The Baby Borrowers Last Night

The back-to-back episodes of The Baby Borrowers last night proved my earlier assertion that the show was not about teens taking care of children, but about teens taking care of themselves and their relationships.

Although Baby Borrowers intends to act as a deterrent to would-be teen parents (the show's slogan is "it's not parenting; it's birth control"), the reality is that the teens, as parents, are getting better. They've learned how and when to apply discipline, if still a little raw at both, and they're practicing the skills of running a family household—cooking healthy meals, going to work and balancing budgets, imposing timeouts and bedtimes, etc. If anything, the parenting/ household portions of the episodes show the opposite of what the producers intend. When called upon, the teens mostly step up.

The couples, in contrast, are failing one by one. Daton and Morgan came on the show as a way to test the strength of their relationship, so it was no huge surprise when he became the first of the teens to leave. Kelly has deep doubts about her relationship to Austin, and they are now in limbo, with a promise to break up after the completion of the entire experiment. It just makes for awkward television. Poor David, whose real-life parents are going through a divorce, to have to watch the drama and feel the tension between Austin and Kelly.

Even the couples with prior difficulties have rebounded. Kelsey and Sean seem to have settled in, and they're barely seen in the two hours of show last night (which, in this drama-laced show, means they're doing just fine). Cory and Alicea did the best job of parenting seen yet with troubled teen Sam. After Sam dumped all of Alicea's clothes on the floor, the teen "parents" stood strong, together, against the angst-ridden boy. And Sasha and Jordan returned to their place at the top of the couple/ parent rankings. When one member of each couple was treated to a visit by a friend, Jordan and his best friend hung out with Sasha too. Tellingly, Daton and his friend went to a skating rink, alone, to commiserate about Morgan.

I'm glad the show is almost over—they take care of the elderly next week, before presumably some type of wrap-up—because NBC has made this a painful ride. Unlike the original show, lauded as a success across the pond, NBC made this just another teen drama roller coaster. By selecting struggling couples made up of teens that had never worked a day in their life, they thought they'd get instances of bad parenting. Instead, they got pouty teens and malfunctioning couples who just happened to be babysitting. It's not birth control; it's couples counseling.