Weird Stuff on Cable

How about the CAR REBUILD shows. Here the premise is quite simple. We have a car that is presently a pice of **** because some asshole thought he could invest his own talents into fixing it up and customizing it. SOmeone in the family calls this expert at car rebuilding(Who also has this tv show) and pleads for him to rebuild her hubbies car (FOR FUCKIN FREE no less). A huge crew of cartechs comes along and takes the car apart and reconstructs it better than the original. BUT, they must do it all in 7 days. (I have no idea why seven days is tha magic number, except that the entire show is about the cartechs bitching about how little time they have) ALL of those shows are the same. I usually look at the program title (EG Carguys rebuild an old KAiser Frazer). Then I tune in at the very end. SOrta like watching basketball, you can cut out all that bullshit in the middle.

ALL carshows suck, (and I love cars)

ANOTHER series of douche bag shows are

1Cutting down trees

2Sucking up trees from swamps

3Fishing for giant catfish all over the world

4This father and son team of bike builders. The gimmick is that they hate each other

5 THE WORST is the GOLD Hunters in ALaska. THese guys are so lame and incompetent that even when they get solid advice from a mining engineer or two they dont take it. SO they almost went bust.This show I watch because its my personal Schadenfreud about other mining companies (hee hee)

I really liked the Jon & Kate + 8 show in the early days. The older girls (twins) are the same age as sozlet and there was a lot of standard stay-at-home parent issues that were writ large. Jon reminded me a lot of a friend of mine who is a stay-at-home dad. And the little kids were cute! They were so little that they were completely natural.

Then Kate started to really get on my nerves. Then Jon started to snap out of his passivity and realize that Kate was not always right. Then I started to really worry about the older girls, especially one of them (Maddy?). The parents and the little kids didn't seem to notice/ mind the cameras much, but Maddy really did, and I got the first whiffs of Kate trying to milk this cash cow for all it was worth, even at the expense of her family.

Then the trainwreck started. Jon moved past the not-passive stage to outright brattiness. The little kids started to become more camera-aware and less natural. The older kids got more worrisome. And Kate... holy crap.

I stopped watching at some point before the end, not sure where exactly.

Now, Housewives....

I started watching this mostly 'cause I'd turn on the TV at noon and watch whatever was on while I ate lunch. (Husband at work, kid at school.) Housewives were frequently what was on (I'd be looking for Top Chef or Project Runway on Bravo, and...) I do love all the reality shows I watch (and though I know two on the list, those plus TC and PR are about all I ever watch) because of the "overhearing" aspect. I LOVE seeing people jabbering at each other with captions.

OK, I'm behind on all the housewives, so this may be out of date. But I find Nene (Atlanta) fascinating. I know these are "reality" in name only but she has a way with words that I don't think is scripted and I find quite entertaining.

The Orange County ones are too excruciating. They started out with standard-issue rich ladies who were way too open and not-savvy about how they'd be presented. The woo-hoo lady for example was just eviscerated and she didn't seem to get it. (Vicki.) Then she got all prim and closed and boring but still awful. Everyone's trying to make a buck. The one who got divorced -- ugh. I have some sympathy for her but she's also just so spoiled and entitled. I haven't watched that show in a while (as in, turn it off if it comes on while I'm flipping channels).

Oh and the Little People, Big World one I watched some of too, until the dad became just way too offputting. He can be a real jerk. The mom I liked. I liked the general concept of learning about the culture, a lot of parallels with Deaf culture. Appreciated that window.

I do love "1000 WAYS TO DIE". These are really bizarre stories. I assume that there is a nugget of truth in there and the stories were just tarted up to fit in between commercials


THESE kinda shows are all on at the same times on Mon-Wed and you can watch em by flipping back and forth. The only thing that is evil is that ALL the cable stations synnchronize their commercials so they come on all at the same time. EVIL BITCHES!!

OK. I have seen this show maybe three times. I even made my husband watch it once, but he said once was more than enough....it's Rue Paul's Drag Race, which pits would-be drag queens against one another to create persona, outlandish costumes, lip-synch songs...etc. The show goes backstage for bitch-slappin', back-stabbin fun, too.
The contestants perform before judges who are almost as bizarre...including, of course, Ms, Rue Paul him/herself. It is bizarre.

farmerman, I gotta admit that car shows don't do a thing for me. I don't know from cars. I don't know how to drive. I'm barely aware that these shows are on. I know about the biker builders, but I never watched. On the other hand, that River Monster show is a major loser. Yes, there are big fish in rivers. So what! Don't know about the tree cutting and tree swamp shows. I watched about a minute of the Gold Hunters in Alaska. I was bored.

I admit to watching 1000 Ways to Die. Not often, but it's there when nothing else is on. Fact is, it's always there. I agree with the tarted up business. But this show manages to make death amusing, or ironic. My fave. A guy strapped a large sausage to his upper leg using the kind of elastic stuff they use when they tie up your arm to take blood. Apparently he was a "big" hit with the ladies until he dropped dead. The sausage was tied just a tad too tight. Something happened to his circulation. And the women wept. LOL.

soz, First I have to admit to a bias against very large families. However, Kate and Jon didn't have sequential largeness. They had a litter of kids. Maybe my lack of interest is based on my not having kids. Dunno. You said that Kate eventually started to get on your nerves. People get on my nerves easily--and FAST. Another reason I don't watch these family shows. I usually hate everybody.

I think the same applies to the Housewives shows. I get annoyed easily. I think those people would annoy the hell out of me. Not my cup of tea. What can I tell ya?

mags, I watched that show once. I kinda liked it. But I couldn't find it again. Ru Paul in a suit is worth the price of admission, which in this case is free.

