My Beef with the Marriage Ref

"And now your marriage is in their hands…"

There couldn't be a better summation for The Marriage Ref, NBC's new show that premiered after the Winter Olympics. The show basically consists of couples submitting their "issues" for verdict from a celebrity panel and in front of a mass audience.

I've only seen part of one show to check it out and have big problems with it.

Let's just say that the show left on me with a not-so-pretty impression. My thoughts about the show were even more solidified when looking at it through the convictions instilled in me from my youth.

What the show essentially does is make a spectacle of marriage by thrusting it in the public square, displaying a couple's problems for mass strangers to basically ridicule.

A couple's problems submitted before a celebrity panel only adds insult to injury…as if these celebrities know how to keep their own marriages in tact. Someone like Madonna? Or Alec Baldwin?

Please…

The stories of these celebrities (in and of themselves) are to be pitied and not laughed at.

But having them on the show's "marriage panel" exposes the show as a faux solution to really dealing with a dynamic duo's problems.

The Marriage Ref hijacks the sacredness of a couple working through their problems, strengthening their marriage in the privacy of their own home.

With the Marriage Ref, the institution becomes a big clown show, a circus.

Think twice before laughing at what really isn't comedy.