The Baby Borrowers: Try Before You Buy

The Baby Borrowers is not about teenage couples trying to raise kids. It's about teenage couples, period.

The examples of bad parenting are shocking, but I tend to think they're mostly indicative of the constraints of the situation. In one instance, Daton and Morgan's "son" soils his diaper at the home of another teen couple. Morgan tries to get him to walk to the bathroom, but she's giggling and he doesn't want to walk, so she ends up dragging him. Nevermind that a child with a soiled diaper is being drug across the floor of someone else's house, because, really, neither the house nor the child belongs to anyone in the room. No one's really responsible at all, making the whole exercise at times painful and always riveting, but more importantly, it's just entertainment.

Mostly we see how, at any given time, one member of the couple is struggling with the burdens of parenthood. How the other member of the couple reacts means all the difference. When Austin refuses to stay home with the kids, preferring to leave Kelly at home while he works, Kelly pouts. Then, when Austin takes a shower, Kelly leaves the house to commiserate next door. No one is left watching the twin two-year olds that were supposed to be in their care.

Sasha and Jordan provide the best example of a functioning couple. Although they face much more difficulty with two-year-old Luke this week, they each step up when the other fails. Sasha teaches Jordan how to comfort young Luke when he's crying, and later, when Luke rebels against Sasha too, Jordan is there to bring her back and calm her down. The episode ends badly for even these two though, as we see Sasha preparing to pack and leave. The announcer leaves us hanging.

Besides the primary lesson of waiting to have children until a suitable, cooperative partner has been found, the show deserves credit for one other thing: it does a really good job of making crying sound like the worst noise on earth. That audible reminder is powerful, and the only true birth control evident in the show. Next week that deterrent is gone as the couples take over pre-teens.