TLC’s ‘The Baldwins’ Reality Show Will Be a Hit, and You Know It
In a move so obvious that it’s shocking it hadn’t happened already, the Baldwins—Alec and Hilaria, née Hilary—have announced that they’ll be taking their near-double-digit brood to TLC in 2025. In a horribly sound-mixed Instagram post that appears to be shot on a last-generation iPhone, the couple shared their excitement about exposing their questionable parenting skills to the masses. The show will be titled, in a creative leap, The Baldwins.
“We’re inviting you into our home to experience the ups and downs, the good, the bad, the wild and the crazy,” says Alec, cutting to myriad shots of their children screaming their heads off. “Home is the place we love to be most,” he continues, lying.
The Baldwins have seven children between the ages of one-and-a-half and 10, each one famously bequeathed a name of Spanish origin. That’s a result of Hilaria falsely perpetuating the notion that she was a native Spaniard, despite numerous evidence to the contrary. In 2020, after years of going on TV speaking Spanglish and misrepresenting herself in interviews—a gambit perpetuated by her husband, too—internet sleuths uncovered that she was actually just a rich girl from Massachusetts. Which, there’s nothing wrong with that! But Hilaria’s Rachel Dolezal-adjacent cosplay earned her no fans, and it didn’t help that Alec doesn’t have the most sparkling reputation himself.
The upside of blowing Hilaria’s cover was that it made her an object of public fascination. That was compounded by the fact that she became something of a modern Octomom. If you don’t find the fact that this woman pumped out seven kids in nine years, you’re a liar. And if you’re surprised by the fact that TLC would be willing to fork over millions to get someone like her on their channel, you’ve never looked at a channel guide. There was a period in the 2010s when TLC aired shows about families with an absurd number of children for hours at a time, from Jon and Kate Plus 8 to 19 Kids and Counting. With celebrity parents at the helm, The Baldwins was predestined hit programming.
You’d also be naive to think that this show will be anything less than hilarious. The infamous clip in which Hilaria feigns forgetting the English word for “cucumber” on national television is seared into the brains of many pop culture-addled freaks, including this one. And the promise of more of these moments warranting instant mockery is delectable. Considering how the majority of the trailer features small children shrieking—and knowing that Alec has a short fuse—there will also likely be several explosive, deeply uncomfortable moments that make for great television. Throw in some more shoddy cinematography, and TLC could have its biggest hit ever on its hands.
The Baldwins stand to benefit from a ratings smash just as much as TLC does, however. It’s hard not to see this as a ploy for image rehab in the face of the family’s tumultuous few years. In 2021, Alec accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his film Rust, using a gun that he believed was loaded with blanks. The incident has set off numerous legal battles and embarrassing reports of the state of the couple’s relationship—an impression that The Baldwins will inevitably try to shake.
Yes, the curiosity with the Baldwin family is a somewhat shameful one, but such is the pleasure of TLC. That said, considering Alec will be standing trial in July for involuntary manslaughter, we’ll see if The Baldwins even makes it to the air next year.
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