“Reality TV” was born in the United States with the first installment of Survivor, itself derived from the Swedish television series Expedition Robinson, originally created in 1997. The series premiered on May 31, 2000, on CBS and featured a marooned group of strangers—later divided into two tribes—in a desolate locale where they must provide food, water, fire and shelter for themselves while competing in challenges to earn either a reward or an immunity from expulsion from the game in the next of successive votes of elimination. The last two or three survivors face a jury composed of the last seven, eight or nine players voted off. That jury interrogates the final few and then votes for the winner, the “Sole Survivor,” who prances off with a million dollar prize.
The first survivor crew featured Richard Hatch, Rudy Boesch and Susan Hawk. Hatch was a large, duplicitous and disagreeable man who, in the latter stages of the show, kept showing up naked. At least, we think he was naked. You couldn’t really tell because the network kept covering his private parts with a little vaseline-like bubble. Rudy was a crusty old military veteran, straight as an arrow, incapable of guile and therefore unlikely to prevail in a nest of liars. Susan Hawk was a potty-mouthed tomboy, a contrarian of the first order given to broad mood swings and unpredictable behavior. Against all odds, Richard Hatch won the million, despite being despised by his fellow contestants and the TV audience in general. This was probably a brilliant stroke—or a lucky happenstance—for the program, whose popularity soared. It endures today. Karma prevailed in the case of the nasty Richard Hatch, however, who was eventually clapped into jail by the IRS for nonpayment of federal income taxes.
Siobhan and I watched a few seasons of the show, partly due to the colorful casts of characters involved. As time went by, though, it seemed like more and more people were chosen not for divergent or wacky personalities but for how they looked in miniscule bathing suits. Meanwhile, other reality shows started popping up, notably Big Brother, where a cast of yokels was required to live together in the same house and The Amazing Race, which followed teams of contestants charging across the globe in varying transportation modes, tackling challenges indigenous to the countries they happened to be in. First couple home wins.
Eventually—and sadly, I must report—we arrived at The Bachelor, in which a crazed nest of despicable women weekly made fools of themselves over the attentions of an equally despicable man, who gradually banished one after another to the reality show version of Siberia, never to be seen again. Or so we thought. Eventually, some of the more loveable losers started popping up in an equally dreadful monstrosity called, of course, The Bachelorette. It’s been all downhill from there. We have finally reached the nadir of the genre with the wretched Duck Dynasty, about which more later. How were we reduced to this? Where did it all go wrong? Well, it never could have happened without:
The Bubba Phenomenon
Northerners may be oblivious, but in the South, we recognize our Bubbas. They are ubiquitous and easy to find. Troop on down to your local 7-11 on Saturday morning in any southern town and the Bubbas will be there in their cammies, pickup trucks locked to their wobbly boat trailers which carry crafts of dubious merit. If you are the 7-11 owner, this is a day not to be deficient in beer and ice supplies, as mountains of the stuff are required to conduct proper fishing procedures. I’m not sure about the camouflage. Are they trying to fool the fish, who almost certainly can’t see their adversaries? Or is it just the uniform of the day, like NASCAR shirts at Daytona?
I do understand using the garb for hunting, where it likewise proliferates, although the value of cammies worn under gigantic orange vests is a poser. The vests, of course, are absolutely necessary what with the Bubbas’ well-know predilection for not only shooting game but each other. Local farmers have also been known to cover their cows with some version of the vests since they look so much like deer.
When Bubbas are not engaged in wiping out fish or other animals, they are often found out mud-bogging or visiting tractor-pulls. They particularly like to watch trucks with great ginormous tires squish perfectly innocent little vehicles in their paths. And then, of course, there are the stock car races, a sport practically created by Bubbas. The latter are not especially happy these days, sad to report, as the NASCAR championship is won almost every year by an erudite Californian named Jimmy Johnson instead of their own illiterate favorite, Dale Earnhart, Jr., who can’t seem to get out of his own way. Life is full of hardships when you’re a Bubba.
Which is perhaps why Bubbas like guns so much. “Come mess wid ME, I get m’GUN after ye!” A weapon of last resort to most is the soup of the day to the Bubbas. They can’t imagine what they’d do without those guns. And that’s why they worry so much about the evil government sending in the black helicopters to scoop up everyone’s guns and cast them under Washington’s heel. This is why all the Bubbas vote Republican, although they don’t really trust them too much, either. “Those TEA PARTY Republicans, now they have the right idea!” If there’s any doubt who’s on their side, of course, they always have the latest NRA bulletin to peruse. If the NRA tells a Bubba chickenshit is chicken salad, he asks for a second helping.
And don’t mess with GOD, for heaven’s sake. The Bubbas are very touchy about that. And they make it a point to memorize every word of God’s Bible that might be interpreted as disapproving of gays, non-Christians, furriners, Democrats, Yankees, “illegal” drugs or cars made in Japan, while managing to ignore those verses less supportive of their philosophies. Bubbas don’t necessarily go to church all that much, especially during “huntin’ season,” but that doesn’t mean they’re not there in spirit.
