Duggars · Darden · Death on the Lot
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As a teen, I watched 19 Kids and Counting, TLC’s show about the fundamentalist Duggar family, with a sense of morbid fascination. More than anything, I was taken by the logistics. How do you prepare food — every day — for a family that big? Keep up with the laundry? Run errands?
The reality show documented those sorts of basic activities, as well as the family’s homeschooling, strict gender roles, and the extreme sect of Christianity that underpin them. Shiny Happy People, Amazon’s new four-part documentary about the Duggar family, moves their religious views from sideshow to center stage.
I went into Shiny Happy People expecting it to focus on the crimes committed by Josh Duggar, the family’s eldest son, who was sentenced in 2022 to 12 years in prison for receiving and possessing child pornography. Duggar was previously accused of molesting his younger sisters and other girls, a crime his parents managed by sending him to a religious facility for troubled boys.