Here comes ‘Honey Boo Boo’ back for season 2
NEW YORK – The message of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” seems to be: Don’t worry, be happy, consequences be damned.
This devil-may-care philosophy seems to work fine for June Shannon and her outrageous household, at least as captured for the TLC reality show that burst on the scene last summer as a backwoods celebration of mischief-making, fart jokes and dietary excess that would rattle Paula Deen.
It returns Wednesday at 9 p.m. with more of the same.
Set in tiny McIntyre, Ga., the show continues to plunder Southern and rural stereotypes. On a hand-painted sign, “Peaches” is spelled “Peches” (proof that Southerners can’t read or write). The soundtrack is larded with cornpone country music. And to reinforce the notion that this is an alien culture whose spoken tongue is unintelligible, the dialogue is often subtitled.
To its credit, “Boo Boo” has a sweet tone. It remains a big-hearted show.
Then again, most everything about it is super-sized – especially June, who, at 33, is a bleach-blonde Buddha living with four daughters sired by four fathers, including her youngest, 7-year-old Alana (aka Honey Boo Boo), whose dad is Mike (“Sugar Bear”), a 41-year-old chalk miner who serves as resident patriarch and de facto granddad to baby Kaitlyn, whose mother is June’s 18-year-old daughter, Anna (“Chickadee”).
This brood of seven lives in a three-bedroom/one bath home and gets by, according to June, on $80 a week in grocery costs.
How do they do it? June is an accomplished coupon-cutter and a thrifty homemaker who, in the season premiere, scores a culinary coup: a dead hog struck by a car up the road.
“We’re not really hunters in our family,” she explains, so road kill is always welcome. “We bring it home, skin it, cook it, eat it, save money. That’s the way the cycle of life works in our family.”
Warning: Watching them prepare the family’s pork-and-beans feast could turn you into a vegan.
However hard-pressed, the family has its share of fun – although some of the hijinks seem staged for the reality-TV lens.
In one scene, Alana, 13-year-old Lauryn (“Pumpkin”) and 16-year-old Jessica (“Chubbs”) wrap themselves in plastic bags, pour cooking oil on the floor, grease themselves all over with gobs of butter and turn the house into what they call “Redneck Slip ‘n Slide – Extreme Home Edition.”