It was a rare evening, in which I actually found myself at home, with pretty much nothing to do. Usually, whenever this has been the case, I’ve spent said time and then some playing League of Legends, but I’ve kind of been on a hiatus from playing lately, and I didn’t really feel like getting drawn into the time suck LoL can occasionally be. I was caught up on wrestling, the laundry was all done, the dog was empty, the pets all fed, and no need to brog. So I turned on the television, with no objective ahead; naturally, I guided the schedule to see what was on TLC.
“My Fat Saved My Life,” followed by “Extreme Time Cheaters.” I set my DVR to record both shows, and then I went and did something else, because of course I didn’t actually spend my time watching television, live, and subjecting myself to actually having to watch commercials. Plssssss
So when I had more time at another time, I went back to watch these shows, because they clearly seemed like they had the potential to be sadistically entertaining to me. Honestly, at first blush, I was more excited by the show about fat people, because TLC shows about fat people have already gotten a good rap with me so far, but to be honest, I wasn’t really that impressed by My Fat Saved My Life. The title pretty much explains it all, because it’s just a series of short stories, naturally poorly reenacted, about people who were involved in catastrophic incidents in which normal people should have died, but solely on account of their massive girths, they somehow inexplicably survive.
One woman was so fat that she couldn’t wear a seatbelt when she drove. But she still managed to wedge herself into a driving position, regardless. She got t-boned one day, but because of her monstrous mass, instead of getting ejected from the passenger window like a normal-sized person not wearing a seatbelt would, she kind of just got stuck in the car and survived. Sure, it required the jaws of life to extract her, and she made sure to point out all of the bystanders judging her when being carted away, but she survived.
Another guy was this fat bar owner who was staying in a hotel, while out of town for a darts tournament. After getting bounced in the first round, he and his friends got absolutely shit-faced at the hotel bar. Drunk out of his mind, he went sprinting down the hallway on the 17th floor, and on account of diminished depth perception, ended up running through and out the window at the end of the hallway, and falling 17 stories, landing face-first on the concrete sidewalk. Inexplicably, he survived, solely based on the fact that his girth, created something of an impact dampener, thus absorbing the energy that would have made the fall lethal. Sure, he broke numerous bones and damaged some internal organs, but he survived a seventeen-story fall because he was fat.
I turned off the show at this point, because it really wasn’t that interesting. But seeing the preview for Extreme Time Cheaters, where a man liquified all of his food, because it was faster to consume, a woman who shaved her legs in the pool, and a man determined to get in-and-out of a grocery store in under 15 minutes, seemed like there was some potential for some genuine train wreck television.
Honestly, the show was way more intriguing than I thought it would be; easily superior over How Fat Saved My Life, in terms of entertainment by watching people doing cringe-worthy things.
The guy who liquified all of his food to save time consuming it also turned out to do laundry just four times a year; subsequently, he had a massive wardrobe, consisting of among other things, 125 pairs of the exact same socks and underwear, because his logic was that instead of spending 4 hours a week doing laundry, why not spend 4 hours every 4 months doing ALL the laundry? And in true TLC fashion, they create a scenario where he tries to go on a date with someone unaware of his idiosyncrasies, and the awkward nature of watching a date transpire, before she ultimately grows impatient.
Pool leg shaver woman, turned out to be a schedule-obsessive time micromanager, who literally schedules her entire life to a T. From scheduling time for sex, time to schedule the schedule, among other activities, there’s absolutely no part of the day that isn’t accounted for on her schedules. Her scenario is how she plans an extremely tightly scheduled birthday party for her husband, where all activities including arrival, mingling, food, pool party, cake and departure are completely scheduled, and her wimpy husband goes along with it, because the payoff for staying on schedule, is alluded to be, sex. Who cares what all of his friends think about being rushed and herded like cattle??
And then the third guy is a guy obsessed with counting his steps, because he equates steps to time, and the lower number of steps to accomplish, anything, meaning less time spent doing it. He configures his home to where anything and everything can be accomplished with minimal number of steps taken in between them, and subjects his two sons to his obsessive compulsive behavior, like sending one of his sons to camp a spot in a grocery store line, while he and his other son execute a carefully prepared route of the store in order to pick up everything on a list.
The payoff for all these “contestants” are that in spite of their obsessions with saving time, they’re all supposedly for reasons with the best of intentions. Liquid food guy turns out to be a humanitarian for a third-world country, and often spends all of his vacation time visiting impoverished countries. Schedule lady supposedly was once bed-ridden, and having managed whatever ailment that nearly crippled her, has an outlook on life that there isn’t a single minute worth wasting, and lives what she preaches about maximizing every second of the day. And Steps guy simply wishes that every minute saved by his idiosyncratic step counting, is another minute that he can spend with his sons.
However, the fallacy with Extreme Time Cheaters, and just the concept of extreme measures taken to save time, is that extrapolating the time saved, to whatever measurements, doesn’t really have a concrete payoff date. Like, on shows about saving money, like Extreme Cheapskates, the money saved, can typically be cut off at some points, and have tangible evidence. Like money saved in a week, a month, or a year, can have tangible hard currency in hand at the end of these time frames, which could then be used to spend or put into perspective.
Time has no such tangible evidence of existing having been saved. All throughout Extreme Time Cheaters, the show constantly extrapolates the time saved by the extreme measures being taken, saying stuff like “saved X amount of hours per year” or “over a lifetime, saving Y amount of years.” At what point does any of that actually pay out? Sure, I’m sure they’re using an equation based on life expectancy or such, but say a lifetime of extreme time saving is done, and liquid food guy suddenly “has” 7 years in hand – so what? It’s not like time is a tangible currency that can be spent back or anything; the things he did to save time doesn’t necessarily mean that he will live 7 years beyond typical life expectancy or anything.
It’s a crucial flaw in what’s otherwise an entertaining show of obsessive-compulsive train wrecks of people, because time is just something that really can’t be saved in the vein of currency or something that can be recouped.
The bottom line is that Extreme Time Cheaters, I’d likely be compelled to watch more of. This particular episode was the pilot episode, as it was for Fat People, so there’s no sure guarantee that either show will get more episodes. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about seeing more fat people being saved by their fat, but I wouldn’t mind watching more Extreme Time Cheaters, even if I think the vast majority of their efforts are for naught.
