In the earliest days of "Survivor" and "American Idol," a reasonable person could reasonably state: "Reality television sucks." However, since reality TV has proven to be the most successful economic model for television production, the genre has expanded far beyond the ersatz game show format and yielded a plethora of diverse sub-genres. There is no longer a monolithic entity called "reality television" to hate; in fact, some of it is pretty damn good.
My favorite sub-genre of reality television is the "dangerous jobs" one. I got completely hooked (pun intended) on Discovery Channel´s thrilling "The Deadliest Catch," a weekly reality series that followed the adventures of several crab boat pilots pursuing their elusive prey in the frigid Alaskan waters. "The Deadliest Catch" felt like a combination of one my favorite books a kid, Jack London´s "Call of the Wild," and one of my favorite books as an adult, Herman Melville´s "Moby Dick." That´s heady company, of course, and I´m not saying "Deadliest Catch" will go down as one of the 21st century´s great masterpieces, but damned if I didn´t watch every episode, even when they re-ran it later in the week. Colorful characters, salty sea talk, and death lurking behind every wave. What´s not to love?
The History Channel has tried to capitalize on the success of "Deadliest Catch" with its new reality series "Ice Road Truckers." Don´t let the creative title fool you: this is a series about guys who drive trucks over ice roads. Specifically, they haul big equipment from Yellowknife in Canada´s Northwest Territories up north to several diamond mines. They can only do their job about two months out of the year, not because the diamond mines close down the rest of the time, but because there is no road the rest of the year. You see, the ice road is really built over a series of frozen lakes, and the ice is only thick enough to support the weight of the trucks and their loads for a few months out of the year.
"Ice Road Truckers" copies the "Deadliest Catch" formula almost to the letter. The show focuses on several colorful characters who compete to haul the most loads before the ice road melts into water. The cast features grizzled veterans like Hugh "The Polar Bear" Rowland and Alex Debogorski, each with more than twenty years experience on the ice road, and cocky rookies like Drew Sherwood and T.J. Tilcox. You might confuse fresh-faced Jay Westgard with the rest of the newbies but at age 25 "The Prodigy" has already clocked 8 years on the ice road and doesn´t plan to stop anytime soon. Sophomore Rick Yemm has a score to settle with Hugh, his boss.
The writers go out of their way to emphasize how incredibly dangerous the ice road is. While much of this is hyperbole intended to inject artificial drama into the series (note the frequent insertion of sounds of cracking ice), the danger is real. Big rigs have plunged through the ice sheet, and truckers have died on the road before. Also, temperatures routinely dip to -30 or below which wind chill factors approaching -60, and some times these guys have to hop right into the cold to fix a broken air hose just to keep their truck moving! The danger is part of the appeal for most of these gung-ho truckers, though the money ain´t bad either. The top drivers can pull in $50,000 for just two months work.
But what work they have! On his first run, T.J. Tilcox discovers just what he´s up against as he finds himself barreling through white-out conditions. Sure, there´s no other road to turn off on, but it´s easy for a careless or confused driver to veer off into a snow bank which could lead to disaster since the higher the snow cover, the thinner the ice sheet below.
Just as "Deadliest Catch" tracks the crab fishermen´s total tonnage caught, "Ice Road Truckers" tracks each driver´s total loads hauled as they "dash for the cash." The show plays up the rivalries among the truckers, some of which are friendly, some decidedly not. Other dramatic questions help structure the season. Which rookies will wash out? Will anyone be able to beat The Polar Bear at his own game?
It´s all pretty exciting stuff, but it lacks the diversity and the strategy of "Deadliest Catch." The crab boat captains rove all over the sea looking for their catch, but the ice road truckers only have one road to drive, and they do it over and over again. The novelty begins to wear off by the end of the season´s tenth and final episode (each approx. 45 min.), and I doubt "Ice Road Truckers" will have the same shelf life as "Deadliest Catch" which is about to enter its fourth season.
