New TV Love

It's always interesting to see what happens to one's readership after a blogging hiatus. I have an N of 2 when it comes to dedicted readers. Rock on, TOWWAS and Spice! ...perhaps others are reading but not commenting. Highly possible.

Anyhoo, onto my newly discovered (as of last night) TV love: Texas Ranch House, PBS's latest reality series. The title pretty much explains it but to flesh it out, the series involves a ranch owner family trying to establish a profitable ranch in the mid-1800s. They have 8-or-so cowboys responsible for rounding up cattle with the ultimate goal of selling them to the US Army. ...and they do. The army guys were in full-on authentic outfits and I'm guessing they found actors at the local Civil War reinactment events.

This particular reality show had what seemed like FAR MORE DRAMA than 1900 House and Frontier House. The very last episode involved the ranch owner demanding that one of the cowboys leave the ranch 2 days before the series ended. Having made a pact (all-for-one-and-one-for-all sort of dealy), all 8 cowboys abandoned the show within hours of hearing the news. The warring sides didn't even gather for a follow-up show. Sheesh. Bad blood, dudes. Anyhoo, it turns out that the dorky PBS-watching ranch evaluators gave the ranch owners a pretty bad rating for creating animosity between the ranch hands (cowboys) and owners.

I did't like the owners for several reasons. Here are a few: (1) they didn't wash dishes for days after a community gathering and increased the fly problem, which was already bad due to placement of the manure pile near their front door; (2) their depressing neglect of the vegetable garden, which was planted for them before arrival and should have provided a wonderful source of sustenance and income; and (3) the ranch owner's refusal to buy one of his cowboys when he was captured by a local Indian tribe ... though he bought his horses without a second thought.

I seriously want to be a part of one of these PBS reality series. Seriously.