TLC — home to fat, freakish families, women who procreate too much and beauty pageants featuring tots dressed as sluts — finally has something you can watch without needing a shower.
It’s called “Breaking Amish,” a reality series that follows five young adults who have lived a strict Amish existence all of their lives, but who have made the wrenching decision to leave their communities — and move to New York City.
And by “leaving” they really mean “leaving.” As in for good and forever.
There is simply no turning back — once a person leaves (it’s called “Breaking Amish”) they’re “shunned,” which means that for now and forever they are forbidden to return, and their families are forbidden to ever speak to them again.
The participants here are 21-year old Kate, a natural beauty who is the bishop’s daughter. Her decision to leave and come to NYC in the hopes of becoming a model is heartbreaking in its naivete.
Jeremiah, 32, is the oldest of the group. He was not born Amish but was adopted by an Amish family at birth.
“I was thrown into the Amish trap,” he laments. “[Otherwise] my life would revolve around work and going slow all the time.” He is desperate to drive a car.
To this end, on the first episode, he breaks up with his Amish fiance, who can’t begin to understand how — and why —he’d leave. “You know we’ll have to shun you,” she tells him. He knows.
Twenty-two-year-old Abe, on the other hand, wants to marry Amish but knows that if he leaves, that dream will never happen. But he just wants to know what it would be like to be allowed to go beyond the eighth grade.
His mother, on the other hand, is concerned that he’ll go to the beach and wear a “swimming outfit.”
Sabrina is a 25-year-old woman who was also adopted. Coming originally from Italian and Puerto Rican stock, she wants to know what those cultures are really like.
Instead, as the rumors spread about her leaving, she receives vicious hate mail — from the peace- loving Mennonite community in which she lives. (Mennonites are allowed to use electricity, so she has at least glimpsed the modern world.)
Rebecca, 20, also wants to model. When she walks into her house to tell her parents that she wants to leave, we are witness to her being thrown out and set adrift. I can’t wait to see what happens to these innocents — who’ve never used a computer or a phone, or even had dental or skin care — when they hit the world’s roughest, most competitive city.
Riveting and revealing.