In the four-episode docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets (Prime Video) directors Julia Willoughby Nason (LuLaRich, Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal) and Olivia Crist delve into the history of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who became a reality television sensation with their TLC series 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On, its eventual spinoff. Amid their media downfall and revelations of their oldest son’s crimes as a sex offender is a bigger story about the Christian organization the Duggars indoctrinated their children into, and claims by its former members – many of whom are interviewed here – that it’s actually a cult obsessed with male authoritarian control.
SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE – DUGGAR FAMILY SECRETS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: In northwest Arkansas, Jill Dillard and her husband Derick are sitting for an interview. Jill was the fourth born of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggard’s 19 children, and, she says, “I grew up on TV.”
The Gist: 19 Kids and Counting premiered in 2008, and quickly became a hit that not only featured the daily exploits of a mega-family – they drive around in their own bus; they’re homeschooled; even Jill gets the order of her siblings confused, with all of their names starting with “J” – but established a lucrative reality programming niche for TLC. For many viewers, it was pure sport to indulge with the show’s homespun rhythms set to extra mode. But as Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets emphasizes, for patriarch Jim Bob Duggar, the show was mostly a platform for his ministry. A conservative Baptist and follower of an organization known as the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) since his own youth, and a righteous proponent of its homeschooling program, known as the Advanced Training Institute (ATI), Jim Bob controlled the show’s optics, the revenue it generated for the family, and the damage control which resulted from oldest son Josh Duggar eventually being revealed as a sex offender. After all, as the Duggars’ central male figure and sole decision maker, Jim Bob was only practicing what IBLP founder Bill Gothard preached.
“There’s a story that’s gonna be told, and I would rather be the one telling it than the tabloids and anybody else who can make up whatever they want,” Jill Dillard says in Duggar Family Secrets. She is interviewed extensively here, as are Jim and Bobye Holt, friends of the Duggars who clashed with Jim Bob over the allegations concerning his son, Jim Bob’s sister and her daughter, and former members of the IBLP like Brooke Arnold. When asked to comment on Gothard and his organization, Arnold lets out a huge laugh and calls it a real hornet’s nest. “How long ya got?”
What begins to emerge with the first episode of Duggar Family Secrets is how much of Jim Bob and his wife Michelle’s experience with the creation and management of their giant family is part and parcel with Institute in Basic Life Principle indoctrination. And as clips from the org’s internal programming and sermons from Gothard combine with the observations of Duggar family members and former IBLP followers, it boils down to one bi tenet: male authority teaching is the end all, be all.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The cancellations of 19 Kids and Counting, its spinoff Counting On, and the fallout from Josh Duggar’s conviction as a sex offender have not stopped TLC from elsewhere chasing big ratings for reality shows about mega-families. The network has broadcast Welcome to Plathville since 2019 (the Plaths are another large Southern family with Christian values, though they’ve had their own problems), while Doubling Down With the Derricos, now in its fourth season, follows a family whose 14 children include triplets, quintuplets, and two sets of twins. And not to be outdone, OutDaughtered returns for its latest season this month; that’s the one about a couple whose children include the first all-female quintuplets to be born in the US.
Our Take: “We prayed about it, and we thought, ‘Well, maybe this is an opportunity to share with the world that children are a blessing and a gift from God.’ And so we went back to ‘em and we said ‘We will do this documentary with you as long as you don’t edit out our faith.” That quote from Jim Bob Duggar at an Institute in Basic Life Principles conference called “Our Spiritual Journey” puts a folksy spin on how a former Republican state rep from Arkansas and his very large family became mainstream reality TV stars. But it also reveals the hidden hand at work in all of this, the one the makers of Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets assert was stirring the pot the entire time. Sure, viewers soon became stans for the spectacle of a brood 19 kids strong – holy shit, they’re preparing multiple sheet pans of tater tots and ground beef casserole, and it’s just weekday dinner! – but that very popularity created a route toward legitimacy for the IBLP and its teachings, which would see that every family in America made as many babies as humanly possible and helped to transform the country into a fundamentalist sect from sea to shining sea. And with white men calling all of the shots, of course. When put that way, doesn’t it seem like TLC was platforming a cult?
The interviewees who speak out in Duggar Family Secrets certainly think so, and that includes Jim Bob’s sister Deanne and her daughter Amy, who grew up alongside her nephews and nieces and even appeared on 19 Kids and Counting. This docuseries is not built from nameless allegations, or a reliance on one or two gripey testimonials. Its bona fides are illustrated right away by interviewing Jill Dillard – it probes but doesn’t entirely push her to speak about her brother Josh Duggar’s sexual predation – and unlike the recent tendency in documentary material to thin and stretch out the content for even more clicks, it promises to elevate its narrative beyond the immediate motivations of the Duggars and into an examination of just what the IBLP has been up to this whole time.
Sex and Skin: Here is a prompt that’s given new meaning in the context of this docuseries, whether in the extreme forms of female modesty preached by the IBLF – one interviewee refers to it as blatant “slut shaming” – or the Christian fundamentalist belief in conceiving a “quiverfull” of children, or even its discussion of the sexual offenses committed by the Duggars’ oldest son, which the couple didn’t publicly report for over a decade.
Parting Shot: As it teases the interviews to come in following episodes of Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, it’s clear that people won’t be holding back. “This is much bigger than the Duggars.” “This isn’t the first time I’ve heard about this happening within this IBLP community.” “The Institute raises little predators.” “People look at Josh Duggar and they see a monster. But monsters are created.”
Sleeper Star: YouTube creator Jen Sutphin appears here in her capacity as a keen observer of the fundamentalist community and avid “hate watcher” of a series like 19 Kids and Counting; in a clip, she says “the show has devolved more and more into just straight propaganda as time has gone on,” and adds that the Duggers “were definitely used as a recruiting tool for the IBLP.”
Most Pilot-y Line: When the producers from Discovery first came calling, religious historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez says in Duggar Family Secrets, Jim Bob recognized it as his big moment. “[He] is presented with an opportunity which will give him the power to present his values to the entire country, and the opportunity to make a lot of money.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets offers first hand testimony about the day-to-day behaviors of its titular family, as well as the inner workings and intentions of an organization bent on remaking America in its own hyper-Christian, male authority-loving image.
Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges
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