It´s also disappointing that all of this "high adventure" takes place merely to provide DeBeers and other companies with the capitalist tools of oppression they need to rape the earth and provide rich people with shiny stones to put on their fingers. But you have to let that slide. "Ice Road Truckers" is a lot of fun.
My favorite sub-genre of reality television is the "dangerous jobs" one. I got completely hooked (pun intended) on Discovery Channel´s thrilling "The Deadliest Catch," a weekly reality series that followed the adventures of several crab boat pilots pursuing their elusive prey in the frigid Alaskan waters. "The Deadliest Catch" felt like a combination of one my favorite books a kid, Jack London´s "Call of the Wild," and one of my favorite books as an adult, Herman Melville´s "Moby Dick." That´s heady company, of course, and I´m not saying "Deadliest Catch" will go down as one of the 21st century´s great masterpieces, but damned if I didn´t watch every episode, even when they re-ran it later in the week. Colorful characters, salty sea talk, and death lurking behind every wave. What´s not to love?
The History Channel has tried to capitalize on the success of "Deadliest Catch" with its new reality series "Ice Road Truckers." Don´t let the creative title fool you: this is a series about guys who drive trucks over ice roads. Specifically, they haul big equipment from Yellowknife in Canada´s Northwest Territories up north to several diamond mines. They can only do their job about two months out of the year, not because the diamond mines close down the rest of the time, but because there is no road the rest of the year. You see, the ice road is really built over a series of frozen lakes, and the ice is only thick enough to support the weight of the trucks and their loads for a few months out of the year.
"Ice Road Truckers" copies the "Deadliest Catch" formula almost to the letter. The show focuses on several colorful characters who compete to haul the most loads before the ice road melts into water. The cast features grizzled veterans like Hugh "The Polar Bear" Rowland and Alex Debogorski, each with more than twenty years experience on the ice road, and cocky rookies like Drew Sherwood and T.J. Tilcox. You might confuse fresh-faced Jay Westgard with the rest of the newbies but at age 25 "The Prodigy" has already clocked 8 years on the ice road and doesn´t plan to stop anytime soon. Sophomore Rick Yemm has a score to settle with Hugh, his boss.
The writers go out of their way to emphasize how incredibly dangerous the ice road is. While much of this is hyperbole intended to inject artificial drama into the series (note the frequent insertion of sounds of cracking ice), the danger is real. Big rigs have plunged through the ice sheet, and truckers have died on the road before. Also, temperatures routinely dip to -30 or below which wind chill factors approaching -60, and some times these guys have to hop right into the cold to fix a broken air hose just to keep their truck moving! The danger is part of the appeal for most of these gung-ho truckers, though the money ain´t bad either. The top drivers can pull in $50,000 for just two months work.
But what work they have! On his first run, T.J. Tilcox discovers just what he´s up against as he finds himself barreling through white-out conditions. Sure, there´s no other road to turn off on, but it´s easy for a careless or confused driver to veer off into a snow bank which could lead to disaster since the higher the snow cover, the thinner the ice sheet below.
Just as "Deadliest Catch" tracks the crab fishermen´s total tonnage caught, "Ice Road Truckers" tracks each driver´s total loads hauled as they "dash for the cash." The show plays up the rivalries among the truckers, some of which are friendly, some decidedly not. Other dramatic questions help structure the season. Which rookies will wash out? Will anyone be able to beat The Polar Bear at his own game?
It´s all pretty exciting stuff, but it lacks the diversity and the strategy of "Deadliest Catch." The crab boat captains rove all over the sea looking for their catch, but the ice road truckers only have one road to drive, and they do it over and over again. The novelty begins to wear off by the end of the season´s tenth and final episode (each approx. 45 min.), and I doubt "Ice Road Truckers" will have the same shelf life as "Deadliest Catch" which is about to enter its fourth season.
It´s also disappointing that all of this "high adventure" takes place merely to provide DeBeers and other companies with the capitalist tools of oppression they need to rape the earth and provide rich people with shiny stones to put on their fingers. But you have to let that slide. "Ice Road Truckers" is a lot of fun.
