Guilty Pleasure

I may or may not have many guilty pleasures but the one I am prepared to share with you is my love for the Discovery Channel and before you say, yes I know, Shark Week - let me open your eyes. There is much much more to the Discovery Channel than sharks.

It all started with a pregnancy that wouldn't let me sleep and then a small wee person who enjoyed 4am feeds.  That's when we discovered Deadliest Catch.  Now you may indeed have watched the odd episode but we have weathered several seasons with the king crab fishermen of Dutch Harbour. We've watched Wild Bill have rotten luck with greenhorns, Jake Anderson make it to Captain his own boat, Sig and Edgar sharing responsibilities (a teeny tiny bit lol) and Josh Harris sit on his butt smoking.  That man really doesn't appear to know the meaning of hard work.  And that's not even the full complement of unique characters that pepper the show.  Together with Mike Rowe's earnest narration we ride every wave and gasp at every deck wipeout.

We then moved on to Auction Hunters.  Now there are other shows of a similar nature - Storage Wars and Storage Hunters but despite their bizarre cast of bidders they don't quite match up to Ton and Allen who scour America in their beat up bread van attending auctions and vying for that unique item.  They once sold back some original graffiti artwork to the artist Risk for $60,000!

After that we got sucked into the world of Parker Schnabel, Tod 'Fricking' Hoffman and originally Dakota Fred & Dustin who in later seasons morphed into Tony Beets - the viking gold king of the Klondike.  Yes, that's right - a TV show about gold mining.  Don't knock it till you've tried it - that stuff is addictive!  

Why are these reality TV shows so addictive?  Is it because they bear absolutely no relation to our lives and are therefore seen as something exotic?  Or perhaps, and more likely, there are characters we love to hate, those we root for to succeed and those we secretly admire and wish we were more like.  And these are real people.  Yes, they probably ham it up for the cameras and yes I'm sure there is some expert editing going on to make selective traits more obvious but oddly that's all part of the charm.  We care about these people and what happens to them, we deride them when they make mistakes and we sit in our armchairs shaking our heads at the ridiculous situations they find themselves in.  If you're me you also argue with the cutting floor when they get the time lines are screwy which happens more often than I'd like. 

The problem with watching these shows is that you begin to think others on the same channel will be just as absorbing and enjoyable.

              

   

You're not wrong.  My only hope is that some day my characters will be just as addictive.