Call It What You Want...

It’s time for another television reality show PBS-style, which means, historical, informative, and all crammed into one week (British reality-style) rather than strung out over an entire season a la  Survivor USA. This time it’s Texas Ranch House, an opportunity for a handful of lucky participants to step back to the year 1867 and join a Texas ranch.

Unfortunately for any television viewers who watch anything else, in order to enjoy all of Texas Ranch House, you’ll need to clear your schedule for two hours every night this week, not watching anything else (set your Tivo if you dare), and by Friday, you’ll be so tired of the Cooke family and Texas longhorns, you’ll not even care if the cattle make it to the buyer and who ultimately goes on the drive after all. In British reality shows this makes sense because at least a portion of each show is live, and the shows sum up the past day’s events, but this is not the case with Ranch House. (I’d prefer to have it strung out a bit, maybe one hour a night for two weeks. I do hate to wait a whole week for the next installment of a show, so yes, please, give it to me, but gee whiz, kids, not ALL at once. My broadcast journalism professor referred to the “parsimony principle” as using [usually a syndicated program] as much as possible – in order to make more money –  but as sparingly as possible – so as not to create overkill. Do the math here, PBS – 10 hours of anything on TV in one week is overkill. Thanks.)

But on with my commentary on the show. Thanks to one of the daughters of the “ranch family” for wearing her corset most of the time. Really. There are a lot of areas here where you and your sisters and mother are not holding your end of the appropriate-dress bargain, but at least you’ve got the corset on when you’re in the confessional.

Hurrah for the self-proclaimed computer nerd Jared for getting kidnapped by Indians and making interesting comments. Yippee for the horses and cows and super-cute dog and all that. But Mrs. Cooke, wife of the ranch owner, needs to be hit alongside the head with a heavy board. Congratulations, lady, for your eagerness to take on the sexism of our society, to bring equality to the ranch, except for one small thing: You’re supposed to be a nineteenth-century rancher’s wife!!! No ranch owner would let his wife make the demands you’re making. No rancher’s wife would take it upon herself to make the rules for the cowboys. Those cowboys would be gone to the next ranch so fast, leaving your ranch without a hand on deck. Thanks to her hands-on approach, her husband is less than a joke among his men; no one respects him because he is obviously being constantly instructed by his wife about what to do when. He gives the ranch hands and his foreman one answer (clearly the one he’d prefer), but when he goes back to the house, his wife whines and complains and he feels he has to give in to her as well.

I found it amusing the other night when he commented that he’s been running major corporations for years without this sort of trouble – perhaps it’s because his wife doesn’t butt in to his work “back home.”

Perhaps she has the hardest job to fit into. The guys, well, basically, get to be guys, carousing, drinking, working pretty stinking hard trying to find cattle. Hard work is hard work, no matter what year it is, and the job parameters and supplies (or lack thereof) pretty much keep the guys in a period-appropriate place. But apparently she doesn’t have enough to do to really keep her busy enough that she’s not concerned about everyone else’s business besides just her own.

Yes. I know. Cross-cultural experiences bring out our weaknesses and foibles, and being on TV for everyone to see them doesn’t help. But is she even trying to play the part of the 19^th-century woman? Is she encouraging her daughters and “girl of all work” to try to fit the roles set before them as 19^th-century women? Not even close.