Meet Your Temporary Mommie: on the profound conservatism of TV wife-swapping

Let me begin with an admission:
I've been relying on regular broadcast TV for several years now.
[shocked gasps]

My wife and I lack the inclination and (to be forthright) the wherewhithal to pay for that kind of entertainment. (We're "renting" movies from the local library, for goodness' sake.) We generally use what we find on the airwaves as a platform for Mystery Science Theater-style improv to amuse ourselves. Being credentialed social scientists from an elite research institution which shall remain nameless, much of our sniping inevitably involves heavy-duty theory.

Consider the deadly combination resulting from anthropology applied to wife-swapping. Was there enough of a market for voyeurism to warrant TWO shows switching spouses?

What continues to disappoint me about these shows, aside from the tired tropes of reality TV (staged situations guaranteed to provoke conflict and then require happy endings) is the decided - and deflating - lack of titillation.

I've watched these damn shows for weeks and there ain't been a real swapping yet.

These shows, whatever they look like, manifest a solidly conservative moral foundation. Allow me to build a pseudo-legal case.

Exhibit 1 - women get traded, not men or kids. No surprise that this mirrors women being "given away" by dads to husbands in weddings. How progressive/transgressive is the entertainment industry if it won't even raise the possibility of a husband-swap?

Exhibit 2 - new mommies' duties don't cover everything. Sure, there's cookin', cleanin', bossin',--all the usual prerogatives. But the elephant in the room: where do the mommies sleep? I will guarantee it's not in the master bedroom.

Until you TV types can put out a Wife Swap that really puts out, piss off. My wife and I need to rip America's Next Top Model a new one.