In the earliest days of "Survivor" and "American Idol," a reasonable person could reasonably state: "Reality television sucks." However, since reality TV has proven to be the most successful economic model for television production, the genre has expanded far beyond the ersatz game show format and yielded a plethora of diverse sub-genres. There is no longer a monolithic entity called "reality television" to hate; in fact, some of it is pretty damn good.
My favorite sub-genre of reality television is the "dangerous jobs" one. I got completely hooked (pun intended) on Discovery Channel´s thrilling "The Deadliest Catch," a weekly reality series that followed the adventures of several crab boat pilots pursuing their elusive prey in the frigid Alaskan waters. "The Deadliest Catch" felt like a combination of one my favorite books a kid, Jack London´s "Call of the Wild," and one of my favorite books as an adult, Herman Melville´s "Moby Dick." That´s heady company, of course, and I´m not saying "Deadliest Catch" will go down as one of the 21st century´s great masterpieces, but damned if I didn´t watch every episode, even when they re-ran it later in the week. Colorful characters, salty sea talk, and death lurking behind every wave. What´s not to love?
The History Channel has tried to capitalize on the success of "Deadliest Catch" with its new reality series "Ice Road Truckers." Don´t let the creative title fool you: this is a series about guys who drive trucks over ice roads. Specifically, they haul big equipment from Yellowknife in Canada´s Northwest Territories up north to several diamond mines. They can only do their job about two months out of the year, not because the diamond mines close down the rest of the time, but because there is no road the rest of the year. You see, the ice road is really built over a series of frozen lakes, and the ice is only thick enough to support the weight of the trucks and their loads for a few months out of the year.
"Ice Road Truckers" copies the "Deadliest Catch" formula almost to the letter. The show focuses on several colorful characters who compete to haul the most loads before the ice road melts into water. The cast features grizzled veterans like Hugh "The Polar Bear" Rowland and Alex Debogorski, each with more than twenty years experience on the ice road, and cocky rookies like Drew Sherwood and T.J. Tilcox. You might confuse fresh-faced Jay Westgard with the rest of the newbies but at age 25 "The Prodigy" has already clocked 8 years on the ice road and doesn´t plan to stop anytime soon. Sophomore Rick Yemm has a score to settle with Hugh, his boss.
The writers go out of their way to emphasize how incredibly dangerous the ice road is. While much of this is hyperbole intended to inject artificial drama into the series (note the frequent insertion of sounds of cracking ice), the danger is real. Big rigs have plunged through the ice sheet, and truckers have died on the road before. Also, temperatures routinely dip to -30 or below which wind chill factors approaching -60, and some times these guys have to hop right into the cold to fix a broken air hose just to keep their truck moving! The danger is part of the appeal for most of these gung-ho truckers, though the money ain´t bad either. The top drivers can pull in $50,000 for just two months work.
But what work they have! On his first run, T.J. Tilcox discovers just what he´s up against as he finds himself barreling through white-out conditions. Sure, there´s no other road to turn off on, but it´s easy for a careless or confused driver to veer off into a snow bank which could lead to disaster since the higher the snow cover, the thinner the ice sheet below.
Just as "Deadliest Catch" tracks the crab fishermen´s total tonnage caught, "Ice Road Truckers" tracks each driver´s total loads hauled as they "dash for the cash." The show plays up the rivalries among the truckers, some of which are friendly, some decidedly not. Other dramatic questions help structure the season. Which rookies will wash out? Will anyone be able to beat The Polar Bear at his own game?
It´s all pretty exciting stuff, but it lacks the diversity and the strategy of "Deadliest Catch." The crab boat captains rove all over the sea looking for their catch, but the ice road truckers only have one road to drive, and they do it over and over again. The novelty begins to wear off by the end of the season´s tenth and final episode (each approx. 45 min.), and I doubt "Ice Road Truckers" will have the same shelf life as "Deadliest Catch" which is about to enter its fourth season.