One more and then I gotta go to work.

Bully Beatdown. I need to be careful. This could become an addiction. The premise is that somebody is being horribly bullied. Scars. Hospitalization. Broken bones. Etc. The bully is uncaring, unfeeling, arrogant, and obnoxious. The bullied people come to the show to get even. The show host, some guy with Mayhem in his name challenges the bully to a ring match. The potential prize is $10,000. Bullies seem to think they're invincible. They show up. Mayhem gets some anime fighter (whatever the hell that is) to fight the bully. If the bully has problems, the person being bullied gets the money. The pageantry. The over-the-top play on fighting matches. Vunderbar. Then the bully gets his ass kicked BIG TIME. I love it. Loses all the money. Love it. It seems to me that the only thing not allowed in anime fighting is biting. Nothing's perfect.

It's on the cable channel LOGO, Roberta. Not every cable service carries LOGO

I tape Survivor, the only reality show I'm watching this season. Used to watch the cooking shows, but got tired of them. I'll watch Project Runway if it comes on again. Used to love The Amazing Race, but not watching it this season - got tired of the bickering. Will tape PBS on Sunday nights if Masterpiece Classic is scheduled. Oh, and I tape the Ellen show everyday, but usually end up deleting most of those since they accumulate so fast. Mr.Irish thinks the TV was invented for sports. He's pretty good about watching a movie with me now and then, though.

They aren't weird, but I watch:
Idol
Pawn Stars
American Pickers
Clean House
Hoarders (sometimes, really, I can't watch every one of those)
and can't wait for the new
What The Sell
MI-5
Masterpiece Theater
How It's Made

mags, Thanks for the info. I get logo. I just didn't remember where I had seen the show.

Irish, I'm worried about you, kid. Weird stuff is Masterpiece Classics on PBS? Never mind. You'll be fine. I watch Survivor and I still watch The Amazing Race. I'm having second thoughts about Project Runway. After last season, I'm pissed. Gretchen won!!

I saw a show about people with WEIRD habits. I mean WEIRD. (Sorry, I can't remember the name of the show.) First up, a guy who eats glass and bullets. He doesn't understand why his friends are concerned for his health! They take him to a doctor who takes an X-ray. The glass is nestled neatly in his gut. The bullets are not so neat. The doc warns the guy that this could be a life-threatening situation. He cuts back to a couple of glasses a week. I don't know what he did about the bullets.

A woman eats toilet paper. Great masses of toilet paper all day long. She also doesn't understand why this is a problem. Nor does the woman who's addicted to scouring powder. Her favorite is Comet. Blech. The last weird habit covered in the one show I watched was a woman who sucks her thumb. What people suck in the privacy of their own homes is their business. But this woman sucks her thumb everywhere. At the supermarket. At work. While walking down the street. She doesn't understand why people think it's weird.

It know, inviting judgment is usually a big part of the appeal. ("Real Housewives" can be summed up as "First, be jealous of how much money they have. Then, enjoy the feelings of superiority that waft over you when you see what horrible taste they have and what awful mothers and wives they are and how unhappy they are in general.") (OK that's a bit harsh, there's more to it than that like the Nene-wit I mentioned before, but I think that's the general premise.)

Anyway the big big family one (17 18 19 whatever, the oops she uncrossed her legs again one) I watched for about five minutes and got creeped out by the parent-people. Eek.

we dont have cable but watch Amazing race on free to air mostly so we can bitch about how stupid and arrogant the contestants are. There is an Australian made version coming out soon.
sneak peak http://au.tv.yahoo.com/the-amazing-race-australia/video/

Iron chef. Love it. love the bad translated commentary and over the top dress sense of chairman Kaga.

Nooooooooo! You have to watch lol! There's so few of us...I love hearing others' takes on the really goofy episodes. I have sort of a crush on Tim Gunn...plus I get a kick out of the judges and seeing what short and shiny concoction Heidi will show up in each week. I haven't seen any promos for a new season, though...hope it hasn't been cancelled!!!

I really like PAwn Stars. But The Pickers has gotten its welcome worn out. It too has become the same show week after week. Pawn Stars focuses on each item, theres the diff. PAwn Stars is like Antiques Roadshow. These are both learning experiences.

I do also like Mythbusters for their good looks at Physics. I dont like that you have to wait till the end of the show to see the results. When they built the sailboat out of duct tape I was watching the work and the results.
Also the wooden cannon and the duct tape cannon. (They always use proper techniques of gradual increasing energy when they test things.
SOmetimes they blow the science and the viewers let em know. They then will modify the tests to incorporate the viewers ideas.

You have to be curious about a lot of things to enjoy Mythbusters.

I dont like Survivorman and Man v Wild. These both have gotten tpo be production numbers with as much off camera production as was "Survivor" (which, IMHO , jumped the shark after season 1)

I find it interesting that we get many of these shows as free to air.
Man Vs Wild reminds me of Ginger Rogers doing everthing Fred Astair dis but backwards. (The camera man).

I wouldnt mind seeing the trees from swamps show. Didnt a guy get hauled over the coals for stealing logs or something?
Big Moves is another on I watch on occasion and theres an English one about building/renovating old and new houses. It mainly convinces me that people have too much money.

Agree with you on Survivorman. I watched two full seasons of Everest: Beyond the Limit, have you seen that? Another I liked was Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment.

I'm with ya on Pawn Stars, those guys are consistently interesting and informative.
I sometimes enjoy survivorman, the guy's personality is likeable, but that Bear Gryll gets on my nerves big time.
The one show I never get tired of is Anthony Bourdain, he really takes the time to learn something about the people and thier culture.

I wish they would show some Wild America reruns on pbs, ole Marty was just great.