Reality TV fans take note: the network that brought you such gems as Dance Moms and Army Wives is offering up yet another show focusing on the the obscure lives of a very particular subset of the population. Entitled Preachers’ Daughters, this new Lifetime program follows three teenage girls and the challenges they face growing up as pastors’ children.
Olivia, whose father Mark is a preacher, is an 18-year-old single mother seeking to turn her life around after a period of partying and drug use. Kolby, whose divorced parents are both pastors, is a 16-year-old high school student who often receives advice from her three older sisters. Finally, 18-year-old Taylor, whose father Ken is the pastor of a Pentecostal church, struggles to follow her parents’ many strict rules. All three girls, at times, have difficulty balancing their religious values and their parents’ expectations with their desire to participate in typical teenage activities.
Though Preachers’ Daughters had the potential to be an interesting show, it unfortunately falls flat. The storylines are stale and have been done on countless other reality shows. Olivia’s main storyline, for example, centers around discovering her baby’s paternity and then developing a relationship with the father — a plotline familiar to every viewer of Teen Mom. Kolby’s struggle to have her insanely strict mother accept her new boyfriend — documented in scene after scene of her mother forcing the boyfriend to fill out a contract and forbidding the pair from spending time alone, — quickly becomes monotonous.
Though I’m aware that the vast majority of reality shows are not actually “real,” this one seems especially scripted. It’s hard not to laugh when Taylor heads out to party with friends in a hotel room after telling her parents she is going to a friend’s house. As Taylor drinks and dances with boys — two activities definitely not approved of by dear old mom and dad — she worries about them finding out and punishing her, yet is completely willing to have a film crew follow her. Unsurprisingly, her parents discover her secret by the end of the episode and forbid her from hanging out with boys again.
Preachers’ Daughters is mildly entertaining, but nothing worth spending much time watching. For fans of the reality TV genre, there are a multitude of better options.
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