Ice Truckers

That’s Cold

So the Discovery channel is now promoting a brand new and exciting series called "Ice Truckers". Apparently this occurs during the winter, and when it's very cold, hence the ice. It also occurs in a very remote part of the world, hence the truckers. Judging by the promos on the radio, and who doesn't, it would appear that the entire premise is that trucking over ice is a 24/7 job, done by rough surly men with hearts of gold who live on the edge and probably care deeply for the hard women that they love. It is a blatant spin-off of "Deadliest Catch", which in itself is a spin-off of "World Championship of Poker" in it's ability to tie character and luck and skill and editing into a story of what is really a game of mathematical analysis and wild overpayment.

Why this blog entry, then? Well, it seems to me that the explosion of blue-collar reality shows is somewhat of a renaissance in TV. It's no longer "Survivor", it's "Pimp my Ride". It's no longer "The Bachelor", it's "The Hills". The trend seems to be that the preponderance of choices in TV and Netflix and on demand has only created airtime that can only be filled with reality. Not the beautifully scripted, arranged, produced reality of the "Real World", but actual reality, done by actual people. In some cases this can be fun, in others we are faced with "Ice Truckers", which unless I'm completely off, will go the way that any unscripted show about trucking should go. Away.