Wife Swap is the Jerry Springer to Trading Spouse's Oprah.

Wife Swap goes there. It's a little more tacky than Trading Spouses, but never without intrigue. The wives traded on this show are always complete opposites, absurdly so. Each wife in her own right is outside of what most people consider normal.

The colorful characters selected for past Wife Swap episodes include a modern day pirate, a Manhattan princess who has two nannies for her children and doesn't work, a woman whose family eats raw meat, and an endless parade of clean freaks and slobs. Controlling clean freaks are always switched with those who are extremely lax about housework.

Each show opens with the reading of the manual, during which the new wife is often brought to tears by her shock at the other wife's habits. There is the obligatory walk through the house where the new wife takes in the new family's freak tendencies, obsessive cleanliness, or lack of cleanliness.

Once the new wives meet their new families, the next step in the Wife Swap formula is the new wife taking on the other wife's lifestyle. This could involve anything from wearing a costume to cleaning a barn to scrubbing the house from top to bottom. It is always accompanied by whining.

Next in the Wife Swap bag of tricks is the "Rule Change Ceremony". The family sits defiantly as the new wife reads her new rules. This stage can include yelling, crying, storming out, insults, and on one occasion nearly resulted in a physical confrontation. Then the family either follows the new rules, with whining and resistance, or defies the new rules, with whining and resistance.

Last is the wives returning to their spouses, where the foursome meet at a table. This generally involves some degree of argument, once even resulting in thrown furniture and punches. Sometimes, however, progress is made in people realizing their behavior has been flawed, and maybe the swap taught them something. There have been a few meetings where everyone is calm and it's productive. But we all know that's just not as conducive to good television.

Stay tuned! You might miss the very last phase of Wife Swap: "After the Swap". Whether or not the swaps were a good experience, the result is always the same: they show the families having learned something and taken a little something valuable from the experience. Formerly slovenly families are shown sweeping, over-scheduled families are shown playing monopoly, and pampered moms are shown cooking. In the land of Wife Swap, positive change comes from chaos, and you don't even need a Trading-Spouses-style $50,000 payout dangled like a carrot in front of you.