Bubbas spend a LOT of time watching television. They are very loyal to their favorite shows and go to great lengths to protect them. Which is, no doubt, why there exists in the world today an eyesore the likes of:
Bubbas At The Pool
Duck Dynasty: Where Television Goes To Die
There are dumb things done in the morning sun by the men who moil for gold.—Anonymous
The Arts & Entertainment Network (A&E), a misnomer if there ever was one, was formed from the merger of ARTS and the Entertainment Channel, a premium cable station, in 1984 with their respective owners keeping stakes in the new company. Thus, A&E’s shareholders were Hearst and ABC (from ARTS) and Radio City Music Hall (Rockefeller Group) and RCA, then the parent of NBC (from Entertainment Channel). This new conglomeration launched Arts & Entertainment Network with the notion it would be a “cultural cable channel” on February 1, 1984. It’s been all downhill from there, with the cultural classic Duck Dynasty emerging as the channel’s most-watched program ever in 2013. So much for the best laid plans of mice and men.
Duck Dynasty portrays the simple—and I mean simple—lives of the Robertson family, which consists of brothers Phil and Si, and Phil’s sons, Jase, Willy and Jep, together with all their attendant womenfolk. This nightmare brew operates out of chic West Monroe, Louisiana, which is exactly where they belong.
There are many things a man can do in life to benefit his fellow man, to enhance his neighborhood, his city or even his planet. Benefactors like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates contribute enormous sums of money to the downtrodden, Jimmy Carter hammers nails for Habitat For Humanity, your next-door neighbor works the ladles once a week at the local soup kitchen. Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Mother Teresa gave her life to the poor with her mission in the slums of Calcutta. Any attention or appreciation awarded these people for their deeds is probably too little. But alas, attention and appreciation are not always directed where they are most deserved.
Phil Robertson’s contribution to his fellow man was his invention of a devious instrument which causes confusion in certain avian populations, leading their members to contribute to their own demise. Yes, folks, the foundation of this sordid empire is Phil’s very own duck call, which he has named the Duck Commander. The Duck Commander is the font from which spews all the rewards of Petersondom. Because there are endless numbers of mindless goobers who like to hide in the weeds and shoot birds, there is a huge demand for Phil’s product, which is manufactured and shipped out of Louisiana in great numbers. None of this makes us particularly grouchy. Everybody can’t be Mother Teresa.
The sad part of all this is that there are enough Bubbas afoot in the land to elevate this claptrap program to a point where the fourth season premiere drew 11.8 million viewers, the most watched non-fiction cable series in television history. Well, Bill, you might quibble, that’s a LOT of barbecue eaters….they must be doing something right. A fair argument. And so, exercising the journalistic responsibility that is a well-known hallmark of The Flying Pie, I actually watched a couple of episodes. Let me restate that for accuracy purposes: I tried to watch a couple of episodes. I had to stop when blood began oozing from my eyes and ears, my dog Lila began to howl and Siobhan ran from the house, screaming. It is impossible to describe the brainless banality of this catastrophe. In the first episode, Duck Commander employees stood around playing bean bag instead of loading the duck calls onto the waiting trucks, much to the chagrin of their supervisor. It reminded me of the time when, just out of high school, I got a job setting up a Plaidland store. You remember Plaid Stamps, a pale imitation of S&H Green Stamps, which various markets would dole out to shoppers to encourage them to visit their facilities? You glued your plaid or green stamps in little books and when they were full you took them down to the Stamp Redemption Store to redeem them for some valuable treasure like a spectacular floor lamp or a beautiful breadbox. Anyway, somebody has to actually unload the trucks and get the merchandise into the Plaidland and that task fell to myself and a quartet of utter morons whose conversation was exclusively limited to discussions of car repair and who was sleeping with whose wives. These conversations were highly intellectual compared to those on Duck Dynasty, but they are the closest comparisons I can think of.
The second episode involved Grandpa Phil and his jolly wife entertaining two granddaughters, who pleaded to stay the night. Phil said uh uh. They told Phil he had the best beard in the world, which is a big deal in Peterson country, where everybody is possessed of vast amounts of facial scruffiness. (I might say something uncharacteristically sarcastic here except for the fact that my very own Boston Red Sox won the World Series last year sporting just such adornments.) Anyway, the kids went on to tell Grandpa he was also the best fisherman in the world, and, when he prodded, also the best hunter. “Oh, WELL….” Phil practically sighed. And the kiddies were staying over. That’s it. That’s the whole skitlet. Remember when Jerry Seinfeld told us his program was about nothing? Well, Seinfeld was endlessly eventful compared to this snorer. But we get it—when the Bubbas watch this stuff, well, it’s easy to relate because the conversations are the same as the ones carried on out in their own garages. There’s no real point to anything, it’s just a celebration of idle conversation. But even THAT doesn’t throw us into fits of rage. Though we’re getting closer.
In mid-December of 2013, GQ Magazine (GQ used to stand for Gentleman’s Quarterly but that has apparently been changed to Goober Quest), for some reason conducted an interview with Phil Robertson, in which he, being a Godlike man, felt it necessary to excoriate gays. This, after all, is part of the Bubba Credo. A&E immediately suspended him from the program. The rest of the family sulked that they might just pull out, too, but we doubt that would have happened. It’s hard to give up all the fripperies of Fame. None of this proved necessary, of course, due to the Great Revolution of the Bubbas, who bombarded the channel with threats and protests, terrified they would lose their alternate egos. A&E buckled like a Moldavian bridge and Phil was reinstated. Beer corks popped in rural communities throughout the South.
It is laughable on the one hand and tragic on the other that clueless dolts like Phil Robertson are eventually awarded a pulpit because on one fine day in the boggy depths of Louisiana an inspired moment sprung forth into an otherwise cluttered mind, and Phil Robertson arose with a purpose, marched to a grimy workbench and created….for God’s sake….a duck call.
Heroes Of The Bayou
That’s all, folks. Next Week: The Steamy Porn History Of Honey Boo Boo. Or Not.
