There are some strange things on TV these days.

One lazy post-work evening a couple weeks back, I lounged on the couch at a friend’s place while TLC was on TV at low volume. TLC has never been a channel that I could fully wrap my head around. All of the shows seem to fit into four broad categories: [cup]cakes, weddings, babies, and people doing questionable things with their lives. I always found it baffling that a show such as Say Yes to the Dress has the ability to paralyze even the most cynical of the (female) marriage cynics for 30 some-odd minutes. All of a sudden every man, woman and child is offering stark opinions regarding dresses in debatable taste and with staggering price tags. And then there’s Toddlers and Tiaras; probably the most appalling thing on TV. Don’t believe me? A radio station in Vancouver recently played an audio clip of a five-year old getting their eyebrows waxed for a pageant.

It’s as bad as you imagine it would be.

Anyway, I’m digressing a bit here. A show called Extreme Couponing started. “How extreme could a coupon book really get?” my friend quipped. “Paper cuts?” We had no idea.

creative commons image courtesy of sdc2027

The show followed “couponers” in the US that would stock up on various coupons, head to their local grocery store, fill up seven or eight carts, spend 45 minutes waiting as the poor cashier attempted to ring everything through, and left, usually with savings in the hundreds of dollars. They lead camera crews into their basements or garages, and gloated over the 400 sticks of deodorant they had accumulated.

“What about homeless shelters? Food banks?”

“Do you need that much stuff? Will you even be able to use it before it goes bad?”

We were filled with questions, demanding answers we would never receive.

Then I stumbled upon this article in the Globe and Mail.

Hurrah for all the people who use smart couponing to save their families money and donate the excess savings to people who need it! They probably won\’t end up on TV, but they have more to be proud of than the people who are consumers for the sport of it.