Manly reality shows (no dating or dancing allowed)

Books, comics, TV, music
1

I’ve been a fan of reality* shows for a while, and am enjoying many of the lower budget shows on cable aimed at the XY demographic. Rather than starting individual threads for one or more of these, I’ll comment on a few here.

  • Yeah, I know, “reality” is a bit of a misnomer. Many reality shows, including “manly” shows are heavily produced and nearly or actually scripted. Oh well…

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Blowing Stuff Up Shows
Mythbusters - An obvious contender. Dorky men blow stuff up. Plus a cute chick to look at.

Others? Mythbusters feels a little like the old Junkyard Wars, but I think that’s one is gone. There was a nice special on one of the cable channels recently on a Punkin’ Chunkin’ contest - cool, elaborate catapults and such throwing pumpkins long distances. There was a short lived show a couple years ago that was basically Mythbusters minus the myths and more focused on blowing stuff up, but it was kinda dull. A thin genre, I guess.

Haggling/Auction Shows
(or at least the appearance of haggling)

Pawn Stars - Not very realistic auctions and odd scripted to semi-scripted feeling interactions among the leads. Still, I am generally amused/entertained.

Storage Wars - I’d like to like this show, but even though I can tolerate the forced, unrealistic commerce of Pawn Stars, in this show the weird unrealistic auctions and lockers that feel salted don’t work for me. Still, I occasionally watch it and my son likes it now.

American Pickers - Probably less scripted (at least in the early episodes) than some of the other bartering shows, but finding rusty junk in old barns didn’t hold my interest for too long - a few episodes and occasionally bits of a newer one.

Real Deal - Newer show. Again a show about negotiating for odd antiques and such, with an auction back end. The auction back end, at least, seems to play it pretty straight, and the show is decent. One of the negotiator/buyer guys looks like Santa Claus.

Barrett-Jackson car auctions - Not really a reality show, but I like watching cool old cars roll across the block. These things air sporadically.

Alaska Shows
Gold Rush Alaska - My son likes this and I can tolerate it. I’m not sure whether the original crew is stupid or hamming it up for the camera. Probably a little of both.

Flying Wild Alaska - Entertaining and feels reasonably realistic. Ariel is cute, but she might make some of the Gold Rush look smart.

Crabbing shows - How many of these were there? Fun for a while, but I’m over these…

Redneck Shows
Not really my thing. I did like at least one of the logging shows from a year or two back.

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I think at the moment, my favorites are Real Deal and Flying Wild Alaska, but I doubt either will hold my interest that long. Most of these shows are, to me, most entertaining for the first 5-10 episodes. Mythbusters and Pawn Stars have held my interest longer though.

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The above list is not meant to be exhaustive. Feel free to add your own shows and/or category(ies) and/or comment on the stuff above.

2

I love driving shows, like “World’s Scariest Police Chases” or “World’s Worst Drivers” and the like. I could watch those for hours and hours.

3

Survivorman definitely.

Les Stroud is badass and the show is informative and terrifying.

4

Good sub-genre, Spoofy.

They haven’t made any more Survivorman episodes for a while, have they?

The Dual Survival show (can’t remember if that is the right name) is decent. Nice character clash between trippy hippy and ex-soldier (marine?), though they seem/seemed to get along well enough on camera.

5

Top Shot seems to be decent. I barely watch any other reality TV so I might not be the best judge. I will say I squirm at most TV shows because of how cheesy they are, and I can’t watch them more than 5 minutes. Sometimes I fidgit watching Top Shot, but then they’ll have a genuinely cool shooting challenge that makes up for it. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of guys having a good time on the range. I think it occasionally transcends reality TV that way despite the producers’ best efforts.

6

I have to admit that I absolutely love Tabatha’s Salon Takeover.

She’s like a female Gordon Ramsay, and it’s hilarious to watch her go into these terrible salons and set them right.

The only time I’ve watched Alaska Gold Rush is when they’ve shown “Glory Hole” montages on The Soup.

7

Discovery has launched a number of “Blow stuff up shows” trying to catch the Mythbusters magic again. They’ve all failed.

