Mountain Monsters

This is just plain old mindless TV entertainment for a relaxing evening. I enjoy watching. I knew it was silly watching the promos. I would rather watch this than some dancing with the has been stars or hearing no talent American idols. I look forward to it knowing what is gonna happen. Building traps like the 'Moth Man' episode. That was great. Knowing these guys never catch anything and watching the mess they get into is funny. Plus how many more of the same old alien shows can we stand? For me the big draw was the Appalachians, I can watch anything about that region. I am not a hillbilly basher but they make for TV.

I checked out these guy's personal web site at "www.aimsa.org" (the one apparently not related to the "Destination America" channel), - and as an experiment to see if "A.I.M.S." (The Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings)actually even existed - I sent "Trapper", the leader of this gaggle of semi-pro actors, a personal email - giving him a little additional data that I had sought out about the "Devil Dog" of Logan County after I had done some armchair research, and my email came back "Return to sender - address unknown". Suspicions confirmed! An obvious bogus dummy site! I won't lie and say this show is not entertaining, it is, especially if your Ten years old. My issue mainly is that it pretends to be something that it's not (much like Pro-Wrestling and American politics). It will insult your intelligence brutally if you are actually watching it for real information or actual journalistic truth - and not merely as a diversion in order to surrender your higher brain functions to a nice catatonic stare, and a greater appreciation of the merciless butchering of the "Blair Witch Methodology" of media production.

Several of the gang seem to me to be vaguely recognizable as both bit part actors in other things that I may have seen them in over the years - and various cameos as other people here and there throughout the universe of premium / pay T.V. past times. Especially "Trapper", and the "Youngster" (The young fat guy whose habitually clumsy, and that wears painfully cliché red neck Bandannas) - both of which I feel like I have seen before in some other programming somewhere. It doesn't really matter though because it's obvious from the bad acting, the CGI "Witness Videos", the "over the top" characterizations, the Saturday morning cartoon / Three stooges delivery, and the obvious lack of real knowledge that any of the characters have over the core subject matter and background histology - that this show is a complete farce.

Look at this this way, it takes a little more than just a talent for "scarin up possums and coons" to catch something that has evaded people with PHDs and decades of serious zoological / expeditionary field research under their belts. And the "shoot first and ask questions later" approach does not bode well with a potentially endangered species that may technically be federally protected defacto.

Watch it if your desperate for low brow entertainment - just don't be gullible or stupid enough to buy it.

It is really funny - watching these good old boys out hunting the monsters - of course they never seem to get them on video or catch one - but they are the best at looking scared - It is really pretty funny the technical terms or better yet the faces they make when they are chasing the monsters and get scared. Frankly I would be carrying bigger firepower if I was them - instead of shotguns - can't do much withe them. But I have to say they do make for a funny show - Science ?? What's that - just mindless entertainment. Any one them would be just as much fun in a show called "people of Walmart" but then that's all too real !

This is just a fun show. The AIMS team are lovable, funny, crazy and each one a character. I really don't care if it's fake. I love Wild Bill's crazy, Trapper's 'putting the heat on it' and Huckleberry's 'gonna get it's a$$". Jeff's $10 words (bipedal)and Willie's traps are imaginative and downright cool. In this world of crime and war and bad things on just about every channel, it's nice to just sit back, suspend reality and smile for an hour. As far as I'm concerned, These guys can run around the woods looking for critters for years to come and I'll watch. Not everything has to be so serious...if it bugs you, change the channel.

...is the title of a real movie. This program is not far removed.

I often find myself defending Appalachians. Most descend from Scots/Irish settlers, so one can reasonably assume they're intelligent. (If you ignore the twang, you'll hear that most use good grammar, pronounce words correctly, and have a solid vocabulary.) This program, unfortunately, makes me think I should abandon my defense.

Even allowing for the fact that humans are, in general, irrationally credulous, how much of this are we supposed to believe? The Devil Dog episode is plausible (though I question the existence of coyote packs -- coyotes are generally solitary). The Wolf-Man episode is maybe, kinda, sorta believable -- if one accepts the possibility of a wolf with an excess of growth hormone.

The Moth Man and Lizard Demon episodes are beyond ludicrous. Thinking you saw something doesn't mean you saw what you thought you saw. I'm particularly bothered by the Lizard Demon's footprint, which looks fake. //All// the footprints look fake -- as if they'd been carefully crafted and pressed //just so// into the dirt.

As with "Porter Ridge", the best part of the show is the cast -- some of whom are drop-dead handsome (Willy, especially).

To summarize, I can only say... "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a thermal-imaging camera, and he'll turn it into a profitable TV series."