'Mom Knows Best?' Episodes 1-4 Recap & Review: Is This For Real?

I’ve always had a hate-hate relationship with reality TV. I find it fake, all constructed for the sake of drama and never truly meaningful. The only kind of shows portraying anything real I can watch is stuff like American Idol, or maybe some sort of dance show because I can watch the performances and remove myself from the rest of the show. Mom Knows Best? is the worst kind of reality show, because it’s like a 2-in-1. The show puts 9 mums in a luxurious homestay, where they get to enjoy the many luxuries of life, while their kids have to stay in a dormitory nearby, to experience the “hard life.” Culturally, for Americans, this show is basically like a nightmare. In a lot of cultures across the globe, mine included, it’s not abnormal for a kid to stay with their parents at home well into adulthood. To Americans, this is like a sin, so maybe that’s where the entertainment begins. But even to me, watching fully grown adults not being able to figure out how to use a washing machine feels a little too much.

I’m sure you can tell by now that I have nothing positive to say about this show, but let me make it worse by giving you the full context. I told you where the moms and kids are staying, but what’s the actual point of the show? Why’s it called Mom Knows Best? Well, because the mums are meant to bet on their kids’ every move. I understand there’s a special bond between mums and kids, but anyone who has been a kid themselves knows that this isn’t going to work out, because kids will always keep stuff from their parents. That’s what friends and siblings are for.

The show opens with everyone showing up to their designated homes. Everyone is clearly excited for this, whichever side they’re on. But it’s not going to be that way for long. Claudia Raia is the host of the show, which is, of course, delightfully exciting for everyone on it. She shows up in some exquisite outfits, which could only be considered the big highlight of the show. Anyway, the mothers and kids are introduced briefly, with Inocencia and Vicktoria immediately standing out of the crowd, because Inocencia cries within the first fifteen minutes of the show. Turns out Vicktoria was one of 4 quadruplets, and the only survivor. Of course, that would’ve been hard to deal with. On the other hand are Dri and Diego, where we see the son brag about being into Sugar Grannies, which is something even I haven’t heard of, so that’s fun for a mom, I guess. But she genuinely doesn’t care, because she’s like a moth to a flame when it comes to her son. She’s genuinely obsessed with him in a kinda scary way. It begins with 1,000,000 reais, but it’s not like an individual prize. It’s a prize pool that everyone essentially takes from. On the other hand, the kids are made to believe they’re on a reality show called “The House,” which will pay them 250,000 reais to move out of home.  So, if even one mother messes up the challenge, the whole group loses money collectively. But the betting game is rather simple, essentially multiple-choice questions for you to choose which answer your kid would’ve given. For some reason, in the four episodes we watch, there is one elimination, which I also promptly forgot about by the time I got to the end of episode 4. The first to leave the show is the duo Rafaela and Cassia, and, of course, it’s all mum Cassia’s fault. Ironically, at the first bet, Cenir says that she’d bet the whole million that her daughter Karina said she wants to be an heiress. But hilariously, her bubble bursts in seconds.

Now, there are a couple of mums in this house who are genuinely intolerable. For one, it’s Bea’s mum, Monica, who is constantly reminding everyone that, though her daughter is openly gay, she will change, because God told Monica so. Monica isn’t the only mum of a queer kid on the show, so this is definitely one of the big points of contention in the house. Adriana and Monica are complete opposites in the way they think and also present themselves. The latter is heavily religious, clearly, and the former is simply accepting of her son, Pedro. She’s also one of the bolder mums, in terms of never shying away from saying how she feels. On the other hand, Kaynara’s mother, Martinha, tells everyone that she’s not an affectionate mum, and her husband, who she lost during the pandemic, was the affectionate one.

The biggest dramatic moment in the show is when Inocencia tells all the other mothers that she’s so afraid of aging that she’d rather die first. If I’m not wrong, she might be the eldest of the group. Now, she does have the right to say these words without feeling shame for it. But this conversation gets dragged out all the way till episode 4 from episode one, because it seems like the only piece of drama we are meant to pay attention to. But this is not true, there’s a couple of highlights; for one, Bea and her mother, Monica’s relationship. Monica clearly thinks she can change her daughter’s sexual orientation, and though some of the moms point out that this is airing on international television, she doesn’t want to change how she talks about it.

The other thing is that the kids and mums get to be in venting rooms together, but the kids don’t know in the first instance. They just get advice written down, not knowing where it’s coming from. However, the second time around, the show drops a bomb on the kids, showing their mums on the other side. The mums are meant to convince the kids to hide the fact that they met from all the other contestants. Easy enough task, I guess. Also, every few challenges, the leader of the house changes, and they get to decide what kind of chores the fellow kids get to do. The first leader is Patrick, and the second is Bea. By the 3rd episode, the mothers are down to 853,000 reais. That’s how disconnected they are from their kids, I guess. There’s another thing, I genuinely don’t understand why there’s so much crying on the show, but okay.

At the end of episode 4, the drama is intense, with all the mothers basically ganging up on Dri, who seems to not know how to converse with them. I don’t get the cultural context, but it appears the kind of things she says are not taken well by any of the other mums, so she’s clearly the problem. Plus, we already know she basically treats her 25-year-old as her own prince, so I guess she needs to have her eyes opened. This is the biggest element of drama in the show, and I know for sure it’s going to get carried forward till the end of the show. But anyway, by the end of 4 episodes, there’s a format change. Until now, the show made it seem like the mums being there is just going to be a secret till the end, but instead, it’s revealed to the kids at the end of episode 4, along with the real title of the show, and an introduction to their host, Claudia. So now we have a lot of unwanted drama awaiting us for the final 3 episodes next week.