It’s No Secret: Abe Schmucker Already Knew Rebecca Byler Was Married To Rufus Hostetler
October 15, 2012 by Hollywoodite
At the cliffhanger of Breaking Amish season one episode six, preparing for episode seven, Abe Schmucker has purchased an engagement ring for girlfriend Rebecca Byler after borrowing some of the money from his room mate, Jeremiah Raber. Schmucker then returns to the Amish for approval of the marriage only for his mother to ask “HOW?!” as in “how” would that be possible when Byler was married at the time of filming.
The show appears to be leading people to believe that Schmucker is unaware Byler married Rufus Hostetler. From whom she only became divorced July 2012, although they separated sometime between the months of June 2010 (when she was “a few weeks pregnant” by another man) and October 2010 (when Hostetler admitted Byler ran away with Schmucker).
Filming for Breaking Amish started May 2012, about a month after Kate Stoltzfus’ D.U.I. arrest. So Byler was legally married, at least, for the start of filming this year.
In the scene where Schmucker asked for parental approval, his mother was indignant at the idea of bigamy since Byler was still married. However, Schmucker most likely KNEW Byler was married. And, in all likelihood, any suggestion otherwise by TLC is a lie.
To illustrate the point, Byler and Hostetler married after March 22, 2010 on which date they filed for their marriage license. But by October 2010, Hostetler wrote the following on his Facebook: “I am tryn 2 figure out why in th world abe schmucker wud want to b a friend on face book afterall he left wht my wife.” Byler and Schmucker were a couple in mid-2010, they allegedly had a baby together very quickly after getting together, and Schmucker tried to befriend Byler’s husband-at-the-time on Facebook in late-2010.
In September this year, TLC and the production company responsible for Breaking Amish admitted the show’s not entirely authentic and said discrepancies would be explained in later episodes.
It would appear that has amounted to additional photography a.k.a. re-shoots (like the cutaway in which Raber admitted he has been married before) and this whole scenario, the whole of episode seven, about Byler’s marriage.
That there were any such re-shoots is conjecture. However, it’s more plausible than it is believable TLC had all this filmed anyway. It’s more likely the show did some hasty edits after the backlash regarding its lack of veracity and got the cast back to do, perhaps, scenes that explained away their complicated histories (including marriages and divorces and arrests and leaving the Amish years ago).