Okay, so I get that there is very little reality in "Reality TV". I understand that the shows are scripted. I know the drama is fake. I am sure that the competition is BS. Still, like a moth that can't resist the pretty blue light that makes that cool zapping sound, I tune in every week to Gold Rush and Ax Men. There isn't a lot on TV that I find real interesting, but I do like seeing the equipment at work and I can put up with all the rest of the crap for an hour. I even get a little entertainment seeing the annoyed look on my wife's face twice a week when she realizes what we are about to watch. But i think last week's Zitterkopf segment of Ax Men set a new low bar for both shows. Apparently, there was one stump of such enormous size and tenacity that unless it came out of the ground there would be no way to build the road that was necessary to access the job with their super log hauler cabover flatbed. Without this road their season would definitely be a bust and their families sure to starve. Next shot was of their poor innocent skid steer loader that had no idea what abuse it was about to endure. It was painful to watch as the skid mark was rammed mercilessly and repeatedly into the stump. This continued until, according to script, the idiot inside hit his face against the front cab post loosening a tooth (human, not bucket). Glad this was finally over, it only got worse as he then proceeded to remove said tooth. At this point I was done, simultaneously changing the channel and apologizing to the wife (I am anticipating a particularly tense moment with her later this week when I tune into Gold Rush). Did anyone else find this appalling or am I just getting old?
Yes I did. No safety equipment at all, looks like on Meth all the time. Was pounding fist's on safety bar like a spoiled brat. Can anyone get the serial number on the cat ? Want to make sure that one I don't buy. Don't know why he didn't just cut it flush, after digging the dirt from around it, fill it back in.
It was appalling.
I think I lost IQ points when I witnessed that fiasco. I think we all have took a shot in the mouth and loosened a tooth, but if you quit messing with it the tooth will tighten back up. I do believe Sunday evening I will find something else better to do!
Exactly. Or just dig it out with the skid, didn't look like it was in there too well.
Television just ain't worth watching. The more we watch the dumber we get.
I kinda lost interest in gold rush w/ the first episode when he was fording the river w/ the track hoe and came to the main channel and was worrying himself sick over how deep it is. All the phony drama is just more than I care to watch!! I guess it could be called a working man's soap opera!! I guess for those who haven't been there/done it it's a high adventure. Mike
Those shows are nonsense! (That being said I do watch Gold Rush once in a while, lol )
I Gave up on cable TV, a coupla years ago. About the time storage wars was at it's zenith. In 30+ years of going to auctions, I have seen maybe 3 fights, 2 were verbal, and one was a tussel between a pair of 60 year old brothers. Common sense and hollywood are not on speaking terms, So I'm sticking to classic reruns, on free tv...
i just record it when i remember its on , then just fast forward thru it then i dont have to hear the crap but i can watch the equipment with hearing them talk and it only takes about 15 minutes for the show, that way i dont loose as manybrain cells
I haven't watched Ax Men for a few years now, but reading you explain what happened had me laughing :laugh I find it boggling how for scripted tv shows they will bring in experts from whatever field they are covering to make it seem more realistic, be it military or detective type stuff, but for "reality" tv shows they seem to drag the dumbest idiots out from wherever they hide and proclaim them the experts in that topic I quit watching "reality" tv some time ago, gets too aggravating personally.
I worked on Drilling rigs in the Rocky Mountains for many years. Found the Reality' show simply moronic! I one was interested in what it's like, best to visit YouTube. Ps; All you care about when working a rig is going home in one piece. and FYI; It's not an Oil Rig' It's a Drilling Rig. And also less than 10 % of wells are drilled off shore.
I've watch almost none of these shows like Axe Men and the gold people but often wondered just from watching the advertisements for them if OSHA or MSHA inspectors watch them, would be interesting to hear the comments they would be making! Probably be complaining about the writers cramp they would get doing a report after a day at one of these sites. Then there are the goofs building custom cars, have their "ace" engine builder rebuild a 350 chevy and runs for five seconds and spins a bearing. Pull it back out and the guy tears it down and reassembles it over night to put back in the next morning. I mean if he could not get it right in the first place with all the time needed how the ...... is he going to do it by pulling an all nighter. And after seeing even one episode of this shop would you want to bid on one of this thrown together at the last minute disasters? Agree with who ever asked for the S/N of the equipment used on that show would steer clear of anything they touched. Worse than buying equipment from an auction of a company that went bankrupt. You know the first thing they eliminated to save money at the end was maintenance!
I worked with a kid this summer that in first couple of hours mentioned his favorite show was Ax Men. Didn't take much longer to find he'd fit right in with the cast of his favorite show. His best (or worst) moment was defiantly rolling by in the boss's pickup, giving me the fist and a finger salute, hitting a drainage ditch that looked more like a whoop, launching himself and damn near every tool in the Montezuma box into the air, and finally hitting the horn with his face. When it all went south his eyes got so big it looked like something out of a cartoon. If truck was doing anything over 5mph he probably would have made low earth orbit. Since it didn't do anything besides throw the front end out of alignment it made my day, even covered in wheat dust. There are more, just as dumb, maybe not as spectacular, but it would have made great tv.
