14 DAY TRIAL // TLC’s newest and biggest reality show, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, was canceled last week, after it emerged that the matriarch Mama June had rekindled her romance with the man who had been in prison for 10 years for abusing her own daughter.
That daughter, Anna Cardwell, known as Chickadee on the show, was 8 years at the time Mark McDaniel forced himself on her. She is 20 now, a mother on her own and has moved out of the family home.
And the news that her mother is dating the man who abused her has broken her heart, as her new interview with Entertainment Tonight reveals.
Chickadee blames Mama June for the abuse and everything else
ET has released 2 teasers for the interview / special, which will start airing tonight, Thursday, October 30, 2014. The third video embedded below is a video report meant to help you catch up with the scandal.
What it’s clear from these previews is that Chickadee blames her mother for the fact that she was abused, and for pretty much everything else. “It’s all Mama’s fault!,” she says at one point, right before dissolving in tears.
Chickadee resents Mama June for not ever believing her that McDaniel abused her, she resents her for taking him back, and she clearly resents her for exposing her 3 sisters, all of them minor and still in Mama June’s custody, to him by dating him again.
Moreover, she’s willing to speak out, even if that will probably break her family apart for good and she might never be welcomed back again.
Meanwhile, Mama June is trying to act like nothing’s wrong
Perhaps anticipating such a move from Chickadee, Mama June got her estranged partner Sugar Bear, Honey Boo Boo’s parent, to go out with her shopping, thus providing a perfect photo-op for the paparazzi and making a silent stand: there is no scandal, we’re still together if only as parents.
Just one day ago, Sugar Bear half-confirmed rumors that he might seek full custody of Honey Boo Boo by telling the paparazzi that he was “upset” and worried that Mama June had gone back with McDaniel, because it put his 9-year-old daughter in grave danger.
Apparently, he wasn’t all that upset as he let on, because he was photographed holding a smiling Mama June’s arm. Honey Boo Boo also appeared thrilled to have her picture taken.
TLC is done with the family, but will some other network want a piece of the action?
A few, rather unlikely theories online claim that this scandal could have been a PR stunt, though no other celebrity has ever used an association with a known pedophile to get attention. But the bottom line remains: season 4 of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo didn’t really do all that great in the ratings, even though the network still ordered a fifth one.
Photos from the staged photo-op available online show that, even though Mama June and Sugar Bear are no longer followed around by a camera crew, they still have at least 2 bodyguards in their employment. They could be cautious like that, but last time we heard, all security was paid for by TLC.
If TLC isn’t paying for anything for them right now, this begs the question: who is? Could another networking be footing the bill after signing them for another reality show – perhaps a “docuseries” a la Tori Spelling and Kendra Wilkinson, meant to document their coping with a life-shattering scandal?
It sounds a bit far-fetched but it’s not entirely unlikely. Time will most definitely tell.