"Extreme Couponing," one must admit, is a title that instantly elicits laughter, two words that honestly have no business being in the same sentence together. Yet the series, which debuted on TLC in 2011, proved that there actually are extreme couponers, bargain-savvy penny-pinchers who have figured out how to work the coupon system, to which all of us should say, "Well played." The ability to do that, however, is where the "extreme" part of the title comes in, and the show pulled no punches when it came to delving into how genius and obsession intersected as these coupon-clipping supermarket samurai cracked the code that would allow them to buy 80 packs of Charmin toilet paper for two cents, and then receive a rebate check in the mail.
As the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out, viewers may have witnessed the amazing bargains that the subjects profiled on "Extreme Couponing" managed to enjoy, yet the show didn't really depict the hours spent gearing up for the big shop. Sometimes, that can require going store to store comparing prices. "If you're not strategic in planning it, you can spend more gas than it's worth," extreme couponer Stacy Fout warned.
The other big downside to extreme couponing, Fout admitted, was experiencing the scathing scorn of customers lined up behind a couponer as the poor, underpaid cashier is forced to check the many coupons thrust into their hands.
