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MTV’s Teen Mom franchise traces its origins back to 2009, with the first season of 16 And Pregnant, and has encompassed Teen Mom, Teen Mom 2, Teen Mom 3 (RIP), Teen Mom: Young And Pregnant, Teen Mum (a UK-based iteration), and countless specials and reunions. And while its original mission may have been to de-glamorize the experience of unplanned parenthood to a degree that would lead non-televised teens to figure out how contraception works — which, by the way, it has apparently done — it’s also turned its young subjects into highly compensated D-list celebrities who do all the things you’d expect of people in their fame bracket. They sign on to other reality shows, on other networks, ostensibly to work on their relationships but also, conveniently, to mooch more screen time. They get arrested. They go on social media both to feud with their exes, or one another, and also to shill sponcon. And while the show’s earliest seasons may have highlighted the financial stresses their babies placed on them, the teen moms seem like they’re doing okay now: they own their own homes, generally don’t work full-time jobs, enjoy exotic vacations. Catelynn recently bought a horse. Any former teen mother watching might dream of getting a piece of this action — and starting last night, one of the country’s most famous former teen mothers got hers.
Bristol Palin had fame thrust upon her in 2008, when her mother Sarah — then the governor of Alaska — joined the Republican ticket as a VP candidate for presidential hopeful John McCain. Gov. Palin had to disclose that her eldest daughter, 17-year-old Bristol, was pregnant out of wedlock. As you may have heard, Gov. Palin’s Vice Presidential run was not successful, though she did at least get a $150,000 wardrobe out of it. She resigned before the end of her first term as governor, amid a variety of ethics investigations, but continued her career as a celebrity first as a political commentator and then as the star, along with her family, of the (one-season) TLC reality show Sarah Palin’s Alaska.
Bristol’s relationship with her baby’s father, Levi Johnston, lasted only a few months longer than Gov. Palin’s vice-presidential campaign, but it seems she’s learned from her mother how to prolong her time in the public eye. She was named a spokeswoman for The Candie’s Foundation, in which capacity she promoted abstinence-only education, for which she was compensated far more than the foundation received in donations. She was cast in Season 11 of Dancing With The Stars and hung on to the finals amid questions about the integrity of the show’s voting system. (A return engagement as one of the “all-stars” in Season 15 ended after four weeks; her son Tripp will star in the first season of Dancing With The Stars: Juniors.) She was cast in her own reality show on Lifetime, which was poorly received and cancelled after one season. Now she’s making $250,000 to star on Teen Mom OG.
What’s MTV getting for its money? Drama straight out of the gate. Bristol is replacing Farrah Abraham, fired in 2017 for using her down time to work in adult entertainment; earlier this year, she settled a suit she had brought against Viacom for harassment and wrongful termination. Reached for comment about Bristol’s casting, Farrah obliged by dismissing Bristol as a copycat and mangling a movie reference in the process. (You meant Single White Female, not Girl, Interrupted, Farrah, but good effort.)
Bristol’s first scene on the show finds her in Arizona for her sister Willow’s bachelorette weekend, not quite nailing the candid conversations required in her new job as she awkwardly asks another sister, Piper, “Can you believe Mom’s here?…I think it’s so fun that she’s here.” She later announces that she’s “ready to go back to work with real estate,” and appeals to fans of her malapropism-prone mother’s by twice saying “resignate” when she means “resonate.”
Much more skilled as a reality TV star is Bristol’s husband, Dakota Meyer, with whom she’s had two daughters, Sailor and Atlee. A former Marine, Dakota was awarded the Medal of Honor after he was his platoon’s sole survivor of a 2009 battle in Afghanistan. Like everyone in Maci’s storyline, Dakota is very committed to apparel branding and, in all his scenes, wears the same “Own The Dash” t-shirt. While visiting his father in Kentucky, Dakota frankly tells producers the challenges he’s faced with anxiety and PTSD; his father confirms that, for “four to six months” after he returned from his deployment, Dakota slept with a pistol on his chest. Dakota says his children are the reason he gets up every day, while in Arizona, Bristol confides in Willow that “his PTSD is really affecting [their] marriage.”
We see this play out when the couple is reunited in Austin: Bristol notices that Dakota is breathing heavily, and when she asks him what’s wrong, he gets agitated and yells at her about nightmares he’s had about his “dead guys,” ever since the battle. This occurs while he is behind the wheel, on a highway, driving the entire family home from a park outing, and too far gone in his own emotion to acknowledge Bristol’s attempts to save the discussion for a time when all three kids aren’t closed in a vehicle with them. It continues at home, with Bristol claiming she wants to untangle the fact of Dakota’s trauma from the ways he takes it out on her, and Dakota expressing disgust about the dismissive ways she’s described his pain to various professionals they’ve sought to help them.
Both a supertease for the rest of the season and, uh, the news have spoiled the couple’s divorce; we’ll see Bristol trying to bounce back during the season. But we probably shouldn’t expect that, as a single woman, she’ll take any Farrah-esque paths. Bristol has a very clear idea about what has brought her here: “If there’s anything with my life that’s, like, resignates with somebody else and gives them any sort of, like, light at the end of the tunnel, then I think that God gave me a platform to do that.” God probably doesn’t intend for Bristol to make room on that platform for her brother Track.
Writer, editor, and snack enthusiast Tara Ariano is the co-founder of TelevisionWithoutPity.com and Fametracker.com (R.I.P.), as well as Previously.tv. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great and Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210), and has contributed to New York, the New York Times magazine, Vulture, The Awl, and Slate, among many others. She lives in Austin.
