Don't know if this has been covered yet but I noticed "Frontier House" on PBS is starting here April 29. 3 families living as 1880 homsteaders. Should be very interesting!!!......Kirk

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2002

Answers

Thanks for the info Kirk!!! I am a total PBS "junkie", gets so I can't stand to watch regular TV due to the supidity of content, let alone the commercials ;-)!!! I haven't got my program guide yet for this coming month and I didn't know what was coming up.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2002

I have never been able to find the PBS station. I wish I could because that Frontier House sounds really interesting. I admit, I still watch the Survivor shows. (They voted off Hunter)

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2002

What about that mega dink Rob? Man I hope he's gone tonight!!! Not that I watch but hubby does and sometimes I am in the room when that butthead lets fly with one of his close minded and repugnant remarks. UGH! That guy is a great poster child for birth control! Now back to Frontier House..is that gonna be like the Pioneer show that was taped in Canada? I missed that cuz I had no cable or satellite then. For PBS I get Buffalo channel. Do you think they'd air it too?

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2002

My gosh, I didn't think anyone else here would be watching Survivor! {blush} I missed the first group (from reports, it sounds like I'm glad I missed THEM). Yeah, voting Hunter off was VERY bizarre, but I guess Rob fancies himself some sort of master manipulator. I thought he was just an idiot, but I must admit, he does seem to have SOME intelligence, though no charm. I don't think voting off Gabe was the smartest move either, but he wasn't too clever about his actions. If he would have just promised his original teammates that he would stick to the plan, he'd still be there. And Rob or Sean would be gone by now (I hope THAT happens SOON) -- those two are the biggest whiners!

Anyway, PBS: Here is their online link

You can find the "local" listings via that link too. We don't seem to be getting Pioneer House. Must be a local decision.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2002

Well, DUH! Of course we don't get Pioneer House. Because the name is FRONTIER House!! I think April 29th is the national debut, so probably most stations will have it. {slinking away with a red face}

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2002

Normally I watch Survivor too, but between them changing the schedule because of basketball and my class schedule I"ve missed the last 3 episodes. This Thursday we're going to the Children's Museum to see their special "Star Wars" exhibit (starting the countdown for the huge Star Wars convention here in May), so it looks like I'll miss it again this week too. I hope that Tammy wins, because I have a friend named Tammy who's a big Survivor fan, so I keep teasing her that she's on the show. :)

-- Anonymous, April 01, 2002

I watched I think about two episodes of Survivor in the first year just to see what it was all about. I've decided the show is actually a psyops against survival at all since it's structured in such a way as to promote no one surviving. Trash TV at its worst.

......Alan.

-- Anonymous, April 01, 2002

"Trash TV at its worst. "

Really? You think it's worse than anything else on TV? Worse than Temptation Island, Big Brother, or Jerry Springer? ;-P

I know it's not quality TV. I do enjoy watching them compete in the challenges and see what they've come up with to test their endurance, though. This series, they are not provided with rice or cornmeal or canned goods. They have to scavenge everything. True, they plunked them down in the Marquesas right under various fruit bearing trees. But they have to work for everything they eat. There's also seafood (crabs, shrimps, slimy snails) -- when they can catch them, and this must have been a formerly inhabited area, because there are feral pigs and chickens. They haven't caught any yet though!

I also "like" watching how dumb they are. They were provided with a kettle, frypan, and knife, they have coconuts and limes (and other citrus, and I saw a papaya tree, though I don't know if it had any fruit). They've managed to start a fire. When they caught the icky slimy snails and other seafood, they started with eating them raw! They could have marinated the stuff in lime and coconut milk, then sauteed it! Or even skipped the sauteeing step. Geez! It was also funny to watch Rob (the macho dork) chasing chickens, as if he could run down a feral chicken!

-- Anonymous, April 01, 2002

Temptation Island, Big Brother, or Jerry Springer?

Couldn't say, we don't watch TV in the Hagan household and if we did we certainly wouldn't watch those shows most likely.

What makes Survivor trash TV isn't their individual or even collective experiences in survival but the fact that the game is set up that you must steadily eliminate your fellow contestants one by one until there's only one left who gets the bucks. What kind of survival is that? If they were doing this for real instead of in a highly artificial set of rules and there was some sort of overwhelming need to be the sole survivor you'd see them all ambushing and killing each other in the dark. Rudy, the SEAL, in the first year would likely have been the real survivor in that game. HE knew more about survival than all the rest of them combined but we all saw how long he lasted.

What that show is really about is "screw your neighbor." Make deals with one another to eliminate the other group, tribe, whatever and when you've managed to do that start eliminating your own people one by one. Reminds me of Machiavellian politics of the European middle ages and renaisance more than anything else.

Heck, at least Divorce Court and other such trash is honest about what they are.

.......Alan.

-- Anonymous, April 01, 2002

Wow Alan, I wish I could put things into words like you do. I thought the same thing about it when I watched it at my daughter's (we don't do t.v. here) and just knew that I really disliked the show.

-- Anonymous, April 01, 2002

Better Homes and Gardens (yeah, I know, but I got conned into buying a year's subscription from the next-door-neighbor's kid's school fundraiser...which I HATE doing, but I'm a wimp...) is doing a three- part story about this show. Guess it's March, April, and May. I read March's and April's stories.

At first I thought the whole thing was a big show piece (a photo of how the teenage girls were making eyeshadow out of lanolin and ashes or something, for one thing!), but after reading some of the text, I thought it sounded worthwhile. One thing of note was how the women involved became very aware of the tedium of that lifestyle!

It never ceases to amaze me that contemporary women would want to permanently return to that lifestyle (I mean those who would chose NO recourse back to current status, if need be), as it must have been backbreakingly hard, boring, isolated, and nervewracking! At present we women at least have the *luxury* of being able to chose to come back if we want to. I salute my foremothers efforts and wisdom, but from them I also learned to salute my options!! Otherwise, why did they work so hard? I think they would celebrate our freedoms, too!

Anyway, I think the show looks interesting. I'll watch it and probably tape it.

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2002