Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Sure, many of my television mainstays may have broadcasted their shocking season finales already, heralding a long summer drought of good programming, but I’m resourceful. You know me. The ability to fire up Hulu and watch, watch, watch is always a click away, and clicking just so happens to be my specialty. Pawn Stars is the most recent addition to my stable of backup shows and it’s hypnotic, not only for its content but also for its general insights into reality TV.
On the face of it, the series offers a candid look at the day-to-day dealings of a family-owned pawn shop. The family in question is interesting–shrewd, oddly mole-like, a strange intersection between carney folk and retail professionals. The unwitting customers are equally fascinating and commodify people watching, in a way, with a parade of soft negotiators peddling their occasionally wretched tales, all of them hopeful that their pile of shit, unlike all those other piles, will garner untold riches.
After a few episodes, though, the characters become one-note, cardboard caricatures of themselves. Take the Old Man, for instance. He’s a fount of grumpy, folksy retorts. But beyond that, the footage doesn’t give much more. I would love to see a sequence of him mulling over his legacy, wracked by concern over its sustainability. Like, I wonder if he’s heard about the new sheriff in town who’s far more efficient at relocating people’s garbage.
Perhaps this is what makes reality television tick. It ain’t Mad Men, nor does it have to be, and maybe life that isn’t expressed in a screenplay just isn’t as interesting, forcing the show to keep its characters flat and simple to tease out real-life drama more easily. The only other unscripted show I’ve seen recently is Food Revolution, and there too the villains were thoroughly villainous, until they swung completely the other way and became Jamie Oliver’s best friends. You wonder if Idol would’ve been as engaging if Simon suddenly turned friendly during his tenure, or if Real World, wherever it may be now, should ever forgo fulfilling its skank quota. These shows get the job done, as far as escapism goes, and with all the historical tidbits from Pawn Stars and my continued intake of Mad Men, I’m able to escape to a simpler era, one 20-minute increment at a time.