Play One on TV

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I absolutely, positively, and without reservation, loath and detest “Reality Television.” I have never watched Big Brother, Trading Spouses, American Idol, Fear Factor, or any of the incarnations of Survivor. If I want to watch a bunch of people scheming and plotting against one another, all I need to do is poke my head around the cubicle wall at work.

However, I need to make one eentsy-weentsy confession: I love police chase shows.

Let me clarify: I am not talking about “Cops” or any of its wanna-be imitators. I do not get any jollies from watching crack houses full of shirtless members of the “obsessive-compulsive body piercing” segment of society. Instead, I speak of action-packed videos culled from police cameras, showing actual car chases, crashes, chills, spills, and related mayhem. In short, I’m a fan of that modern American institution known as the “high-speed chase.”

In a monument to the limited imaginations of television producers, these shows are invariably labeled with similar-sounding names like World’s Wildest Police Videos and World’s Wackiest Police Videos and World’s Most Dangerous Police Chases and World’s Wildest and Most Dangerous Police Videos of Wacky Chases. Regardless of the show’s title, the content is always the same: perpetrator does something stupid, perpetrator gets the attention of the police; perpetrator tries to outrun police; perpetrator narrowly misses one or more innocent bystanders; perpetrator hits a speed bump at 120 mph and disintegrates in a shower of Detroit confetti. Establishment rejoices.

These shows are usually hosted by Sheriff John Bunnell and his amazing teeth. Such teeth have not graced a law enforcement uniform since the hallowed days of Erik Estrada and CHiPs. If this were the 60’s, this fellow would have been hawking Pepsodent. A picture of these amazing pearly-whites is at left, although I deliberately dulled the teeth a bit in an attempt to prevent phosphor damage to your monitor.

Sheriff Bunnell operates on one guiding principle - everyone on the show is an idiot moron, except for the police officers and the commentary guy in the helicopter. And these are not ordinary idiot morons - they’re guilty idiot morons. Having established these rules of mental and legal inferiority, he then shows that idiot morons have two things in common - they will run away from police officers, and they couldn’t drive their way out of a Sonic drive-in if the carhop was there to provide hand-signals.

Almost every chase vignette follows the same formula (chase, near-misses, crash, arrest, rinse, repeat). Despite the lack of originality on the part of the would-be escapees, I am helplessly bewitched into watching each and every minute of the action. Rooted to the sofa, my gaze is riveted on the spectacle of felon after felon ruining their lives in the the most spectacular tests of Newtonian physics.

Under other circumstances, I have rather high standards in my television viewing, Star Trek nothwithstanding. But all my video snobbery goes out the window when I invite John Bunnell into my home. I willingly overlook many of the most absurd elements of this form of entertainment: the fake police officer interviews (always the same well-groomed, non descript “Police Captain” in his non-descript “Police Office”), the even-faker helicopter voiceovers (”Oh, that was a close one! This guy is OUT OF CONTROL!”) and the uber-fake sound effects of tire squeals and police sirens that are supposed to make it sound oh-so-real. If I applied these same rules to science fiction shows, I probably would have watched more of Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda.

During isolated moments of sanity imposed by commercial breaks, I occasionally wonder why I watch these silly things. Is my life so boring that I must vicariously live the life of a criminal by watching them run a Lexus into a brick wall? Do I have in me the secret desire to drive on my wheel rims at 100 mph? Am I haunted by the fact that I’ve received only two speeding tickets in 25 years of driving, and neither of them were more than 5 mph over the speed limit? Do I really love white teeth that much?

I can trace some of this behavior to “Driver Education” videos. During the 1970s, my kid brother and I would wile away our summers watching public television. During the dead hours between morning-time Sesame Street and afternoon-time Electric Company, we would have exactly two choices in our channel-13 edutainment - Villa Alegra, a Hispanic children’s show for those that felt Maria on Sesame Street wasn’t going far enough, and education videos from the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.

Spanish-speaking puppets or movies about crash-test dummies? It was no contest — the car crashes won hands down. My brother and I learned a lot from these videos, including the various ways that one can actually crash an automobile — from the front, from behind, t-bone, sideswipe, head-on, spinout, flipping, rolling, splitting down the middle, against the side of the Chrysler Building… You name it, and my brother and I could simulate it using the Hot Wheels car of your choice.

How ironic that my early fascination with car crashes came from media designed to create safer drivers.

I used to worry that my continued indulgence would eventually lead me to other “reality” shows, much like that first cigarette that eventually leads to pipe-smoking in a jacket with suede patches on the elbows (shudder). Is John Bunnell the next big gateway drug? However, these fears appear to have been groundless. In over five years of viewing, the chase shows are my one and only foray into this particular aspect of modern television programming. It appears that Survivor X: Antarctica will have to generate its audience without my help.

Now, if they ever make something called World’s Wildest Police Chases of Former Survivor Contestants I may not be able to resist. Should this ever come to pass, please confiscate my remote. Friends don’t let friends watch former Survivor contestants.