In this afflicted world, torn by war, ravaged by climate change, bursting always with fresh diseases and disasters, a ray of hope shone from my flat-screen last night, and I will share it with all of you so you won’t succumb to hopelessness over the fate of humanity.
Mountain Monsters IS BACK ON THE AIR! Just reruns, of course, but now you can view six seasons of Mountain Monsters on Max. I first discovered this series back in 2015. This "reality" (described as such by Wikipedia) show follows a band of backwoods bumblers as they attempt to catch the mythical creatures of Appalachia, mostly Bigfeet, but including werewolves, lizard demons and Mothman. They travel the spine of the mountains, from Georgia to Pennsylvania, seeking every episode to bag creatures that don’t exist.
The viewer can only watch in awe. Questions arise in his or her mind, questions like, “Are these guys for real?” and, because the monster hunters are uniformly big men, “Haven’t they heard of Ozempic yet?” The five of them must total at least fifteen hundred pounds, the better to outweigh any Sasquatch they meet. The biggest of them, Buck, is often videoed wallowing fearlessly into the woods, wearing a pair of jeans an entire refugee family could fit inside. The rest of them range in size from merely pot-bellied to extra chonk.
Every episode begins with the team interviewing a local resident of the holler who has Bigfoot problems like Steve Bannon has grooming issues. His name is Bobo, Ferk or Tuckle, or something along those lines. He shows them a footprint, a scratch on a tree, or a fuzzy picture, evidence of an unkown critter's lair being nearby. Inevitably, Ferk says something like, “I been livin’ in these here yonder back woods my whole life, and I ain’t never seen nothing like that.”
The Monster hunters nod sagely, even though they look like they have been living at the pie counter at Dell’s Diner their whole lives, and agree, “That ain’t no bear/wolf/coyote/hairy escaped convict. That’s a Big-Horned Bigfoot, or Bat-Winged Goose Gobbler, or a Vampire Turkey Vulture,” and promptly set out to capture it.
Willy, the “Trap Builder,” has to build a new trap out of discarded auto parts. A new trap is always necessary, because all the old traps didn’t catch a thing. The rest of the crew roam around the woods, proudly displaying all the technology, like infrared scopes, night vision goggles and video cameras, that they’ve learned to use, even though they probably went to elementary school barefoot. They pile into a four-wheel ATV, which, because of the well-fed nature of the team, always looks like it’s going to tip over even when it’s standing still.
In Episode II, the team is after the “Devil Dog,” a giant canine killer, roaming the hills of some podunk county. They are using the term “Devil Dog,” completely devoid of irony, despite the fact that Devil Dogs were a nasty, last century snack cake that might actually still be available in some stale corner of a 7-11 somewhere in America, unless Buck has eaten them all. This time the trap catches something, but it turns out to be just a couple of local dogs. The Devil Dog herself, described as an “alpha white female weighing over two hundred pounds,” has eluded our heroes.
In my observation of this show, the boys stick to Eastern monsters. We who live in The West can choose to be insulted by this, since we have plenty of Sasquatchi of our own, roaming wild from the Rockies to the Cascades to the Sierras, that probably need trapping, but I don’t want to criticize the monster hunters for not being willing to wedge themselves into an airline seat and fly out here. They are all exactly the kind of guys that make you freeze in horror when you see them lumbering down the aisle and you have an empty seat next to you on the plane.
There’s lots of shots of the guys blanching in fear at some rustlings in a corncrib that might be Bigfoot picking his enormous toenails, and plenty of wild hallooings from the darkest corner of the woods, at which the Mountain Men cringe, and invariably say, “Whut was that?” They come across piles of bones picked cleaned, supposedly by foul creatures, and vile footprints along soggy bottoms, which make the boys question the wisdom of continuing the pursuit, but which the cynical among us might suspect were planted there by the show’s producers.
Apparently, there were further seasons of Mountain Monsters after these six, but they are on Roky or Dinghu or some streaming service I don’t want to find or pronounce correctly. I already have Max, though, and if you’re lucky, you do too. Grab a snack and tune in. Make that snack biscuits and gravy. Now you’ve got the spirit.
