9 Worst TLC Shows, Ranked

Unscripted TV shows with unclothed participants can actually be substantive — check out Naked Attraction and its body-inclusive attitudes. But this show was just a naked attempt to cash in on a slightly NSFW spin on House Hunters ‘ concept. Did TLC become The Leering Channel?

Breaking Amish might as well have been titled Breaking Artifice. The reality show purported to follow Amish and Mennonite young adults venturing into the world beyond their communities for the first time. But the actual reality, according to unearthed social media posts, was that cast members had already married, had children, and divorced.

This show is rubbernecking look at Mormon men who are open with their wives about their attraction to men but otherwise acting straight for the sake of religious conformity. Sexuality is nuanced, and not everyone who experiences same-sex attraction is gay. But as the title indicates, this show wasn’t about nuance.

One of the worst examples of TLC voyeurism was this COPS-style docuseries about busting DUI offenders. One has to wonder if the subjects who rehashed their crimes in confessional interviews on D.U.I. did so out of desperation for a paltry reality-TV paycheck.

It’s hard not to be cynical when considering this docuseries about Alec Baldwin and his family in the aftermath of the fatal shooting on the set of his film Rust. It feels like either a cash grab or a PR stunt, but either way, it didn’t seem tasteful to foreground the Baldwin family when a Rust cinematographer lost her life.

Did some TV producer watch 30 Rock and think the show-within-a-show MILF Island was a sound idea instead of a satire? This is a dating show featuring older women vying for the affection of each other’s sons. Think that’s twisted? Season 2 introduces fathers as romantic rivals.

We rue the day TLC execs ever gave the green light to this docuseries about the Duggar family. What seemed like an innocuous TV show about a massive family belied the bigoted and criminal actions of some of its family members. You’d think background checks might have saved the network some trouble…

There had to have been a better way for Jon and Kate Gosselin to support their twins and sextuplets than to put them in front of TLC cameras that then captured the breakdown of the family amid Jon and Kate’s protracted divorce. Raising eight kids is hard enough without the added pressures and prying eyes of reality TV.

That this reality show featured one 3-year-old pageant contestant dressed up like a sex worker and a 4-year-old pretending to smoke cigarettes is proof enough that it never should have had a place on TV. We don’t know what the parents were thinking — or, for that mater, the TLC execs.