Social media has been in an uproar this week over the 10% chance that AI will take over the world and drive humanity into extinction.
And after seeing the trailer for the new Paramount+ series Team Moms, it would be totally justified in doing so.
In case you’re not aware, Team Moms is a Real Housewives-style look at parents of an elite baseball team in Scottsdale, Arizona. Kim Kardashian, ITV America (producers of Love Island USA), and Skydance Sports are producing it.
While Kardashian praised the series as “fun to watch” because of the passion and intensity of competition both on the field with the kids and off the field with the parents, the trailer showcases every horrific stereotype about American youth sports imaginable. But everything is also turned up to 11 to fit the modern reality-show format that accentuates the drama and feuds between the featured families.
Not to sound too prudish, but there is an epidemic in this country regarding youth sports and the pressure that parents put on their children to become multi-millionaire professional players while also embarrassing themselves with horrific behavior towards kids, umpires, and everyone in between.
And Team Moms delivers on all of those fronts.
We see parents fighting with each other over their kids, pressuring their children to perform as “150 percenters,” bragging about verbally abusing other children, and getting thrown out of games. And just to mix it up, there’s plenty of drinking and partying amongst the parents as well.
But the main goal of the series appears to be making these terrifying parents influencers and famous in their own right off the backs of their children’s skill at baseball through the vomit-inducing format of reality television. And they are going to do it by being the absolute worst youth sports parents in the world.
If this were a documentary warning America about the evils in youth sports, it could be a helpful teaching tool to help us learn from our ways and turn toward something good and decent. Instead, it’s just one more step towards the demise of the human race. And we can’t say we don’t deserve it.
About Matt Yoder