Did you hand him his Bill Engval "sign"?? Mike
Purty sure you answered your own question, I quit watching that type of crap TV years ago. I love machinery and almost never miss a chance to check it out(new or old). These shows, show nothing about machinery except stupid actions with stupid actors and overall negligence of how to properly work, especially with heavy equipment.
Everybody that is so bored that they watch axmen/goldrush should come over to HEF and get an education about reality
I am not an Ax-Men fan but I do like to watch Gold Rush. I started watching Ax-Men a few years ago and all the "fast motion" shots made me sick. Loaders, feller-bunchers and Cats tearing around at whirlwind speed. I wrote to the producers complaining that this was not realistic and perhaps sending the wrong message to young people who might want to get involved in the industry some day. They might grow up thinking that equipment was supposed to be operated that way. I have not seen as much of it lately but then again I don't watch Ax-Men.
Im just curious, did they ever answer you back? I just caught this thread by accident actually but i thought all the comments were quite funny! I saw the part of the show where the grunting genius was destroying his skid loader to remove a stump that could have been dug out faster with a shovel.....I was absolutely dumbfounded when dude ripped out his tooth with a pair of pliers! I know time is important but what is 4-5 hours in the grand scheme of life to lose a tooth because you want to tear out a stump? Ignorance at its finest. I feel bad for that guy if he does all of this crap he's done without being told to by the production crew. This show started out being a great idea and was really informative and entertaining for the first season or two. I know absolutely nothing about the forestry business and it was cool to see how the crews come in and drop the trees (which they never show anymore), lay out the site, and determine what kind of equipment to use. Now its pure drama and presents an extremely bad image of people working in the forestry industry or just people working in the trades in general. They could easily make an informative show about this and have it be entertaining at the same time. Probably worse now than the car restoration shows. I think the guy who developed this show also does Ice road truckers, which also used to be a great show and now is garbage. Just my 2 cents and i know i should just not watch anymore but theres no other equipment/ construction shows on besides DIY which i cant stomach anymore.
Also..... Goldrush is awesome! But i still have no idea why they try to create all this drama out of stuff that anyone with a brain stem can tell is made up. The show would be better without it.
The only show of this type that I liked was Swamp Loggers with Bobby Goodson and his crew up in NC. It was seriously lacking in the BS department that the other shows thrived upon...and I believe the cast had issues with the producers too b/c the producers wanted the cast to create drama for "good TV"
That was a good show!! It seemed to me that when they started treating Bobby like a trick monkey he bailed out.
I think that is the reason one of the original people was on Ax-Men left can't remember there names The owner/dad only had one arm. But they were a first class outfit with nice equipment and really worried about doing things right.
I really liked that show! I don't even remember seeing a final episode. I thought maybe the company went under....
Nah they are still operating.
Your thinking of JM Browning. They left the show b/c they weren't happy with the way the show was presenting things. The old man did a presentation really tearing into the show and how it's set back public relations for the logging industries severely. My boss was the first one approached by the production company for Harvest. While there have been a lot of moments i wished there had somebody with a camera, i'm convinced that putting a cameraman in somebody's face makes them inherently dumber.
I know another outfit out of NW Oregon that was on the show very early on. I was told the crew came out and filmed for two weeks, then edited that footage down to just the breakdowns and presented every comment recorded out of context so it looked like a giant fight the whole time. The camera crew was not asked to return. Greyson
If I could please make a comment on this Axe Men Sh1te that I have long since not switched the T.V. on to view, it really puts over (I think) a picture that portrays the Round Timber Industry in the America's as run by "Total Idiots", this program is shown in the U.K. and Europe making people think that the Woods is full of people without a Brain Cell between them, the Program should be stopped with all involved given some form of treatment, it makes the industry and the skilled people working within it look very poor indeed, I look on this Forums Forestry section always and see Men and Work they have done with great skill and stamina in very hard conditions, massive loads hauled on very difficult and trying roads by drivers taking pride in their work and equipment, if these idiots in the Axe Men Comedy were all given an Axe I think they would all be Dead by Brew Time, this program portrays to the rest of the World a very low standard of person that keeps going lower, the real Timber Boys must Hate it, I hope I have not come over to heavy on these dummy's but the truth is best. tctractors
Tc, you are spot on with your analysis, I work in the woods in the Pacific Northwest around some of these outfits on the show. I don't watch even though I know some of the guys, it is not funny to me. To see these guys that work hard and do very challenging jobs under challenging conditions portrayed as a bunch of screaming dummies is insulting, and if I was asked to be filmed doing what I do I would decline because I can imagine what it would be made to look like. If it really was like that working out here I wouldn't do it, and I love it. Like Jay Browning said it has set the industry back 50 years in the general publics eye. I would love to see a show like Swamp Loggers filmed here that showed a good outfit doing good work. Most of the loggers on the show are real pros with a few exceptions. That being said there are some entertaining episodes by some entertaining people that would be good tv but they don't happen as often as the show would have you believe.
Absolutely. A job well done that would impress us, would go over the head of the average man or woman in the street. So you get exaggerated drama and a lot of pointless conflict, to keep people from changing the channel.