The peek outside the close knit community inside Anabaptist communities like the Amish has been the subject of documentaries and reality series over the years.
A new one that starts tonight, “Breaking Amish” (TLC, 10 p.m.), sort of follows the “Amish in the City” template used on The CW a few years back, capturing the reaction when a few of the adventurous members of the communities are willing to venture out and take in the excitement of a big American city where bonnets are not so popular.
In “Amish in the City,” it was Los Angeles; in “Breaking Amish” it’s New York City. It’s not exactly rumspringa – these are not teenagers sewing wild outs but young adults seeing if they can make it on the outside. In addition to the Amish there’s one Mennonite whose beliefs are a little different – she can drive for one thing.
But it’s even more complicated than that. Two of them are adopted from outside the community and feel, perhaps on a biological level, that they don’t belong to the farm setting where they were raised.
And more complicated still: some get in trouble with their elders because of the fact they’ve invited cameras in. The producers, too, seem integral in providing the final push out of the nest, arranging transportation and providing a house. If it’s not quite “The Real World” or “Jersey Shore,” it does include a heavy hand of TV pushing action along, it would seem.
But, the producers said, “all five of them were going to do something and they were going to leave and they didn’t know how to make that happen. We provided them with a much safer way to do that.”
Eric Evangelista added that “Breaking Amish” has nothing to do with “Real World” or “Jersey Shore.” “It’s completely unique with very high stakes, and each character on the show has a tremendous amount on the line.”
Besides, he told reporters at the TV Critics press tour, “Snooki’s family I don’t think would shun her if she were on television. And I don’t think any of the other people on those other shows have that much at stake.”
“I don’t think there was anything wrong with wanting to go out and explore the world and see if that’s really what you want,” said one of the participants, Sabrina. “Like, you’ve got to make a decision in the end, but there’s so much at stake. Like, you just have to weigh the pros and cons…. I wanted to figure out whether or not that was right for me.”
She said she doubted any of the five participants were acting differently because camera crews were on them.
“None of us really have ever been outside of our culture necessarily,” Sabrina said. “So for us to be, like, filmed and everything, like, we were just completely genuine and ourselves because we honestly like, I honestly don’t know how to be I can’t speak for everybody else, but me personally — I don’t know how to be anything other than myself. Like, I’m just out there. Like, I can’t help it.”