Ice Road Truckers is great.

Shit's going great. I downloaded season 10 of Ice Road Truckers. Let me tell you about that.

There are no spoiler alerts possible for IRT. The show itself is one long tease where nothing... actually... ever... happens. I get a real bang out of it. I remember watching some of this show in 2008, and I was blown away to see that they're still doing it.

Ice Road Truckers.

They drive big rigs in the far north to get supplies to remote locations. To get there, they have to drive across frozen lakes. If the ice is too thin, a truck goes in - or at least that's what they promise. I haven't seen a truck go through the ice yet, so I checked with the internet. Turns out a truck has never gone through the ice. A spoiler is when you say what did happen. What do you call it when you point out that nothing really ever does? I didn't spoil anything. I'd blame the camera crew for getting zero footage of sinking trucks.

This might sound like I don't like Ice Road Truckers as a show. Not true. I think it's a gas. You just can't take it literally. The semi-scripted action is pure banality, and I am highly amused at how they try to spice it up. They talk all about how they're probably gonna go through the ice. It's quaint and theatrical. They're so ready to go through the ice. They open the door as they cross the ice slowly - one guy steers from the running board prepared to bail. They talk about how they could be stranded if they break down, but help is always there.

I'll tell you what a real show is: Highway Thru Hell. Not the American one. The Canadian one. That show follows a tow truck company that recovers crashed big rigs along a horrendous stretch of highway. Winter in Canada. It looks pretty miserable. Everybody takes themselves very seriously. I am greatly amused. The conflicts are exaggerated; people get pissed off. As angry as they ever get, they are still Canadian, so they can't help being weirdly polite.

I would hate to watch those shows with commercials, but that's what torrents are all about. I've got that VPN shit set up, so I'm safe. Until the VPN fails for a split second - then my folks get their nineteenth warning that their son is a crook, he's crooking around on their internet, and he downloaded HBO*

*all of it.