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"You've got to watch ‘Tiger King,' "said a guy, a confirmed elitist who, if he watches anything at all, cleaves to "Masterpiece" on PBS while mocking me for my lowbrow tastes. "I've watched five episodes already!"
"Tiger King"? Isn't that like Twitter trolls with tigers? Or is it more like Jerry Springer/Maury Povich with tigers, sequins and too few teeth? If it were fiction, written by Elmore Leonard, I might try again. But he's dead.
The TV audience watches the big-cat circus people, their jealousies and self-indulgence taking them to some dark place like contract murder. The appeal is like that of every freak show in history — you watch, feeling superior to the toothless with their bad hair, their cheap animal prints.
Enjoy it as you please. But it's just not my metier. By the rules of modern journalism, I should be praising "Tiger King" to the heavens because it is popular. Playing to the mob is the new currency, in politics and culture. And clicks are our new god, even during Lent. But I just can't.
"Alone," oddly enough, is the name of the reality TV show on History that you should be watching during the COVID-19 shutdown, if you're looking for a quality program that matches the solitary, shelter-in-place zeitgeist.
The premise? Women and men, trained survivalists, are dropped alone into the wilderness, with some basic survival gear, but no guns. They hunt, trap, forage and fish to eat. They build their own fire and shelters. They fend off wolves and bears. There are no camera crews. They shoot their own video. They are absolutely alone out there in the cold, sometimes for months and months. They don't know how long it will last.
Some begin to crack. Sound familiar?
Their struggle through hunger is rough. But their battle with isolation — while talking about it all on camera — is riveting. The last one standing wins a $500,000 prize. "Alone" is the only TV show that can make me cry.
"I can't help laughing about the toilet paper hoarding craze now," said Ryan Pender, one of the producers for Leftfield, the company that makes the show. "Because if you're a student of ‘Alone,' you know that everything is toilet paper."
A few seasons ago, contestant Dave Nessia did everything right. He caught many fish and smoked them, to save for lean, cold times ahead. But he wouldn't eat the fish. Instead, he hoarded them for weeks thinking he'd wait just one more day, then one more day after that. The medical crew that regularly checks on the survivalists decided he'd lost too much weight and he was pulled out.
Some contestants get squirrelly. Others are mentally tough, holding fast, devoting themselves to projects. Some carve chess sets or find clay and make pots, or build fireplaces with river stones. Some collect medicinal herbs. One mistake can cost them their lives and the prize.
"We wanted it as pure as possible," Pender said. "Primitive bows if they choose. We put them in locations nobody has been in for years. It's self-reliance at its best. It's just you and your capabilities. And one mistake out there can end it."
One of my favorite contestants, a woman who knew all about medicinal plants and mushrooms, made a mistake, cutting herself with a hatchet. The infection was unforgiving. She took out her satellite phone, tapped out and called for extraction, and began weeping.
Some love it out there. Others begin to crack the moment they leave the helicopter, realizing how alone they are, that they're not the character in their own movie. It isn't a movie. It's the wilderness and it can kill you. The show runners call this "drop-shock."
In the last season of "Alone" — set in the Canadian Arctic — contestant Jordan Jonas, of Lynchburg, Va., took down a caribou with a bow and arrow. He had meat. But he needed more fat to keep his brain working. The bears came. And then a wolverine. Even bears are afraid of wolverines.
Jonas fought off a wolverine that stole his caribou fat. He used a stick and a hatchet and ended it. Then he caught a lake trout through the ice, which offered him enough fat to keep going. He won the $500,000.
You can find "Alone" on demand or through streaming services and watch six seasons. In the upcoming seventh season of "Alone," now being edited, the prize grows. Now the winner will win $1 million, if he or she lasts 100 days up there. I've watched all six seasons, and no one has made 100 days.
So, what makes it so compelling? Is it watching people go crazy as they starve?
"I don't think so," Pender said. "I think for some contestants what the show really is, is learning about yourself. And giving the folks at home an insight into what happens to your mind when food is tough to get; what happens to the body, when it's just you and you alone in your head.
"We're kind of all there now, in a way, right? Even in their own homes, some people are worrying about having enough resources, food, and there are folks who don't have jobs."
If there is one show for the coronavirus shutdown, it's not the trash about the tiger freaks.
It's "Alone."
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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.