"Mad Sally" Baur moves into her new life as a professional organizer (ABC/Michael Rubenstein)

Eye spoke recently with Dominique Bouchard, the casting director for ABC reality series Wife Swap, where wives swap husbands and children for two weeks to experience life in a drastically different environment. With participants in the past including families of competitive eaters, pirates, child-pageant advocates, and a wife who trains cage fighters, one can only imagine the casting gets fairly interesting.

How do you find some of these families, like the pirate or freak-show families? There's definitely a low percentage we actually choose that apply within the show. Families like the pirates, we come up with an idea of people we want to find. Then we try to contact different organizations and put the word out there. A casting AP would be assigned to that particular project of finding a family like that. We offer a finder's fee—so if we contact a particular organization, by helping us out they are going to receive the fee. And the families get a financial honorarium for being on the show.

We're going to have an episode coming up where we wanted to find a family of little people. So for an organization like the LPA [Little People of America], we might have given them the information to spread around.

Can you tell me more about the pairings? It always seems like the conservative family is paired with the unconventional family, the family with the wife who does all the work is paired with the family with the husband who does all the chores. Without giving our secrets away, I would say it’s not about pairing opposites. It’s really not. We look at the family, what one family could teach another, and what they could possibly learn.

Have there ever been any wife swaps where the husbands wound up with the other wife? Divorces? Any where members of each family still keep in touch? From season 3, there are definitely one or two families who are in contact. I have heard that through the grapevine; I wouldn’t give out who those families are. Divorces—as far as we know, no. But if someone from season 1 got a divorce, I wouldn't know for sure. As far as a permanent wife swap—absolutely not.

MTV.com

Eye of the Potato talked recently with Matt Vener, former casting director for one of MTV's most daring reality shows, the now-canceled series Date My Mom. The highly rated dating show featured contestants who chose their potential mates based on dates they have with the mates' mothers. Eye discusses with Vener why the show was canceled, why casting the gay and lesbian episodes was so difficult, and where they found those freaky moms.

Date My Mom was a pretty bold show while it was on TV. Did you guys ever receive criticism for some of the antics, like when that one mom tied a cherry stem with her tongue? There are a couple of things people have talked about; I think at one time Jon Stewart had said something on his show. But when people make comments, that means it stood out. So people watched it because of it.

Why did the mothers and daughters want to go on this show? Were many of them interested in a career in acting? Yes, I think it was two things. These daughters had also just turned 18, 19, and were about to go to college. It was their last chance to do a show with their parents that they could show to the kids one day.

Right, but it's not like MTV could have done Date My Dad, right? It would've been pretty weird.

How did you find these people? Were they all applicants who applied through MTV.com? No, I have to give it to my staff of recruiters, who go out to nightclubs, beaches, colleges and find all these people. Most of the contestants came from holding events at clubs . . ."Hey, we're coming to your club, casting for Date My Mom."

It always seemed like the daughter was hot, the mom was ugly. Or the mom was hot, the daughter was ugly. Did you try to mix it up with with a certain number of each? We wanted to mix it up and give everyone a shot. We didn't want people to think you just had to be hot to be on the show. It was up to the guy, based on what the mom would tell him. We wanted to see if the guy would pick based on beauty or on what he felt comfortable hanging out with.

(Calgary Sun)
The current bachelor: Prince Lorenzo Borghese

Eye of the Potato talked recently with Robyn Kass, casting director for The Bachelor about the search for the bachelor, criticisms of current bachelor Lorenzo Borghese, and why there hasn't been a minority bachelor or bachelorette.

I'm sure you've read those criticisms about Lorenzo: his title isn't really recognized anymore in Italy, he's actually from New Jersey, he doesn't really speak Italian. We've never hid anything about his background or his family. Even on the show, there's numerous times he lets the girls know, 'This is the background of my family.' I don't think we were every trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes; I think we've always been up front about his family and their titles and where he lives and what he does.

So you didn't try to hide the fact that he was trying to learn some Italian before the show. You didn't feel like it was this grand exposé. No, no. People like to make big things out of little things. I thought it was very sweet that he was trying to learn a little bit of it.

Most of the girls had already done the research: knew about the company, his background. We didn't try to fool any of the women into thinking they were going to be living in, like, the Vatican.

Why hasn't there been a minority bachelor or bachelorette? Will there ever be one? Yeah, sure. Again, I came in late, this is my second season, I don't know the reasons. It might just have to do with timing and the people who apply and the people who we get and the people who are right all around. But I don't see why there wouldn't be.