Parents' Guide to Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets

Nothing viewers learn in this documentary series is a surprise, yet it's simultaneously validating and depressing to learn that the perfect image of reality TV family the Duggars was a facade. Most viewers will come to this show with some knowledge of the family and its downfall, but Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets fascinates with the level of intimate detail the series manages to get. Cousins, aunts, close friends, and Duggar daughter Jill Duggar are interviewed, and are surprisingly revealing. As one interviewee says on camera, he's burned his bridges with his family by participating; viewers may wonder if that's the case for all those who participated.

Nonetheless, Shiny Happy People is both an interesting peek behind the scenes of a famous family and the shadowy religious group they're most closely associated with, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). To no one's shock, an authoritarian group with a reputation for being punishing and bigoted turns out to be fronted by a man with his own dark secrets. His predilections were also, of course, woven into the fabric of a movement in which women and children are encouraged to obey and submit, preferably as meekly as possible. The people who speak on camera in Shiny Happy People were all molded by the IBLP, and together their chorus of voices is damning. Shiny Happy People isn't uplifting viewing, but in demonstrating the dangers of oppression, it has something important to say.