“Nimrod Nation” Tonight on Sundance Channel
Apparently a “nimrod” is a hunter. I always just thought a “nimrod” was an idiot. Shows how much I know.
Tonight on the Sundance Channel a new eight-part documentary series is premiering entitled Nimrod Nation (9:00pm with a second episode at 9:30). Produced by Brett Morgan (”The Kid Stays In the Picture”) the series follows the small, rural town of Watersmeet, Michigan, as the locals root on their beloved high school basketball team, the Nimrods. Riding the Friday Night Lights train of sympathetic small town life and allegiances, Nimrod Nation trades in pads and helmets for hard courts and the round ball, and substitutes the Texas heat for Upper Peninsula cold and snow. The personalities interestingly enough, are much the same, though only in the way all of us, wherever we may live, work and have fun are technically the same. More after the jump…
Small towns are intrinsically interesting, especially to those who reside within the comfortable confines of urban life. To many, myself included, all of that open space kind of freaks me out. The question seems to always be, “what exactly do people do out there to pass the time?” Well, the vastness of that open space does a good job of answering that question. Like their mascot, these are outdoors men, hunters, fishers and the like. Sitting here in my New York apartment I was first struck by the sheer quantity of guns in the town and how those guns seemed to be key to a good portion of the inhabitants ability to pass time. As the episode went along what was perhaps more startling was how quickly I became acclimated to the presence of all of that fire power. Hunting is a way of life. There is a moment at the end of the first episode that is so matter-of-fact in its frankness its kind of amazing the scene plays as funny as it does. What might have been a truly horrifying experience twenty-five-minutes earlier seemed not only justified here but right. The series deserves a lot of credit for not portraying these people as nimrods but as Nimrods.
Approaching the last week of November, smack dab in the throws of a writers’ strike with good television being harder and harder to come by, Nimrod Nation a terrific way to spend an hour on Mondays for the next month. Check it out (the first two episodes are available on iTunes, with the first being FREE — it always is, right?).
November 27th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I couldn’t wait for the show to air and I wasn’t disappointed. I may be biased because I live just over 100 miles from Watersmeet and coached against the Nimrods just a few years ago. This is how many people live in the Upper Peninsula. It’s a great place to live and raise a family. I just wish the show was about Lake Linden :o)