7 Best And 7 Worst Shows On TLC

TLC shows are really something. With over 100 original programs under its belt, there's no denying the network's ability to keep millions of people interested, entertained, and coming back for the content they crave each week. However, the TLC viewers know and love today is a far-cry from what the network was originally intended to be.

Founded in 1972 by NASA and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare as the Appalachian Community Service Network, its name was officially changed to The Learning Channel (TLC for short) in 1980. True to its name, TLC's earliest days were focused on educational programming, with the network airing documentary series on topics like space and paleontology. However, throughout its years on television, TLC — now owned by Discovery, Inc. — seems to have mostly abandoned its mission to educate viewers, opting instead for programming designed to entertain. 

While viewers might learn a thing or two while binging their current TLC favorites, the network now boasts a steady stream of reality programs showcasing psychic moms, flashy weddings, and pregnant teenagers. Here's a list of the TLC shows worthy of a good binge — as well as those you might want to skip. 

Premiering in February 2012, My 600-lb Life had potential to be a somewhat inspiring program showcasing the weight loss journeys of morbidly obese people as they made the major lifestyle changes required to live their best, healthiest lives. Instead, the TLC show has proven itself to be more depressing than inspirational — sometimes even bordering on exploitative. 

As viewers of the show have noted on social media, the shower scenes that often appear at the beginning of each episode are unnecessary and uncomfortable for everyone involved. Expressing their sarcastic take on the shower scenes, one viewer tweeted, "[The] best part about [My 600-lb Life] is how everybody's ashamed of themselves but then TLC is like, 'Why don't you get naked [and] shower on camera?'" 

Commenting on Reddit, another viewer of My 600-lb Life revealed they found the shower scenes difficult to watch, writing, "I'm sure when the show first came out, they were enticing for viewers with that morbid curiosity. Now it just makes me sad and I feel like it is unnecessary for the story."

90 Day Fiancé is a TLC show with a controversial premise: Couples who have applied for or received a K-1 visa (the visa given to foreign fiancés of American citizens) must decide if their relationship has what it takes to make a marriage work before said visa expires.

As noted by The New York Times, 90 Day Fiancé found popularity during a time in which immigration to America was (and still is) a heated, often polarizing topic. While a K-1 visa is often associated with immigration fraud, Lenni B. Benson — an immigration expert and law professor — told the NYT that misconception is "not true in the majority of cases." Still, this hasn't stopped viewers from taking to social media and accusing subjects of skirting the system. However, when asked if the show had changed since the Obama administration, TLC president Howard Lee told the NYT, "We don't get into the politics of all of that in the series." 

In other words, instead of contributing meaningful conversation to the topic of immigration, TLC allows 90 Day Fiancé to speak for itself — even though its message is often downright confusing. 

Hoarding: Buried Alive premiered in March 2010 — and the stomach-churning TLC show delivered a stream of nightmare fuel for some time.

Dr. Julie Pike explained to CBS News, "Hoarding is a potentially debilitating disorder where people accumulate more and more things in their home — clutter — to the point that they are no longer able to use their house for its intended purpose." Hoarding: Buried Alive provided viewers with an up-close look at the lives of extreme hoarders across the county. However, some mental health professionals think the show's portrayal of hoarders was exploitative and disagree with the program's way of "fixing" the problem by forcing the hoarder to simply get rid of their stuff.

Revealing that she calls hoarding reality shows "exploitainment" instead of entertainment, counselor Debbie Stanley told Everyday Health, "Stripping away a person's coping mechanism before a better one has been gradually established is cruel and unethical, and usually results in more severe hoarding." Added registered nurse, Lori Watson, "Hoarding does not develop overnight and it will not be 'fixed' in the period of a few days of filming."

According to TLC's website, Unexpected is a series that takes a "raw" look at three pregnant teenagers and the effects their pregnancies have on their families. If the premise sounds familiar, it's probably because it is.

Even if you don't fancy yourself a fan of current pop culture or reality television, you'd have to be living under a rock to escape the presence of MTV's 16 and Pregnant — the reality show that spawned Teen Mom and essentially kickstarted America's interest in teenage pregnancies. While Unexpected seems to be TLC's answer to Teen Mom fans, one of the TLC show's teenaged stars, Lexus, told Us Weekly she disagrees with the comparison. "There's not as much drama [on Unexpected]," the teen told Us Weekly. She continued, adding, "I think it's more real. Our problems are more realistic than [they are on] Teen Mom and shows like that. I feel like our stories are better."

Still, it's difficult to watch Unexpected without feeling like what you're seeing has all been done before. And, in the era of peak TV, is it really necessary to expose the private lives of pregnant teens in the name of entertainment?  

Long Island Medium is an entertaining — and even somewhat addicting — television show. After all, the so-called reality show has all the ingredients that make up bingeworthy television. The titular medium, Theresa Caputo, inserts healthy doses of comic relief into each episode with her over-the-top personality, which is perfectly complemented by her signature look and Long Island accent. And considering the sheer number of tears shed by Caputo's grieving clients throughout the series, comic relief is a must-have.

That said, the TLC show's entertainment value is overshadowed by the possibility that Caputo isn't the psychic medium she claims to be, and is instead manipulating vulnerable clients using "cold reading" techniques. As explained by The New York Times, a cold reading is the act of a "psychic" picking up on subtle verbal or nonverbal clues and using them to "make educated, but generally vague, guesses about your life and family." Skeptics of Caputo believe she's simply an incredibly skilled cold reader — and, while Caputo has repeatedly denied the claims, there's no way to prove the Long Islander is actually relaying messages from her clients' deceased loved ones. 

One of the more controversial TLC shows, Sister Wives premiered on the network in 2010. Despite what its title might lead someone unfamiliar with the show to believe, the titular wives on Sister Wives aren't actually sisters at all. Instead, their "sisterhood" is founded on their separate marriages to the same man, polygamist Kody Brown. 

When Sister Wives debuted, Brown was legally married to his wife Meri and "spiritually" married to his other "wives" Janelle and Christine. The first season of the show also chronicled Brown's engagement and eventual spiritual marriage to his fourth wife, Robyn. At the time of this writing, Brown is divorced from Meri, legally married to Robyn, and shares a whopping 18 children with his wives. Obviously, TLC has a thing for enormous families. 

No matter a person's viewpoint regarding polygamy, what truly makes Sister Wives uncomfortable to watch are the rumors that Brown and his four wives are miserable in their current situation. In 2016, Kendra Pollard-Parra — a former close friend of Robyn — told InTouch Weekly, "They pretend to be happy for the show, but the family is a mess."

Mother-daughter relationships have historically made for good entertainment. Steel Magnolias, Mamma Mia!, and Gilmore Girls are just a few examples of mother-daughter stories that continue to remain relevant years after they first made their debut. However, the TLC show sMothered features mother-daughter relationships that viewers will likely want to forget rather than revisit. 

According to the show's description on TLC's website, sMothered "follows four outrageous mother/daughter duos who take their bonds to the extreme!" Honestly, we couldn't have said it any better ourselves. In the trailer for the series — which premiered in 2019 — daughter Angelica admits that she and her mother, Sunhe, share a bed. "I'm the little spoon and she's the big spoon," Angelica said, laughing. Later, Sunhe confesses that if she could find "a man version of Angelica," she would, quote, "marry them in a heartbeat." 

TLC fans wasted no time in letting the network know their feelings about sMothered. "[TLC], I'm a loyal viewer, but #sMothered is sick," one viewer tweeted. Added another viewer, "It's seriously disturbing the shows being aired in the name of 'entertainment' on this channel."