Sometimes, I weep for the future.

I don’t wish to be disrespectful to anyone, but if you’re going to the glass teat for reality than you really need to reevaluate your reality. I accept that one’s place in the space-time continuum gives each of us a specific reality based on innumerable possibilities, but I can’t accept that yours is so different from mine that you believe anything you see on TV to be approaching reality. If you stood where TV is in relation to reality you would, at the very least, need a powerful set of binoculars to see it; even then reality would probably be as clear as the Patterson-Gimlin Film. Honestly, every time I read comments on message boards questioning the reality of any show in the paranormal genre I oscillate between contempt, sympathy, and pity.

If you want to think about things that defy imagination you should spend some time on the internet looking at the current thinking in physics; multiple universes, compressed dimensions, and the search for the Grand Unified Theory can leave you breathless with the real possibilities around us. Maybe just go outside after dark, sit down, and consider your place in the unlimited universe above you. The thing is, it’s not unlimited; it’s expanding and gaining speed into… Into what? Time? If that doesn’t blow your mind you didn’t really do it.

I enjoy the heck out of “Mountain Monsters.” I own all three seasons and I play them over and over (I say play because lots of time I’m doing other things while they play). The guys are fun, they are American archetypes, redneck’s rednecks. I bet they would be an absolute hoot to have over for a bar-b-que or a fishing trip. I’d wager Trapper would be great around a campfire, spinning tales until late in the night.

They’re modern-day cowboys, gathering a posse to deal with something menacing the local population. The show embodies many characteristics found in popular TVdom; think of the “A-Team”, “MacGyver”, or “Inspector Gadget”. Look closely and you’ll see those traditional American values that have run through American movies since John Ford and Frank Capra or John Wayne and Gary Cooper.

Now if you want to say they “jumped the shark” in Season 3, I’ll not argue; the final episode in Season 2 certainly created the ramp. If this was “NCIS” I’d be a bit chapped, but “Mountain Monsters” certainly doesn’t claim to be more than an hour of entertainment. I would challenge you to stop trying to find holes in their “reality”; instead, allow yourself to enter their world for a while. You’ll laugh a bit, you’ll jump every now and then, and maybe you’ll even eye the dark in your backyard a bit differently just in case a Snallygaster or Wampus Beast might be lurking.

In “Danse Macabre”, Stephen King wrote that imagining is like lifting a rock; when you’re young it’s a pebble that you can lift with ease, but as you gain “experience” the rock gets larger and heavier until lifting it at all becomes too much. So, for old time’s sake, put on your back belt, a pair of gloves and let Trapper and the boys help you toss that rock up in the air for an hour.