I love to watch terrible pseudo-history shows on The History Channel.
This is fiction masquerading as history. And I can’t stop myself. I know that they’re far-fetched and contrived. I know that shows like this have most certainly contributed to the dumbing down of America. It’s not like I’m looking for one more reason not to trust my government. And I know that the Venn diagram of people who really believe in the Curse of Oak Island and people who believe that Facebook is going to start charging you unless you copy and paste, NOT SHARE, this vaguely legal-ese post, is a single overlapping circle. I get it. Like I said, I’m not proud of it.
But I get SUCKED IN. Part of me loves to hatewatch them. Part of me just loves a good conspiracy theory. The idea that the government might be covering up evidence that Hitler really escaped the end of World War II, and lived for decades in Argentina? Sign me up. Was Lee Harvey Oswald really a Russian agent sent to kill JFK at the height of the Cold War? You can’t prove he wasn’t! (I don’t know, maybe you can. Questioning evidence is not really a practice these shows participate in.)
In no particular order, here are the things I have been made to wonder as I watch History Channel programming.
Does Bob Baer own more than one shirt?
Bob Baer is a former CIA officer who was meant to lend gravitas to the meanderings of “Hunting Hitler” – in which we were all led, very carefully, to believe that Adolf Hitler escaped the end of WWII and lived out his days in secret in South America, while trying to set up the rise of the Fourth Reich. (Wow, when I write it all out like that, I’m even more embarrassed.)
While his teams “on the ground” go exploring through the rainforests and talk with locals who claim to have seen or worked for Martin Bormann or Hitler himself, Bob sits somewhere in L.A. acting like he’s calling the shots in real time. What actually happened was that he wore the same freaking blue shirt through the entire first season (oh yeah, there’s even more than one season), and it. drove. me. bananas. Look, if your goal is really to make us believe all this is happening simultaneously, put in some damn effort. Unless the execs at the History Channel are actually holding him hostage for weeks at a time while filming is underway, make him change his shirt.
How did people with as little common sense as the Lagina brothers become millionaires?
My husband started watching The Curse of Oak Island, and I started making fun of him for it (I’m sure I’m super fun to be married to). But sure enough, I was sitting there watching it too, despite a perfectly good TV in the other room and an entire unwatched season of Poldark. This one falls firmly in the hatewatch camp for me. The Lagina brothers just have WAY too much money and time on their hands. They have spent MILLIONS of dollars digging holes into a swampy pit on a tiny island off the coast of Nova Scotia, because they believe someone (maybe the Templars? It’s always the Templars) buried a treasure there and then booby trapped it. People have died looking for this treasure. (Crazy people, probably, but still.) They somehow have themselves convinced that they’re doing something important by solving a mystery that no sane person has cared about or believed in for hundreds of years.
They’re grown up toddlers playing in a giant sandbox, and every time something goes wrong in their dig (and I do mean EVERY TIME because it happens EVERY TIME) one of them has a hissy fit and threatens to take their toys and go home.
All I can think the whole time is, “How did people this stupid get rich enough to waste this much money in the first place?” They must have really gotten in on the ground floor of a fantastic MLM opportunity. Is this a diamond-level perk?
Swampy island in the middle of nowhere and unlimited access to construction equipment! #goals #riseandgrind
Is “but that would have been amazing” a good enough premise for a show?
I just finished watching the first season of American Ripper. Again, despite my perfectly functional second TV. This was interesting to begin with, especially if you’re at all familiar with the story of H.H. Holmes and his killing spree in Chicago at the end of the 19th century (read The Devil in the White City). The premise here is that the descendant of Holmes has built up a case in his own mind that proves that Holmes was actually Jack the Ripper.
He somehow enlists the help of another former CIA operative, Amaryllis Fox. I don’t understand what’s happening here, really. It’s like The History Channel is taking in former CIA officers the same way Fox News is taking on former Trump staffers. She listens to his story and totally thinks he’s ridiculous but hey, they’re paying her so she’s like:
Anyway, they set out to research this. They travel to London and Chicago and meet with weapons experts and handwriting experts, and they even DIG UP HOLMES’ GRAVE after they get the idea that he may have escaped his own death. And spoiler alert, it turns out that like, NONE of the evidence leads anyone with any credibility to believe that Holmes was the Ripper.
The season finished and I thought, what did I just watch? All of those “Wow, if we found evidence that Holmes ______ that could mean he was the Ripper” moments were actually:
Just a whole bunch of nothing.
History Channel, I really think you need to consider a name change. Or add some quotation marks. The “History” Channel, perhaps? I wish I could say that I’m going to skip your next presentation on whether, I don’t know, President Lincoln actually traveled to the future to provide proof that we faked the moon landing or something. But I am going to strive to keep my distance. You shouldn’t mess with history.
Have you been sucked into these shows? What are you hatewatching these days?
Written by MacKenzie
Current obsessions: Outlander. All Souls Trilogy and Matthew Clairmont. Check Please! Supernatural romances. The 2005 Pride and Prejudice. Podcasts. All things cozy and northwoods-y. Married to my farmer, raising two fiercely independent daughters. You can find me reading all the Game of Thrones fan theories and pretending to clean my house.
