Triumph of the Liams Part XII: The History Channel

    The History Channel, the one place you can go one cable to see some grainy old footage of Nazis getting shot at. At least that's how it used to be... Over the past few years it seems like the History Channel is pulling an MTV and not airing the type of programming that the channel was named for... Think of the Weather Channel airing a reality show about weathermen. The History Channel has been doing this crap for a while now. I remember in the late nineties when they would rerun old episodes of "In Search of" with Leonard Nemoy [1]. This was a campy faux-investigative report show about supernatural crap like the Lock Ness Monster. I didn't mind this too much because there were still plenty of shows about actual historical events. Well, things have changed quite a bit in the last ten years.

    In recent years it seems like the History Channel has been airing a lot more of this type of crap. There have been shows about Big Foot, Aliens, UFOs, Extreme Weather and Naturals Disasters. Stuff that I don't think should be on the History Channel. You can make an argument for why shows about devastating earthquakes and tornadoes should be on the History Channel, but I think they make boring shows... There really is no excuse for Big Foot and aliens.

    Some of my favorite shows back in the day were the "deadly missions" or "history's greatest escapes" short thirty minute episodes about a single event that happened in the first half of the twentieth century. Usually these took place during or before World War Two and were about snipers, bank robbers or assassins. These must have been cheap to produce as all of the footage was newsreel stuff from the forties with a little narration by Edward Hermann [2] or Roger Mudd [3].More recently though there have been an abundance of fresh new reality shows about firefighters and lumberjacks... Crap that doesn't interest me one bit.

Modern Marvels is largely to blame

    I think shows like How it's Made and Modern Marvels are largely to blame for the bastardization of the History Channel. For some reason people like to watch pseudo-documentaries about everyday shit. I think Modern Marvels started out with good intentions, I've even enjoyed a number of their episodes (such as the building of the World Trade Center and the one about how the 1950s vision of the future compares to today). But some of these shows have gotten out of hand. Namely Modern Marvels: Ice Road Truckers, the heart-warming (ZOMG PUN INTENDED) tale of poorly educated retards who's only employment opportunity is to drive a semi over a frozen lake. But more on that later... Modern Marvels isn't limited to things or occupations but the show also covers concepts, like martial arts. I don't see how it's a Modern Marvel, but whatever.

    While we're on the subject, the History Channel has a show called Human Weapon [4] which fits nicely into the "shit that shouldn't be on the History Channel" category. The premise is fine, which is that the show will talk about the history of a certain type of martial art, like karate or kick boxing. Not real deep stuff but at least it's got some historic merit. Where this show goes wrong is the hosts. This program is hosted by two meatheads who try to "break it all down" for us, because watching a dude throw a punch might be a little complicated for some viewers. They even go as far as create a CGI model that outlines techniques. This always starts with basics like punching and kicking... Sound exciting? Check out the video on the right and listen to the oh-so-riveting description of Savate pointe au foie (which is just a fancy French name for kicking and punching).

Jurassic Fight Club

    I don't want to sound like a creationist [5], but a show about CGI dinosaurs fighting each other isn't really historic... it's kinda scientific, but barely. I mean, we can prove there were dinosaurs, but there is still a lot of guessing going on when you talk about which ones lived when exactly and would have run into whichever other species of dinosaurs were around. I'm not saying they shouldn't make this show, CGI dino artists have families to feed too... Just don't air this crap on the History Channel. Put this on Discovery or maybe Animal Planet.

    What you may not know is that the Discovery Channel had basically this same show a while ago. Back then it was called Animal Face-Off [6] and it featured non-extinct animals. Each episode started with some dude asking scientists how each animal hunts, fights, kills etc. Then he makes a mechanical version of each animal's jaws or claws (whichever they fight with) and tears up some shit so you get an idea of how powerful the real animal is. I never knew why they made steal and pneumatic mock ups, but whatever... At the end of the show there was a two or three minute long CGI fight between the two animals chosen for that week. My favorite was Gorilla versus Leopard, embedded below. You can see how lame the show was, apparently the folks at the History Channel thought this was groundbreaking television...

Ice Road Truckers

    I absolutely hate this show. It has nothing to do with the fact that it's on the History Channel. My hatred of this show is purely based on how incredibly stupid the premise of this show is. Ok, we'll give these truckers a camera to take with them while they drive sixteen hours over a frozen lake and then we'll cut the footage into a 23 episode long season and air it in weekly installments. This show would work if there was any real drama involved. But there isn't, it's one dude in a truck, driving on ice. Sure the ice could break, but it's not gonna happen every episode... So what ends up happening is that your usual episode climax is centered around a trucker that got stuck in the snow for a couple hours and he might end up being late delivering some mechanical gizmo to an oil drilling station. Great television it is not.

    I'm guessing this program came to be after the "success" of the Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. I'm sure a couple executives got together and tried to brain storm up a worthy successor and this is the best they could come up with. I should say that I actually like the Deadliest Catch. Well, like is maybe a little to strong. I've watched the first couple of seasons and I'd probably watch more on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I'm not going to go out and buy the DVDs [7] or anything. The difference between these two shows is that there is actual drama on The Deadliest Catch. Not just because crab fishing in the Bering Strait is more dangerous, but because there is more that one dude per boat. There is plenty of overstated drama on The Deadliest Catch as well, like the time some dude was going to miss a court date because the boat was late getting back to shore, then it turned out he got back sooner than he thought. Yawn. If both shows were just about one dude in a truck or one dude in a crab boat, alone... driving around... it'd be equally boring. Imagine Cops with only one cop, and he didn't get out of his car because he might freeze or fall through some ice. It's just a horrible idea for a television show.

    Now, with all of that being said, why the hell is Ice Road Truckers even on the History Channel? There is nothing 'historic' about their job, they even point this out in the show. You couldn't do this kind of job all that very long ago because shit would freeze up and these fools would die... A historical take on this show would be comparing them to dog sled teams, but then why not just do a show about dog sled teams? Or how about the story of Leningrad in the Second World War [8], when the city was besieged and had to be supplied by caravans that ran over Lake Ladoga. There is a good example of a historic case of actual "ice road truckers" that would be an interesting documentary because their contributions had real results. There was actual drama... See how it works?

    I really don't like the direction the History Channel is going. I'd much rather watch those old documentaries about World War II that I've seen a million times instead of Ice Road Truckers. It seems like the History Channel is trying to get rid of all of their programming that has a basis in history, sort of like how MTV has stopped airing music videos. I made this correlation at the start so I'll close by taking this to the logical extreme. If the History Channel wants to imitate MTV they should start by copying MTV's programming in earnest. The History Channel version of Road Rules can feature the dudes from Ice Road Truckers. Just throw them each in a Winnebago and make them do stupid tricks out on the tundra in order to earn enough gas money to make it to the next stop. History Channel's Real World can be set in a log cabin for a sense of historic flair. What happens when a Civil War reenactor, a Smithsonian curator, a Muay Thai kickboxer and someone who lived through the 1989 San Francisco earthquake stop being polite - and start being REAL?! Or how about History Channel's Pimp My Ride, where Hunter Ellis [9] takes some poor twenty-something's beater and tricks it out like a Victorian era cottage [10], like so much Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear. I might actually watch that...