Reality television is only as good as its gimmick and with the gimmick of “amish people fresh into the english world” gone, this show is nothing but average people doing average things.
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