I will fully admit to falling for a marketing ploy and a really juvenile and idiotic marketing ploy at that. For weeks now I have seen commercials for the season premiere of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and its coy invitation to not just watch the revulsion that is the redneck Thompson family but to also smell the action as it is going on. I made a horrible mistake.

The first step to this smell-o-vision affair was to go out and purchase a copy of either People magazine or US Weekly. Since this week's US Weekly is a journalistic investigation into the whereabouts of a one Kim Kardashian, I opted for this rag as opposed to the other. People magazine this week is all about the Cleveland rape victims and that's sad, yo. Inside US Weekly was an insert with six scratch 'n sniff circles that you were to scratch and subsequently smell when prompted by the corresponding number on the screen. Seemed simple enough. I did have to stop myself from just smelling all of them at the top of the show for fear I would ruin the amazingness I was anticipating from the next 30 minutes of my life.

Within minutes, I was completely confused as to what the hell was going on. I think the show was in English, but I can't be sure and I assume I am not alone as there are subtitles. I think the family was arguing about cell phones or maybe cheeseballs. Momma June was angry that the kids weren't doing their chores so she took all of their phones and put them in an old cheese ball container. I was worried for a minute that June might be confused and accidentally eat the phones. I was too busy vomiting and crying over the state of our society that I somehow missed the first scratch and sniff. But thank God I caught the second one or else I just don't know what I would have done with my life. A number two popped up on the lower right corner of my screen while someone was talking about something that I couldn't understand as the camera focused on a train going by. Uncreatively, the second circle smelled like gasoline. Boring. Where is all the flatulence I had heard tell about?

The next scratch and sniff occurred when Mamma June was frying up some pork. It smelled quite a bit like bacon, but I had a bone to pick. The pork sizzling in the pan happened to be from a wild hog that was just hit by a car (probably truck). The family is "known" for loving road kill and they clean and skin it themselves. They spent a lot of effort showing the skinning of this pig, named Logan, and talking about how disgusting it smelled. Why not make the dead, rotting road kill hog a scratch 'n sniff? Am I the only one who thought this?

I had no idea that I had volunteered to watch a two-part episode. It's an hour of my life I will never get back. I wish I was dead. My hands smell like bacon. Aren't there supposed to be beauty pageants in this show?

The next episode was much of the same. A lot of yelling in strange tongues, eating meat, wrestling and offering too much information about private parts. I tired to imagine I was an alien trying to learn about the human race in an effort to take over the planet. How might I use this example of Homo sapien to my advantage? At first thought I would poison all of the generic margarine in the world and wait out the endless possibilities. But upon second thought, if I was an alien watching this show and I was doing research on how to take over the planet, I would thank my lucky stars that I had caught this episode and completely abort the mission.

While I was mulling this over, the Thompsons went go-cart racing for Sugar Bear's (the patriarch of the family) birthday and the fifth scratch and sniff smelled like burnt rubber. Still no fart smell despite this bodily function being a mainstay of the show's premise.

And just when I thought I couldn't dry heave anymore, the episode ended with the insinuation of sex between Momma June and Sugar Bear, which smelled like cupcakes. I re-smelled all of the scratch 'n sniffs just to make sure I tapped into their full potential. Scratching them all at the same time created a waft of chocolatey/florally/bacony/gas, but not the kind of gas I was so desperately hoping for.

This entire experience was wholly disappointing and I think that I am genuinely a dumber person for having partaken in this pasttime. To rid the images of the Thompson family sliding around in butter on their own floor from my mind's eye, I put on the news and they were talking about the Honey Boo Boo episode I just watched. The world is ending and it smells like frying pork.