Meet Mr. Mom 1, Episode 1: Are the Llamas Nervous Too?

Austin, Texas, where the women are women and the dads are nervous. That’s right, our first competing families on Meet Mr. Mom are from Austin.

First we have the Smiths. Dan & Leslie Smith have three boys – Jacob, Spencer, and Mitchell. Mitchell is a fudgesicle addict. Just a heads up. Dan is an HR exec for a hospital, and Leslie is a full-time psychologist and is apparently the primary “parent” figure.

Next, we have Tom & Linda Potter and their three girls, Jordan, Madison, and Ashton. Ashton is full of entertaining sound bites and I think it’s Madison who cries a lot. One of them screams a lot too. Fair warning. Tom is a salesman who is often on the road, and Linda is a stay-at-home soccer mom, literally. Her daughters are all soccer players. And here we get our first blip of Ashton, who, in her cute, little six-year-old ‘tude, lets the camera know that girls are tougher and have more muscles than boys.

Right off the bat, we get a bit more info about the format of the show. The moms are to be whisked off to a spa, where they will flirt with tennis pros and wench at a bar, while the dads are to be given tasks over the course of six days. The families are not just shown congruently, they’re actually competing against each other. They will be graded in four areas: Housekeeping, Nutrition (Mitchell’s going to be a problem, isn’t he?), Parenting, and Time Management. At the end of the week, the moms, who will be watching from afar when they’re not too busy drinking at the bar, will come home for the grading.

Winner gets a $25,000 educational savings account. Sweet.

Day One brings cowboys to the doors of the contestants. The moms are given a scroll to read, and while cameras are rolling, they have fifteen minutes to pack, give last-minute instructions, and leave. The families seem strangely unaware that the dad would be going it alone, and I’m wondering how much they were initially told. Leslie Smith actually tears up while reading the scroll. No clue why. Dan Smith talks about what a shock and surprise it is, and how will they ever handle it without her. Gee, Dan, I don’t know. Parent?

At the Potter residence, Linda is dry-eyed, but one of the girls seems to be fabulously upset. Ashton, however, in her sidebar interview lets us know that it’ll be great with just dad, because they can dress how they want and eat what they want. Heh.

We cut back and forth between the families, showing their goodbyes until at last, the mothers are gone. Tom immediately starts making game plans at the Potter residence. The Smiths play basketball, and then young four-year-old Mitchell tells his dad he wants another fudgesicle, and that he’s going to have ten.

Family Project #1: The families get word on the first project — a slumber party. It must entail at least six children, be hosted at the competing families’ homes, and will test all four categories. In the car, the Potters delegate tasks quickly, and the girls get six kids lined up with relative ease. The dad already talks about a Hawaiian themed pool party and that he would make Hawaiian chicken, not order Hawaiian pizza like the eldest wanted. Oooh, someone wants nutrition brownie points! Six other kids in my house? If I fed them at all, pizza would be it.

Over at the Smiths, the boys are having less luck getting a hold of friends. Apparently, boys don’t stick around by the phone like girls do. Imagine that! They make a list of who they have called and left messages for, and head off to the store.

I say head off to the store like it is this quick and easy process. However, Dan irks me to no end here. He tells the elder boys to stay and keep working on the calls, while he takes the munchkin with him to the store. The munchkin throws a fit (probably because he sees no fudgesicles) because he wants to stay at home. The elder boys decide to go with the dad, in the hopes that it will stop Mitchell’s tantrum. Who is running this house?

Uh-oh, over at the Potters, dad is getting the thumbs down on nutrition. Why, do you ask? Because lunch comes at 4:00 p.m. rather than noonish, and trust me, Tom catches hell from precocious Ashton. On an up note, however, they already have faux grass skirts and all kinds of tiki torches dressing up the backyard.

As the Smiths turn into the driveway after a shopping tour, kids await them eagerly. Apparently boys do check messages. Cooking gets under way in earnest as most the guests go out to play basketball. Mitchell wanders in searching for ice cream, and guess what?? Ayep, that’s right. Dad gives him a fudgesicle. It is his fourth for the day or something!

Ah, but we cannot forget the mothers. We cut to Leslie walking in on the hotel bedroom she’ll be staying at and saying, “Holy Murgatroyd!” I like her a little bit more just for the usage of “murgatroyd” on national television. We see Linda walking in to her room, and Leslie comes in quickly behind. The moms meet, hug, and bond in a way only women seem to do. We’re told they have an “immediate connection.”

They flip on the TV, and there are the families. Now, perhaps I’m reading something into this, but I think at this point, the women start checking each other’s stuff out. You know, who has the better house, the cuter husband, whatever. Immediate connection or no, no one does competitive catty better than suburban women.

Random interjection: Damn, Linda’s house has a nice pool. I want to move in. Seriously. This whole house rocks, but the pool... I think they could adopt a 35-year-old, right?

Er, yes, anyway.

Family Project #2: Now, it wouldn’t be a reality show without bizarre tasks, right? Right. So it’s no surprise that suddenly there is a llama and a goat on the front lawn of the Potter house. Taking care of these two pets for the week is the next project. Tom drags the beasties into the backyard and moves the pool party inside, sort of killing the point, but hey. He does it because they don’t know the animals yet, and doesn’t want anyone hurt. This earns him a thumbs up icon in the lower left corner of my television for good parenting. Suck up!

Over at the Smiths, it seems to be a goat and a big ol’ fat pig. P-I-G, pig. It takes some doing, but the pig gets moved into the backyard. Meanwhile, the moms are watching all of this and snarfling mightily at their husbands’ predicaments.

Dan Smith is trying to bathe the four-year-old, who is probably too wound up on fudgesicles to sit still for a bath. Indeed, he is whining overmuch about soap in his eyes. Dan lets us know that he’s never hosted a sleepover like this before. He’s tired, so he comes in to tell the boys to go to sleep with a classic line that should be heard in every house, “Put the guns down on the floor.” Since they aren’t real guns – or maybe they were, this is Texas after all – Dan gets a thumbs up on parenting.

Meanwhile, the women are dressed in kilts and ushered into what I believe they call Mad Dog’s. A quick search on the Internet (god, I love technology. And kilts.), and I found this: a pub in San Antonio, Texas, that quite looks like the place they went. One mom has a shirt that says “Beer Wench” on it. Go, Mom! I need one of those. Any of you in San Antonio? Go road trip for me and gawk at the men in kilts. Send pictures!