It´s also disappointing that all of this "high adventure" takes place merely to provide DeBeers and other companies with the capitalist tools of oppression they need to rape the earth and provide rich people with shiny stones to put on their fingers. But you have to let that slide. "Ice Road Truckers" is a lot of fun.
My favorite sub-genre of reality television is the "dangerous jobs" one. I got completely hooked (pun intended) on Discovery Channel´s thrilling "The Deadliest Catch," a weekly reality series that followed the adventures of several crab boat pilots pursuing their elusive prey in the frigid Alaskan waters. "The Deadliest Catch" felt like a combination of one my favorite books a kid, Jack London´s "Call of the Wild," and one of my favorite books as an adult, Herman Melville´s "Moby Dick." That´s heady company, of course, and I´m not saying "Deadliest Catch" will go down as one of the 21st century´s great masterpieces, but damned if I didn´t watch every episode, even when they re-ran it later in the week. Colorful characters, salty sea talk, and death lurking behind every wave. What´s not to love?
The History Channel has tried to capitalize on the success of "Deadliest Catch" with its new reality series "Ice Road Truckers." Don´t let the creative title fool you: this is a series about guys who drive trucks over ice roads. Specifically, they haul big equipment from Yellowknife in Canada´s Northwest Territories up north to several diamond mines. They can only do their job about two months out of the year, not because the diamond mines close down the rest of the time, but because there is no road the rest of the year. You see, the ice road is really built over a series of frozen lakes, and the ice is only thick enough to support the weight of the trucks and their loads for a few months out of the year.
"Ice Road Truckers" copies the "Deadliest Catch" formula almost to the letter. The show focuses on several colorful characters who compete to haul the most loads before the ice road melts into water. The cast features grizzled veterans like Hugh "The Polar Bear" Rowland and Alex Debogorski, each with more than twenty years experience on the ice road, and cocky rookies like Drew Sherwood and T.J. Tilcox. You might confuse fresh-faced Jay Westgard with the rest of the newbies but at age 25 "The Prodigy" has already clocked 8 years on the ice road and doesn´t plan to stop anytime soon. Sophomore Rick Yemm has a score to settle with Hugh, his boss.
The writers go out of their way to emphasize how incredibly dangerous the ice road is. While much of this is hyperbole intended to inject artificial drama into the series (note the frequent insertion of sounds of cracking ice), the danger is real. Big rigs have plunged through the ice sheet, and truckers have died on the road before. Also, temperatures routinely dip to -30 or below which wind chill factors approaching -60, and some times these guys have to hop right into the cold to fix a broken air hose just to keep their truck moving! The danger is part of the appeal for most of these gung-ho truckers, though the money ain´t bad either. The top drivers can pull in $50,000 for just two months work.
But what work they have! On his first run, T.J. Tilcox discovers just what he´s up against as he finds himself barreling through white-out conditions. Sure, there´s no other road to turn off on, but it´s easy for a careless or confused driver to veer off into a snow bank which could lead to disaster since the higher the snow cover, the thinner the ice sheet below.
Just as "Deadliest Catch" tracks the crab fishermen´s total tonnage caught, "Ice Road Truckers" tracks each driver´s total loads hauled as they "dash for the cash." The show plays up the rivalries among the truckers, some of which are friendly, some decidedly not. Other dramatic questions help structure the season. Which rookies will wash out? Will anyone be able to beat The Polar Bear at his own game?
It´s all pretty exciting stuff, but it lacks the diversity and the strategy of "Deadliest Catch." The crab boat captains rove all over the sea looking for their catch, but the ice road truckers only have one road to drive, and they do it over and over again. The novelty begins to wear off by the end of the season´s tenth and final episode (each approx. 45 min.), and I doubt "Ice Road Truckers" will have the same shelf life as "Deadliest Catch" which is about to enter its fourth season.
It´s also disappointing that all of this "high adventure" takes place merely to provide DeBeers and other companies with the capitalist tools of oppression they need to rape the earth and provide rich people with shiny stones to put on their fingers. But you have to let that slide. "Ice Road Truckers" is a lot of fun.
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