Strangely Addictive

Now I know that plenty of people are addicted to various TV shows—some of them serious shows, and others, well… guilty pleasures. I have to admit that in between The Wire, Battlestar Galactica (the current series), Frontline and Mythbusters, I suffer a strange addiction to the Discovery Channel show How It’s Made. As the Wikipedia article puts it:

The show is a documentary program showing how common, everyday items (including foodstuffs like bubblegum, industrial products such as motors, musical instruments including guitars, and sporting goods such as snowboards) are manufactured, and is filmed to simplify overdubbing in different languages, for example largely avoiding showing a narrator or host onscreen, and most often also not having employees of featured companies speak on camera. An offscreen narrator explains each process, making heavy use of puns. Each half hour show usually has three or four main segments, with each product getting a demonstration of about five minutes, with exceptions for more complex products.

I’m not quite sure I can explain its appeal to me, but I think I’ve always been fascinated by factory tours… understanding the process (say it with the long “O” sound-- it’s originally a Canadian show) is really entertaining. Little, “Aha… that’s how it’s done!” steps are always rewarding. For instance, candy canes are bent after being placed in their wrappers. I find the choreography of the assembly machines pretty mesmerizing, for some odd reason. Some parts of the show take me back to my materials science undergrad roots (“…oh, cool, lost wax casting!”)

As examples of what they cover—see the YouTube clips of curling stones, bacon, and aluminum cans.

Also, it is about as utterly dorky of a show as you can imagine. While watching the show and hearing the cheesy Casiotone synth pop soundtrack (as the product rolls down the assembly line), I find myself sitting on the couch, bopping my head along with the beat, getting down with my bad self. Yeah, it’s about 1970’s porn soundtrack level music.

One somewhat disturbing episode, though, was hatchery chick sorting--it’s the same familiar type of big industrial machines, except that the items on the assembly line are these little yellow fluffballs falling all over each other.


I realize, though, that as dorky as I am for liking the show (and even worse, blogging about it), there are people with even less of a life than myself: for instance, whoever spent time writing the Wikipedia episode guide to the series (tone: note that this is delivered with mocking affection, not full-on derision).