The Benton Family

Episode	8
Air Date	January 8, 2010
Location	Florence, South Carolina
Techniques	Chore Buddies, Reflection Room, Homework Time
Season	6
Previous	The Heredia Family
Next	The Hallenbeck Family

Episode summary

Jo heads off to Florence, South Carolina to meet Greg (44) and Amber Benton (33) with their two chaotic kids: Rivers (10) and Hunter (8) Rivers is dependent on his parents, and Hunter is very strong-willed. The boys are aggressive and mouthy due to their parents' constant arguing, which threatens the stability of their marriage. The boys bicker and cause all sorts of mischief around the household. Not only do the boys act out, but the parents can be aggressive and rude. Can Jo fix Greg and Amber's marriage and get the boys to tow the line or will the family fall apart?

Episode Recap

Observation

Jo meets the family and after that, they go outside. Greg and the boys play football, which Greg states will help keep them strong, and be able to protect themselves. Rivers all of a sudden calls Amber a F----- and she informs Jo about the vulgar usage. Back inside, Amber attempts to get Rivers to do Homework for his spelling test however Greg was being relied on to get the wrong answers intentionally. Greg stared to lose his patience from the spelling.

Later, Jo and Hunter go outside to have a talk and sit on the trampoline. During this, Hunter confesses to Jo about an argument that he had overheard between Greg and Amber, subsequently making him fear that they could get divorced. Jo is shocked by this.

Parent Meeting

Jo talks to Amber and Greg about everything she had witnessed. The discipline, homework time, and the argument that Hunter had told her about were all brought up.

Teaching

When teaching begins Jo shows Amber and Greg a clip of Hunter from observating using the word divorce. Upon hearing it, Greg and Amber went mute. When they went to the kitchen, Greg all of a sudden snapped, and it resulted in him and Amber arguing again, about getting divorced, all of which Jo was caught in the middle of. She is, however, able to stop the argument.

Once de-escalating the argument, Jo decides to bring in Homework Time. When setting up, Greg was mollycoddling Rivers, and so Jo steps in, and explains that Rivers needs to learn to do his homework on his own. When Hunter refuses to do his homework, Jo teaches Amber about how to use the Reflection Room. Hunter started swinging at Amber with a pencil, and so it was off to the Reflection Room. After his timeout, Amber was once again being a pushover to Hunter to do his homework. Jo steps in and tells Hunter to go to timeout. Jo then leaves the house for 3 days.

Parents Evaluation

After her 3 day leave, Jo returns to see how Greg and Amber did with the techniques when she was away.

Clip 1

Amber overreacts to Rivers' homework after he once again gets the wrong answers. Jo states that's not Amber's homework. It's Rivers' homework. She goes onto explain how Amber should've simply checked the homework without overreacting.

Clip 2

Greg and Hunter get into a shouting match over homework time. Hunter feels like he's being rushed and that Greg is being overly demanding. Jo stated that the match, felt like an episode of Boot Camp. She also points out how Greg's tone of voice was not correct.

Clip 3

Amber and Hunter get into a shouting match over a Grammar book. Amber completely lost her patience, subsequently resulting in the 8 minute rule being thrown out of the window entirely. Amber makes up her own time for Hunter’s punishment. Hunter had to do timeout twice in his room. One time for an hour and the other time was until football practice.

Jo was not happy that Amber and Greg almost failed. She states that they need to work on their tones, the discipline and how to properly handle homework time.

Reinforcement

Jo starts off giving Amber rules for discipline so she can help fix it. Jo then fixes the homework and teaches Amber and Greg how to properly handle Rivers during the sessions. Jo, Greg and the boys went outside to show pictures from the past when they were born. Hunter however, ruined the moment as he started to become disrespectful, and so, was put in the Reflection Room. After apologising, Jo successfully leaves the Benton household.

Family members

Person	Age	Family to Relation
Greg	44 (born January 9, 1965)	Father
Amber	33 (born November 26, 1975)	Mother
Rivers	10 (born October 18, 1999)	Son
Hunter	8 (born May 9, 2001)

The child was disciplined via one of Jo Frost's techniques.

The child was disciplined via one of Jo Frost's techinques, but not in a way that she approved of.

Behind The Scenes

This was filmed in November 2009.

Trivia

• Many people criticized Jo for leaving the house during the DVD Meeting, due to what she saw from the entire family during Homework Time. This was the 5th time Jo had almost failed a family entirely.
  • There are 8 other families she almost failed helping as well (3 of which, she actually did fail. One is also set to private due to Family Requests), they include:
  • The Bailey Family (Season 1): Bill and Stacey were considering banning Jo from the house, as a result of how they were talked to during the Parents Meeting, though would not follow through with this.
  • The Young Family (U.K.): Arguably the most infamous of the families listed here. Due to the episode being lost media, it is unknown whether Jo gave up during the episode, or left successful. It is known however, that the producers influenced the boys behaviour, and from there, it only escalated, resulting in her failing.
  • The Hillhouse-Docherty Family: During the test run, Ryan completely destroys the Reward Chart, and from there, things only got worse; after witnessing the boys fighting one last time, Jo has no choice but to give up, and leaves Steven and Kerry. This marked the very first, and only time, Jo was unable to successfully help a family completely.
  • The Dakin Family: Like The Young Family, this episode is completely lost media, however it also went unaired. Whilst unfinished filming is presumably what caused this, it is assumed by fans, that something so bad occurred during the episode, it not only led to it never airing, but also led to Jo failing.
  • The Bowersock Family: During timeout, Jen almost spanked Madeline. In addition, this is the only U.S. family Jo actually ended up failing, as Jen would regress back to using corporal punishment after Jo left, resulting in Thad leaving her with the kids, and Jen getting arrested the next year for drugs.
  • The Bates Family: Jo was upset at Sarah for making up her own rules of the game she and Callum were playing. In addition, Sarah was using timeout for everything, even if the kids were doing something that didn't warrant one.
  • The McKeever Family: This episode actually had two reasons for Jo almost failing, those being Corey walking away from Jo in the DVD Meeting, and Hunter & River's portrayal of being sexist, to her and Lucy.
  • The Jones-Nickolich Family: Similar to Bill and Stacey, Todd considered banning Jo from the house. However, unlike them, Todd would actually go through with this, and as a result, Jo had to start the teaching two days later. This is the closest Jo has ever gotten to failing a family, without actually doing so.
• Despite mentions of a potential divorce because of their arguments, Greg and Amber remain together.
• This is the first episode to take place in South Carolina. The second is The Froebrich Family.
• This episode marked the very first time in Supernanny, in which the children were never shown crying.
• This is the 2nd episode where Jo was caught in the middle of an argument between parents. The first was The Larmer Family.

Gallery

External Links

• Full Episode on YouTube
• Full Episode (Complete) on archive.org
• Amber's Facebook
• Greg's Twitter
• River's YouTube Channel
• Obituary for Amber's dad