Axed and Famous

The first episode was interesting from a surrealist point of view (and hey, LaToya got tasered), but then things got depressing. Crack addicts, toothless prostitutes, battered and bloody wives, and LaToya and more LaToya and more and more and more LaToya.

Jack Osbourne and Wee Man barely appeared in the last couple of episodes. They were the only celebrities worth watching, because they were real. Erik Estrada, Trish Stratus, and Jackson -- they just don't even seem like real people, what with all the enhancements, fake hair, etc. They try, but they just miss the mark of being a real person.

Jack Osbourne and Wee Man -- those are guys you can hang out with, more or less. Or maybe that's just their carefully constructed image.

Though the show tried to bring some positive light to an otherwise depressed area of the country, I couldn't help but feel depressed anyway whenever a crack addict got hauled out of a house or when some lot lizard got pulled out of a truck or when some middle aged, middle class man in a nice Jeep Grand Cherokee got pulled over for trying to solicit a prostitute. I couldn't help but look at them -- the lowest common denominator of society -- and somehow feel guilty for watching.

Maybe we viewers were the guilty ones.

That the celebrities took time to preach "a better way" to criminals is just ridiculous on so many levels. If everyone listened to LaToya when she says, "There's a better life!" then there would be no one's misfortunes and mistakes and ruined lives to exploit on national television. That is, unless you switched to "American Idol," like millions of other Americans.

At its base, "Armed and Famous" was exploitation, but it wasn't the town itself that got exploited so much as the criminals who live here. That's fair enough. "COPS" does the same thing wherever they go.

To be perfectly fair, Muncie is not all trash, all the time, and "Armed and Famous" was obviously not a show designed to parade all the positives of Muncie. Expecting a whitewash would've been ridiculous. You want local fame? You want Hollywood to pay attention to Muncie? It comes with a price. They might show something you don't like.

Of course, there were real positives, such as Wee Man visiting the twin girls who live with the same dwarfism he faces every day. That's the kind of thing to watch. Anything else seems like a superiority complex at work.

By watching this show, even out of morbid curiosity, we became part of the exploitation of our own.

Every town has problems. But in Muncie, if you're able to turn a blind eye for years and years, you forget that Muncie is like any other town.

You forget that, hey, there are drug dealers and toothless prostitutes in Muncie, too. Then you get the stark realization. That's what happened to me. Assuming much about Muncie based on four episodes of bad television is unfair, but it sure draws your attention when crack addicts are getting the shakedown in neighborhoods you know.

We idealize our hometowns. "Armed and Famous," for all of its efforts to remain positive, took away some of that idealism and made me face the truth head-on: Muncie has severe problems with poverty, drug activity, prostitution, and just flat out bizarre crime. A man stealing a backhoe?

What has been done to prevent entire sections of Muncie from rotting away?

Is it not ironic that the anti-drug program is called "D.A.R.E.," as though we must be dared to do something better with ourselves and our town, as though avoiding drugs is akin to bungee jumping -- just another dare?

"Armed and Famous" succeeded in its efforts to show Muncie for what it is -- another run down midwestern town that used to be decent, that used to have opportunity, that used to be my home -- it's like driving by your old house and seeing it burned out and falling to pieces. It hurts to see, but it's real and it's home.

So perhaps it's a good thing that CBS pulled the plug. Now we can turn a blind eye again.

But maybe we shouldn't anymore.