So one night about two months ago, I couldn't sleep. Of course, I grabbed the remote and started flipping through the channels. I come across this show…there are a bunch of bearded men with southern accents, looking a bit like ZZ Top…and one of them is trying to teach a teenage girl I have to assume is his daughter, how to drive. They set up some garbage cans in the parking lot so she can practice parallel parking. She fails miserably, hits one of the cans and when it falls over, garbage spills into the parking lot. Of course, as a viewer, I didn't expect the can to be in use. It looked like it was new, just used for the setup.
I have never laughed so much – aloud – at a television show. The set-up is redneck, slow southern drawl, but it is smart and funny, well timed and with subtle humor and physical gags.
Duck Dynasty. Who would have thought?
I didn't watch it again for a few weeks, but when I did, it was a little marathon so I got a full dose. It really is funny. Really.
Life is too serious. I needed something ridiculous to make me laugh. A bunch of grown men in a water hazard pond in the middle of the golf course hunting big bullfrogs so they can take them home to cook and eat is so ridiculous. Then they are caught by the rent-a-cop security guy in a golf cart. One of the older guys in the group just climbs out of the pond and walks away into the woods without saying a thing. Someone in the pond mumbles something about him learning to do that in the 70s. So they are all hauled in by the security officer and you can see there are no frogs. After they are released, they are driving home and alongside the road they find the old guy walking with a bag of frogs over his shoulder.
Now mind you, I am a person who does not laugh at the 3 Stooges. I can watch I love Lucywithout cracking a smile. I almost got divorced over how stupid the Airplanemovie is. And only one or two things out of all the Monte Python Moviesmakes me smile. I just don't like planned humor.
Duck Dynastyappears to be delivered without the intent of humor. It is handed out as voyeurism at its finest, inside the life of unassuming modest hillbilly rednecks who don't care that they are wealthy, they just want frogs for dinner.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Woman on the Edge: Duck Dynasty review