TV Show Produced By Actual Cartoon Villains Pranks A Girl Seeking Her Long-Lost Mom

autumn-allenA 13-year-old girl who has been looking for her long-lost mother thought she’d finally reached the end of her quest when a popular TV show told her that she and her mother would be reunited on the air. But when the girl’s “mother” ran out, it was just a random male comedian in a dress, because … haha? I don’t know. Apparently someone at the production decided making a kid cry on the air would be hilarious and great for ratings.

According to ITV, 13-year-old Autumn Allen appeared on the Cambodian TV show Pehn Chet Ort or “Like It or Not” for a Mother’s Day special last week. Allen is a singer and actress, and on the show she confessed that she had not seen her mother since Allen and her father left the U.S. for Cambodia when Allen was just six years old.

During the show, Allen told the hosts that meeting her mother again would be “a dream come true,” but when the hosts announced her mother’s entrance, it was really just a male comedian in a dress.

I honestly don’t understand this prank. Even if it does work and achieves something funnier than making a 13-year-old girl cry on TV, what is the punchline? “Haha, a dude is wearing a dress?” I think this joke is going over my head.

Allen laughed the prank off, but her reaction looks a lot like the “I am laughing so hard I am crying” thing some teenagers do when they are trying to cover up actual tears in public. It’s enough to make you grab all your own kids and promise never to leave them.

According to The Phnom Penh Post, audiences were furious on her behalf.

”On that day I was very excited because I thought [my mother] was actually coming,” Allen said. ”At the moment I was sad that I could not see my real mother, but I had fun doing the show. Initially I was disappointed, but … I had fun on the show. My dad was very proud of how I handled myself in the situation. He took me to a nice restaurant afterward.”

Allen said she misses her mother and still wants to meet her. Her father said that he thought at some point Autumn’s mother lived in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The show’s producers eventually issued an apology after the outcry, saying: “We produced that program to make Allen and other people happy. We wanted to send Allen a message that although she has no mother, our team loves her as family so that we play with her to make her smile,” a producer said.

The whole “prank” video can be seen here:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vyJxSjETnc]

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