TAKE ME… TAKE ME… TAKE ME TO…

WARNING: This show contains no singing teenagers.
So it probably won't be around long.

This week after what seemed like a full year of hype and hoopla, ABC finally premiered a shiny new ball of mysteries and riddles masquerading as an hour-long Tuesday night drama. Only this time instead of an island, they're looking to get viewers Lost on The River. (See what I did there? Word play… sexy.)

Wasn't really interested in the show when I first heard about it, but then I saw that Bruce Greenwood was in it and I decided to give it a look. I mean… Bruce Greenwood, dude's a fine actor in his own right, but the man was also Captain Pike in the recent Star Trek film and he's the voice of the cartoon Batman. Star Trek AND Batman? Obviously the guy's trying hard to win my loyalty. And he has it dammit!

"I'll just sit here until they promote some third-year punk cadet
to be Captain. Because that would make total sense.

Some slight spoilers follow so if you haven't seen the show yet, then go do that and come back. I'll wait. Unless you don't give a crap about seeing it and then by all means read on. Of course, if you don't care then why would you keep reading? I mean, I want you to keep reading of course and… I've just made my head hurt.

The plot in a nutshell involves a mom, her son and a reality television crew venturing into the Amazon to find the pater familias. (Google that shit if you don't know what that means.) Greenwood plays the lost pater, a Steve Irwin type guy who disappeared six months prior, was officially classified as dead but then his emergency beacon suddenly starts chirping so the search is on again. At first glance the show is annoying as all hell because it's filmed with handheld cameras and hidden stationary cams to give it the feel of reality TV. What, we even have to make scripted shit look like monkey television now?

But here's the thing, mom and son head into a part of the jungle so effed up and scary that the very mention of its name makes the locals shit their loincloths. And they do so after finding out that dad got lost in there because he went looking for magic. Yeah… magic. They even find video evidence that he was getting into dark voodoo type stuff and things that human beings who wear shoes and take indoor shits shouldn't ever mess with. 

"Dude, are my hands on fire? Because
I am seriously tripping balls right now."

That's where the show took a turn for me. Please understand, I love my dad dearly. And if my mom called and told me that while he was minding his own damn business one day, just sitting on his front porch enjoying his retirement, some banshee from hell came outta nowhere, scooped him up and dragged him kicking and screaming into a swamp, then I'm going into that swamp armed with whatever ordinance I can carry and I'm not leaving that bitch without my Pop-pop. Main thing being that in this tale of make-believe, my daddy didn't go in there of his own freewill. Different story if Mom calls up and says: "Your father went into the swamp over by Dead-man's Holler because he thought it'd be fun to draw pentagrams on trees with bat piss and try to poke the Devil in the eye with a stick." That being the case then I'd find myself on a whole different quest. I'd be out looking for a new father figure because the old one was apparently broken. 

Great, even tokenism
is getting outsourced
these days.

Still, the nine idiots portrayed in this show press on through a butt-load of supernatural shit to find the dumbass. And let's profile those nine people, shall we? Six of them are white, two of them Hispanic, one of them — A.J. the cameraman — is black. But not only is A.J. black, he's British. Reason I bring this up is because there is no f@%king way an American brother is going to see the shit A.J. sees in the first hour of this show and continue on with the search for some white guy he doesn't even know. Sorry, that don't happen. But I suppose they raise brothers differently across the pond and perhaps that's why the producers included the character. His skin color helps the show fill some network diversity quota while his being a proper English gentleman explains why his one line of dialogue isn't "F@%k that shit!"

That being said, A.J. pretty much illustrates the reason I would never have to worry about something like that happening to my dad. And why my son will never have to hook his mom up on Match.com looking for Daddy 2.0. Because American made black men don't do that shit, true story. Want proof? Just look to Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. They've been helping black babies and their mamas find their daddies for years and none of them were ever found in the in the bowels of some rainforest looking for no f@%king magic. Most of the time they're just up the road hiding out at some skank's house so I rest my case. 

But you ARE the kid's father so quit f@%king
dancing and sit down, you jackass!

But getting back to The River… yeah that show sucks. Maybe shoulda just said that in the first place and saved us all some time.

Sorry.