It’s really too bad that my first reality TV post had to be about such a heinous, painful, depressing show as Toddlers and Tiaras. Long ago, when I first began transforming into the TV evangelist that I am today, I recall getting into a huge debate with my mother about reality television. Her line then (a belief I’m sure she still holds today), is that reality shows are among the lowest forms of entertainment imaginable, catering to our basest emotions and thriving off our inner voyeurs. Not only are they bad, I believe her argument went, they are bad for us, providing a pedestal for the nadir of humanity and celebrating boorish banality. A slightly younger and significantly more contrarian version of myself took the opposite perspective, and attempted to tout America’s Next Top Model as my generation’s Middlemarch. As I recall, this conversation took place in a family restaurant with gingham tablecloths. My boyfriend was with us, and he spent most of the meal ducking behind napkin holders.

Obviously, I was incapable of swaying her opinion. In retrospect, my choice of reality show was probably not sound, and so the entire force of my argument was required merely to shore up the easily apparent defaults in my chosen program, leaving me incapable of winning hearts and minds. It was, in other words, not unlike recent American foreign policy. Except, you know, about reality shows.

In any case, when I posted yesterday about Toddlers and Tiaras, a little part of me said to myself “See? Your mother was right. They are uniformly despicable programs.” And I was sad about that, because let’s be honest – two paragraphs ago when I described myself as significantly less contrarian now? That was mostly exaggeration. Despite what I wrote yesterday, I refuse to believe that all reality shows are crude, base or otherwise amoral portrayals of the human condition, and this time I have a much better example to prove otherwise.

All summer, I’ve been watching MTV’s new series 16 and Pregnant. Each episode follows a different teenage girl as she copes with her pregnancy, her boyfriend, her family, graduating from high school, and trying to raise her baby, and it is almost inevitably heartbreaking. These young women struggle with loser boyfriends who have no ability to sympathize much less help, they weep as they try to feed a baby while doing homework, and they have epic showdowns with their parents about the future. I think the show was intended to be a “scare ‘em straight” type of program, and although that does sometimes come across, the primary message seems to be “dump your loser boyfriend.”

Except for the last episode. The last episode out of the six features a girl named Catelynn and her boyfriend Tyler, who decide to give their daughter up for adoption. Catelynn and Tyler’s (alcoholic, transient) parents are both against this decision, and Catelynn’s mother even goes so far as to put a frilly bassinette in her daughter’s bedroom, but both teenagers hold their own and insist on giving their daughter a better life than they have. The episode essentially follows the plot of Juno, as Catelynn and Tyler pick out and meet with an adoptive family and struggle with their decision. It’s like Juno, except Tyler is incredibly involved in the process, and the couple who adopt their daughter is stable, and there’s no snappy dialogue to temper the pain of giving birth and giving the baby away. Catelynn’s mother refuses to sign off on the adoption, so Catelynn and Tyler have to trudge through the hospital parking lot and hand off their daughter outside of hospital grounds, a detail legally required by the state. These two teenagers stand on the sidewalk and weep as the attractive, stable, older couple who desperately want a child pack the baby into a car seat and drive away.

This is so far from the nadir of humanity, it’s almost unbearably painful to watch. And more importantly (to my pseudo-battle against my mother’s argument), the walloping impact comes directly from its reality show format. It is so powerful because it’s unscripted, because the emotions are genuine, and because these teenagers signed up to be filmed in order to share their experience with other kids who have the same dilemma. Juno was an entertaining film, but it has nothing on 16 and Pregnant. So maybe I’m still not able to justify The Hills as anything other than a surreal para-reality experience, and maybe Jon and Kate + 8 is exploitative and appalling, but I have not given up on reality television. Maybe one day I can convince my mom.