A&E’s reality show about in-laws from hell.
A&E continues their tradition of peeking inside the lives of seemingly normal people and putting a camera right on the literal pulse of their secret problems. Monster In-Laws illuminates married couples that are wilting under the weight of smothering, uber-opinionated, or just plain mean parents.
Anthony and Kim are an Italian family in western New York. They have a cute little girl, Nina Maria, and Kim’s parents who are around all the time. Richie and Pam are enamored with their granddaughter to a extreme degree as they eat at their daughter’s home nightly, cook for the little girl, monopolize her time and shower her with whatever she wants – even if Kim disagrees. The entire family has even opened a family restaurant together bearing the little girl’s name.
Poor Anthony, a seemingly standup guy and provider, has become a second-class citizen in his own house and in the restaurant business because traditional machismo patriarch Richie is Type A and bullies his way verbally into what he wants. It’s Richie’s word or the highway, even when he’s under his daughter’s roof. His wife just enables him and walks over her daughter’s wishes as well. Kim is a daddy’s girl who is clearly stuck in the middle as she doesn’t want to disrespect her parents or short-change her husband. Unfortunately, Anthony is coming up short as his daughter is more bonded to her grandparents because they dominate her world and Kim has no backbone to enforce her rules with her parents. Already in marriage counseling, Anthony is at wits end.
In comes Mel Robbins, a national relationship coach, who like Supernanny Jo Frost observes the family for a day. She quickly determines that Richie is a loud, blowhard that talks over everyone when he doesn’t want to hear something not to his liking. She sits them down at the restaurant and determines what the issues are and why Richie won’t allow Kim and Anthony to have any input in their joint business. Richie admits that the restaurant was a mess at opening and his kids just backed out and left the mess in their hands. They bailed the venture out to the tune of $50K and no one has acknowledged that at all. Anthony and Kim are shocked at that and explain they backed away because nothing they said or did pleased Richie. Mel gets them all to recognize that they’ve kept silent and had poor communication for so long now that the little things are creating huge meltdowns because of long-simmering hurt.
When Mel tries to force the family to go through some change exercises, Richie gets amped up and there’s a blowup. He bristles at letting Anthony run the restaurant for the day, but he explodes when Mel asks a very reluctant Kim to duct tape her parent’s mouths closed to just get them to listen. Kim balks, then Richie starts yelling, and that almost brings the two men to blows. Everyone scatters like angry marbles and Mel is able to collect them in an emotional face-to-face where they all finally talk. Richie shows some vulnerability as he cries and explains that he and his wife are wounded that their daughter has threatened to cut them off from Nina Maria in many an argument. Mel calls out Kim for being an emotional brat and she apologizes. Anthony thanks his in-laws for their business support and then Richie and Pam come to accept how to listen and to adhere to new family rules. Family nights go to once a week only and some overall space in general is put into practice. Mel leaves with the family in much better shape – so much so that the end credits say they were able to do a family vacation together and had a great time.
Unlike a lot of reality shows where the participants just yell and revert back to their poor behavior, I admired that Monster In-Laws showed context for all of the family members and also put in place real strategies for fixing problems. Seeing peace in the end isn’t always sexy TV, but it’s a rewarding example of how compromise can really be a savior. Not a bad example in our stratified times.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.