This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
"If you and your family are ever asked to star in a reality TV show, run. Run far. Run fast. Don't look back."
The Tribune's television critic Scott D. Pierce wrote those words in a column published in May. He was writing about the Duggar family. At the time, I thought Pierce was just stating the obvious.
Now the words read like prophecy.
The latest family whose television celebrity seems to be distilling to scandal is the Brown family of the show "Sister Wives." The former and sometimes-still Utahns have made headlines earlier this year when patriarch Kody Brown divorced his legal wife Meri to replace his marriage certificate with one signed by the youngest of his four wives — Robyn.
Then last month, a blog called The Principle that focuses on polygamy published a story about how Meri Brown was duped into an online relationship by a woman posing as a man. That episode put the gossip websites onto something The Principle had earlier reported, that a daughter of Kody and Janelle Brown, a college student named Maddie, was engaged to marry a relative, albeit not a blood relative.
"Our family does not fit the stereotypes," Robyn told The Tribune in 2010, referring to the stereotypes of polygamists. "And we are good people. We are actually like a lot of other people's families."
The Browns may be good people. They may even be like some families, though probably not a lot.
But changing legal spouses — particularly a swap for a younger wife — and intra-family marriage are stereotypes of polygamous families.
In other polygamous families, these stereotypes don't play out for the camera, nor is it mixed with that certain kind of reality "freak show" quality that only TLC seems capable of providing. The Browns are becoming trailblazers, but not in the way they would have hoped five seasons ago.
It didn't use to be this way for the Browns.
When their show first aired in 2010, they garnered sympathy, both for the way they presented themselves and because of the way police and prosecutors in Lehi and Utah County began investigating them.
That investigation didn't yield any criminal charges, and provided Browns with standing to successfully challenge Utah's anti-polygamy law in court. For both polygamists and people who don't think the government should be governing marriage among consenting adults, the Browns were champions.
The state of Utah is appealing. Its argument, to put it simply, is that polygamy leads to bad things.
As my colleague said earlier, so does reality television.
Twitter: @natecarlisle