Mountain Monsters IS BACK ON THE AIR! Just reruns, of course, but now you can view six seasons of Mountain Monsters on Max. I first discovered this series back in 2015. This "reality" (described as such by Wikipedia) show follows a band of backwoods bumblers as they attempt to catch the mythical creatures of Appalachia, mostly Bigfeet, but including werewolves, lizard demons and Mothman. They travel the spine of the mountains, from Georgia to Pennsylvania, seeking every episode to bag creatures that don’t exist.
The viewer can only watch in awe. Questions arise in his or her mind, questions like, “Are these guys for real?” and, because the monster hunters are uniformly big men, “Haven’t they heard of Ozempic yet?” The five of them must total at least fifteen hundred pounds, the better to outweigh any Sasquatch they meet. The biggest of them, Buck, is often videoed wallowing fearlessly into the woods, wearing a pair of jeans an entire refugee family could fit inside. The rest of them range in size from merely pot-bellied to extra chonk.
Every episode begins with the team interviewing a local resident of the holler who has Bigfoot problems like Steve Bannon has grooming issues. His name is Bobo, Ferk or Tuckle, or something along those lines. He shows them a footprint, a scratch on a tree, or a fuzzy picture, evidence of an unkown critter's lair being nearby. Inevitably, Ferk says something like, “I been livin’ in these here yonder back woods my whole life, and I ain’t never seen nothing like that.”
The Monster hunters nod sagely, even though they look like they have been living at the pie counter at Dell’s Diner their whole lives, and agree, “That ain’t no bear/wolf/coyote/hairy escaped convict. That’s a Big-Horned Bigfoot, or Bat-Winged Goose Gobbler, or a Vampire Turkey Vulture,” and promptly set out to capture it.
Willy, the “Trap Builder,” has to build a new trap out of discarded auto parts. A new trap is always necessary, because all the old traps didn’t catch a thing. The rest of the crew roam around the woods, proudly displaying all the technology, like infrared scopes, night vision goggles and video cameras, that they’ve learned to use, even though they probably went to elementary school barefoot. They pile into a four-wheel ATV, which, because of the well-fed nature of the team, always looks like it’s going to tip over even when it’s standing still.
In Episode II, the team is after the “Devil Dog,” a giant canine killer, roaming the hills of some podunk county. They are using the term “Devil Dog,” completely devoid of irony, despite the fact that Devil Dogs were a nasty, last century snack cake that might actually still be available in some stale corner of a 7-11 somewhere in America, unless Buck has eaten them all. This time the trap catches something, but it turns out to be just a couple of local dogs. The Devil Dog herself, described as an “alpha white female weighing over two hundred pounds,” has eluded our heroes.
In my observation of this show, the boys stick to Eastern monsters. We who live in The West can choose to be insulted by this, since we have plenty of Sasquatchi of our own, roaming wild from the Rockies to the Cascades to the Sierras, that probably need trapping, but I don’t want to criticize the monster hunters for not being willing to wedge themselves into an airline seat and fly out here. They are all exactly the kind of guys that make you freeze in horror when you see them lumbering down the aisle and you have an empty seat next to you on the plane.
There’s lots of shots of the guys blanching in fear at some rustlings in a corncrib that might be Bigfoot picking his enormous toenails, and plenty of wild hallooings from the darkest corner of the woods, at which the Mountain Men cringe, and invariably say, “Whut was that?” They come across piles of bones picked cleaned, supposedly by foul creatures, and vile footprints along soggy bottoms, which make the boys question the wisdom of continuing the pursuit, but which the cynical among us might suspect were planted there by the show’s producers.
Apparently, there were further seasons of Mountain Monsters after these six, but they are on Roky or Dinghu or some streaming service I don’t want to find or pronounce correctly. I already have Max, though, and if you’re lucky, you do too. Grab a snack and tune in. Make that snack biscuits and gravy. Now you’ve got the spirit.
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