G4 had one as well, not sure what happened to it.

8

Oh, and this. So I’m watching this with the wife the other night, and the announcer is saying that two of teams were going to make 300-400k in that season. This cannot be right - 400k for like 8 guys, plus expenses? They’ll be lucky to net 30k each. I guess that’s only for half a year of work, but still - that’s not a lot of money.

9

Other than the occasional Celebrity Apprentice and Mythbusters, I mostly just watch cooking-based reality shows.

I like Restaurant: Impossible if only because chef Robert Irvine is such a dickbag. I really enjoy his rotating cast of sycophant designers. You just know once an episode one of them will walk into a room and say something like, “Oh, I like that painting.” and he’ll say “I hate it.” and they’ll say, “Yes, it’s disgusting and has got to go!” It’s also always fun to read the reviews of the restaurant on Yelp and see all the people complaining about how the prices have really gone up recently.

I like Chopped, mostly because it’s an entire season of a cooking contest compressed into a single episode.

And I’m always up to watching Andrew Zimmern eat hagfish drowned in boy’s urine and served on a bed of fetid lamb fat or whatever the fuck he’s doing that week.

Time Warp was a lot of fun if you ignored everything not happening in slow motion. They also had a habit of doing stupid, gross stuff and seeing what it looked like in slow motion. I believe an animated gif from Time Warp landed someone a ban here once! Bonus!

Destroyed In Seconds is one of those ‘caught on camera’ shows that falls into the trap of all of the genre. Too much time spent talking and teasing and not enough spent seeing things destroyed in seconds.

Smash Lab is an embarrassing piece of shit Mythbusters ripoff without the hook of myths (though it’s debatable if Mythbusters even has that anymore) and with worse acting. Much worse acting. God, that show was bad.

10

I was home from work the other day and found myself in the middle of a marathon of Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan on G4. That show is fascinating.

11

I confess. I like the Gordon Ramsey shows. All of them. Kitchen Nightmares, (UK and US) Hell’s Kitchen, and even his guest spots on other shows. I just like the guy. I really believe that he is personally offended when people make bad food and serve it to others.

12

Oh, and I can sit there and watch a How It’s Made marathon for hours.

13

Re: Gold Rush Alaska. One of the secondary characters from season 1 posted a fair amount of stuff on a blog or something. He was the guy who almost came to blows (or maybe did) with the son (from the central father/son pair). IIRC, his posts suggested that some bits of the show were at least hammed up a bit. But man did that group come off as incompetent in the first season.

14

I don’t consider Mythbusters a reality show, but if it is I do watch it.

The only “reality” show I have watched in the past would be the Golf Channel Big Break. However it has, like probably every reality show, become very formulaic and I no longer watch it.

15

Dirty Jobs. Even though the name nowadays should be “unpleasant and dangerous jobs” because they’re running out of truly gross stuff but still shows the stuff that has to get done to make most peoples’ lives normal (as Mike says during the intro). I think it’s funny and watchable since it actually acknowledges breaking the fourth wall.

Tanked. Because I enjoy watching people create things and long to get back into creative endeavors. This show actually inspired one of my two plausible self-employment business ideas, so there is that.

Sons of Guns. Related to the above creativity thing, and also because I enjoy recreational shooting and remembering all my days designing cool MDC weapons in Rifts.

Cake Boss, Ace of Cakes, Cupcake Wars, and any shows about baking. Because I want to be a baker whenever I manage to ditch the corporate world.

16

Objection! Not manly.

17

I like many of the cooking shows quite a bit, Top Chef, Chopped, Iron Chef America, Next Iron Chef, Dinner Impossible.

18

The best part about Cake Boss is when he communes with the dead.

19

It’s even better that the lead guy is named - I shit you not - Jack Hoffman. That’s his name. Jack Hoffman. In search of the Glory Hole.

I nominate that for manliest thing ever. Maybe not the masculinest, depending on how you look at the world, but you can’t argue that it’s even remotely unmanly.

20

CAKE BOSS!