Recycled. AGAIN!

It's been about ten months but, The Laffin' Devils are back on the air with The Devils Ride tonight. It seems to be the reality show that everyone loves to hate. The story I did about it last May has received several hundred hits here- the most by far of any blog post I've ever written.

Much happened while the producers wondered whether to keep the show or take it in another direction. The internet is rife with rumors and, maybe even a few facts. Ya never know...

It is a fact that main character, Gipsy, was arrested for allegedly molesting his step-daughter. Hopefully that's not true. Before you light the torches and gather the townsfolk with farming implements, the man is embroiled in a custody battle and such allegations are often Lawyering 101. Sad but, true. The allegation seems to have come after the show got popular but, evidently didn't factor in Gipsy's leaving the club. Though these guys are not the arch gangsters the producers might like you to think they are, it turns out that Gipsy was asked to leave the club when it was found out that his current wife is a local policewoman. That could be viewed as a conflict of interest...

If you google, you'll find all this stuff and tons of comments about how fake the show is. People think these guys are actors. The show takes place in San Diego, which is in California, where Hollywood is located, and Kevin Bacon is an actor so, there you go...

The point of most reality shows however, is cheap entertainment, using real people who want to be on TV. There has got to be some compensation though. I don't know that these people have SAG cards but some might be seeking one after seeing themselves on the small screen. Their fantasies are their business. Producers certainly like to expand their horizons with spin-offs. For example, who isn't digging for gold in Alaska or buying storage lockers for fun and profit? I can think four pawn shop shows. Nothing succeeds like excess! Or, is it art imitating other art? Imitation is the sincerest form of television?

Television's first priority  is to entertain. Thus, it typically involves actors and some scripting here and there. Real or fake, no doubt there's a ton of editing involved. Really, how interesting is a pawn shop transaction or even digging for gold if you were to watch 12 hours of it? Break it down into 22 minutes and you've got something more palatable.

One show I find very enjoyable is "Auction Hunters". The two stars are actors and they do a very good job of making the show interesting. I don't think it's a secret that the fellas are actors. I think it is a secret that the show appears to be very contrived. If anyone does try to make a living buying the possessions of people who have fallen on hard times, I bet they are not finding coin collections, rare guns and other treasures that they get full retail value(!)  from experts(!) There is some artistic license going on there, some seeding of the lockers, I have read. I know people are a little quirky from person to person but, if you had Waterford Crystal in storage and you owed a few hundred in storage fees, you might find a way to come up with the cash to keep a few thousand dollars worth of crystal. So, many of the interesting items they find are easy to find because the producer had stagehands put them there.

I've read too that Pawn Stars is a huge fake as well. I saw a clip of Dave Attell's old show "Insomniac With Dave Attel" where he interviews Rick Harrison at the pawn shop during the overnight shift where he's taking in junk from street people looking to score quick cash. It was quite a bit different from the TV show where people bring in Picasso's and Russian Jets... Having been in pawn shops myself, I had known from jump street that they rarely (if ever) get interesting stuff let alone ancient artifacts. The word on the internet streets is that the old man is a bigger dick than he appears and that Cory and Chum are drunken ner' do wells. If you visit the shop in Vegas, it's more a tourist trap and a TV set than a place to sell your jewelry. I gather you can but, not to any of the stars. I like to think Rick is a pretty smart guy who knows a lot of trivia. At least he was smart enough to take his dad's sad, little pawn shop into the big time.

I think that's how reality television comes to fruition nine times out of ten. "Fast n' Loud" is a likable show about two Texans who flip old cars for fun and profit. I heard the owner of the shop worked very hard shopping his idea for a show to every production company he could find before he found the one that got him on The History Channel. Ya know- why the heck not? You can only make so much money fixing up old wrecks. More power to you if you can entertain folks while doing it. It's like Fox news or burger at McDonalds. It's not 100% real but, it's made from 100% real ingredients. It's close enough.