Amish Mafia

They should call it "When Amish Go Bad." I'm talking about the insanely addictive new show, Amish Mafia, the most bizarre reality series, well, ever.

Even if Amish Mafia may evoke for some viewers the popular and somewhat discredited "Breaking Amish," the show has a running undercurrent that feels interesting and credible.

If the purpose of the series is to explore a sub-culture lifestyle foreign to most Americans, Discovery's quasi-documentary approach (with educational explanations about Amish community structure, at least in the first episode) does a fair job of covering that. But Hot Snakes Media, who produced the series--and also helmed the controversial Breaking Amish--can't seem to help themselves in adding a kind of "...gone wild!" tag to the end of the endeavor, obliterating anything that feels informational.

Amish Mafia may be intermittently entertaining, but it doesn't pass the smell test.

The Amish Mafia may sound oxymoronic, but as a TV show, it's strictly moronic.

Dim, dumb, dull, daffy and dippy, Discovery should know better.

Reality TV doesn't get much cheaper or crasser than this, and just to clinch its rock-bottom status, the show fills out its picture of rural menace by momentarily citing the 2006 mass shooting at a Lancaster County Amish school.