Let's be honest; there are some really sketchy TV shows on TLC, but even the sketchier ones are addicting, including My Strange Addiction. Basically, if there's something bizarre, it's probably a TLC show. Some of them are really good ideas, and some should have never seen the light of day.
Fans judge if they're good or not by measuring how fake they seem, but even if they are really fake it doesn't really stop anyone from watching them because of their entertainment value. Neither does the fact that TLC keeps a lot of things hush-hush, including secrets about Return to Amish.
So is the show about a group of ex-Amish people returning to the community real or fake? At this point, is anything on TLC real? We have our doubts but we love it anyway.
Some Critics Think It's Fake
As we mentioned, anything bizarre does really well on reality TV. Anything that we don't understand will always be intriguing, and the Amish community definitely falls into that category.
The Christian community of 300,000 people, who live in their own little world, and who choose to live in that world without electricity, is such great subject matter. This is a group of people who are dedicated to living off the land and putting all of the Western civilization's modern inventions behind them. Some are more orthodox and don't even permit their picture to be taken and still read by candlelight.
So when Breaking Amish premiered in 2012, it caught the attention of a lot of people, simply because they wanted a window into this unknown world and to learn more. What would it be like for someone in the community who wanted to leave? Judging by what we do know about the Amish, it's surprising to hear that someone would want to leave at all.
When Breaking Amish ended, its spinoff, Return to Amish, offered an even more complex situation to fans. We found out, more or less, what it was like to leave the community, but what was it like to return to it after realizing the wrong decision was made?
No matter how intriguing all of that might sound, critics were quick to judge the new show and called it totally fake. But these claims had been coming since Breaking Amish.
Some sources claimed it was "nothing but lies," because some cast members had left the community long before appearing on the show. Some legal records proved that some of the cast members had drunk alcohol prior to the show too, even though they'd claimed they hadn't.
"[E]very single person on Breaking Amish is pretending to be something they aren’t," Jezebel writer Tracie Egan Morrissey wrote. "The entire concept of the show — people breaking away from their Amish communities for the first time to experience the outside world — is fraudulent."
TLC's Response Made Things Look Even More Sketchy
When approached about these rumors about the show, TLC told Variety in 2012, "Our Amish and Mennonite producers that we hired introduced us to Amish and Mennonite men and women who were already determined to leave. They had already made the decision to go out and see the world, with or without us. They courageously allowed us to follow them on this journey."
So there you go. The scenes where they were dealing with leaving and how to were totally fake because they already knew they wanted to and how they were going to do it.
Another fishy thing about the show is the fact that Kate Stolz, who appeared in earlier seasons of both shows, couldn't confirm or deny whether the shows were scripted.
"I really can’t [say]. I’m sorry," was her vague response to In Touch's question of whether they were scripted. In a different interview, she did confirm that producers do try to couch cast members into responding to interview questions how they want.
"[P]roducers keep us in a room for hours and ask the same questions over and over — they’re relentless," Stolz revealed in a tweet in 2016. "If we don’t give them the answer they want, they keep us in there until we cry or give them the answer they want."
Sounds like some messed-up torture. Even though we're not completely sure if the shows are scripted, we have had confirmation that the show does pay the cast. Sabrina Burkholder confirmed she was paid, but this only fueled more skepticism. If they got paid then maybe TLC just hired them to play these characters.
Jeremiah also let on that the show might be scripted and confirmed that things were definitely planned before filming. This would explain why some storylines were a bit confusing considering there were reports released that proved contrary.
People really started to doubt the show when conflicting things were revealed about Rebecca and Abe’s story. We saw how they pretended to get to know each other as if they just met, on Breaking Amish, but stories came out to reveal that this was entirely fake. It was revealed that they'd know each other for years before their "first meeting" on the show and even had a daughter.
Chapel’s cancer story was also probably planned because she was really in remission when the show was telling us that her cancer had come back.
So basically it seemed as if the producers of the show was making all of the cast members re-enact some of their real-life experiences for the entertainment of others, even if it meant pretending to have cancer again. These are not things that make us want to continue watching. But anyone who watches reality TV has to take everything with a grain of salt at the end of the day. We'll stick to visiting Lancaster instead.