car shows on TV
Does anyone watch the any of the car shows on TV like West Coast Customs, Car Warriors, Pimp My Ride, the one with Chip Foose, and so on?
I have real love/hate relationship with these shows. The creativity, talent, and craftsmanship can be awe-inspiring. The projects can be epic. Seeing their ideas become reality has helped me push past personal roadblocks that always crop up in a project. Watching pros working their craft has helped me solve problems or inspired a new approach.
Then there's the dark side.
It seems like every show I have to struggle to see what the car actually looks like. Are the camera operators zoom-happy palsy-stricken spider monkeys? The shots appear to be edited with the intent of removing the car from the frame. The narration seems aimed at hard-of-hearing viewers that ride the short bus. The assumption by the writers seems to be the audience likes shiny things and has no clue about how cars work.
There's the clock. "We're under a deadline. We have to finish this car right now", but they still have time to stop and talk about how they don't have any time, and how they really have to hurry, and how everyone needs to get to work, and how this job is really really hard.
Which leads to the worst part - the "human drama" that the producers seem compelled to include in every episode. It reminds me of a preschool just before nap time, a herd of whining petulant 3-year-olds all fighting over one toy. Some shows are worse than others, and some shows seem devoted to that angle at the expense of everything else, where the car is just an excuse to relive high school cliques.
So, from one car-person to another, am I in the minority here?
Topic: car shows on TV (Read 1038 times)
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