When 6-year-old Alana Thompson scored her own reality show on TLC—the network’s first and only spinoff of its hit Toddlers & Tiaras—it must’ve chapped the asses of pageant moms. After all, they’ve spent so much time, effort, and money turning their children into beautiful, perfectly-trained living dolls, reaching for the kind of stardom that Alana and her family achieved simply by being themselves. Alana’s family is to pageants what genderfuck is to gender identity. They fart. They eat cheese puffs for breakfast. They revel in being rednecks. They compare their vulvas to Hardee’s biscuits. They weigh themselves on national television. They are riveting.
The brief opening title of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (in the video above) kind of says it all. As the camera pans over the smiling family for a nice portrait, “Mama” audibly farts and everyone fans the stink away.
The Thompsons consist of 17-year-old “Chickadee” (who is pregnant), 15-year-old “Chubs,” 12-year-old “Pumpkin,” 6-year-old Alana, their dad, 40-year-old “Sugar Bear,” and the 32-year-old matriarch “Mama.”
Mama is the breakout star. An extreme coupon-er, pageant mom, and soon-to-be grandmother of her teen’s baby, she was made for reality TV.