Every now and again, a document so perfect, so sad, so strange, and so funny in equal amounts will descend from the heavens on a gossamer cloud, melt into a beam of pure energy, and worm its way through our TV sets for everyone (well, everyone who has cable) to enjoy. In 2001, this perfect document was the HBO documentary Living Dolls: The Making Of A Child Beauty Queen.
Living Dolls had it all: drama (Will Swan win?), intrigue ("Where's your cup at?"), comedy (pretty much everything), awkwardness ("His favorite pastimes are playing in the dirt and watching Unsolved Mysteries."), and a heavy doses of "What the hell is wrong with these people?" (Everything, but also "Hmm. Pageants or human growth hormone?"). Sadly, however, Living Dolls isn't available on DVD. Evidently, it was too horrifically beautiful for this world.
Last night, however, TLC aired the first episode of the second season of Toddlers & Tiaras, and it came pretty close to the schadenfreude-laden, eminently enjoyable nightmare that was Living Dolls. Toddlers & Tiaras follows three families/parents as they bend and pose and paint their daughters and sons like the adorable little sentient figurines that they are. On last night's episode, there was a mother who was only too happy to play favorites while pitting her two fraternal twin girls against each other; there was a mother of a two-week-old boy who put him in a baby tuxedo and propped him up on stage because she wants to improve his "performance skills;" and there was a former beauty queen named Mickie who was convinced her 4-year-old Eden is a star—and who calmed Eden's "diva moments" with two hand puppets named Billy Bob and Bobby Sue. (The best part of last night's episode? When Eden, face shellacked in makeup and curlers in her hair, yelled at her mother's hand puppet, "Git back in your hidey hole!") Basically, the show could be called Look How My Mom Destroyed Me! or To My Future Therapist, Just Watch This.