Sister Wives - for real this time

Okay, I've given you all a few days to watch it...so have you?  Sister Wives is a new TV show on TLC on Sunday nights.  It's a reality show about a polygamist family:  one husband, three wives (soon to be 4) and 13 children (soon to be plus 3 stepchildren.)

Here's is the main man...Kody:

I cannot get past the hair.  At.  All. Especially when they show him first thing in the morning and his hair is all over the place.  Cut it, Kody.  Let.  It.  Go.  Short hair doesn't make you less of a man, Kody.  I promise.  Anyway, he also drives a mid-life crisis sports car, which struck me as kind of funny (and cheesy) for a dad of 13.

Here are the wives (the one with the dark hair is the new one that Kody is "courting" right now.)

The original three wives and Kody have been together 15+ years.  They live in a big house (built by other polygs) with lots of doors and kitchens so the three wives all have their own homes within the home.  Kody's stuff is spread all over the house because he moves from wife #1's bedroom to wife #2's bedroom etc. every night.

Kody has some sort of sales job.  Two of the wives work and one of them (the pregnant one, 2nd from left) stays home with the kids.  The older kids go to polyg schools and everyone sort of co-parents everybody's kids.  We see them praying together, eating meals together, working in the yard together, etc.  Very very "normal" except for the whole polygamy thing.  Oh and they also point out that they aren't LDS.  Instead they call themselves fundamentalist Mormons.  All but one were raised in plural families (so crazy that there are so many out there.)

I have been thinking about this show all week...especially since the news this week said they were being investigated for bigamy.  I think I have a hard time with the police coming after them because, hello, there are a lot of things that should be being investigated out there.  HOWEVER, if they are getting welfare benefits or whatever, yeah, throw the book at them.  But with three of the parents working full time outside the home, wouldn't they be  making enough money to pay their own way without government assistance?  Yeah, yeah, yeah, they are breaking the law I guess but did he legally marry wives 2, 3 and 4 or did he just ceremonially "marry" them?  I guess you can also make a case that their life may be hurting those children but it's also all they know and they seemed pretty happy and well cared for...but I don't know what to think.

What do YOU think?

And hello, could I possibly have used more " " marks in this post?