The cast of Duck Dynasty
Photo courtesy Art Streiber/A&E
One of America’s broadest and best family sitcoms, Duck Dynasty, which is, yes, also a reality TV show, returns for its fourth season tonight on A&E. Duck Dynasty, about the antics of Louisiana’s hirsute, wealthy, proudly redneck Roberston clan, has been a huge hit for the cable channel, racking up ratings that would be the envy of ABC, NBC, CBS, or Fox. Executives at those networks must be beating their chests: Duck Dynasty is exactly
the comedy they have been trying and failing to make for years and
years. It is the funny, likeable, idiosyncratic, noncreepy, upbeat
version of the crisis of masculinity sitcoms that have cycled through the networks, with more coming this fall.
It’s a show in which men, aware of a changing world, hyper-perform
certain aspects of their machismo—facial hair, hunting, a
no-one-tells-me-what-to-do attitude—but with two key ingredients:
self-awareness and joviality. The Robertson men happily ham it up for
the camera they know is there, laughing instead of crying about the end
of men, and it takes the sourness out of the shtick.
The Robertsons, a close-knit, multigenerational, religious Southern
family that has made a fortune crafting duck calls, have described their
show as “guided reality.”
This means they are in cahoots with the producers when it comes to
planning and executing any given episode’s plot points, which tend to be
ripped right out of sitcom 101. Past episodes have followed the family
on camping trips and high school reunions. They all hew to sitcom beats
and are punctuated by solid to very good one-liners: The Robertsons are
quick and deadpan improvisers.
In tonight’s premiere, the three grown Robertson sons—straight man
Willie, wise-cracking Jase, easygoing li’l bro Jep—are prodded by their
wives into planning a vow-renewal ceremony for their parents on the
occasion of their 48th wedding anniversary. Jase and Willie
complain endlessly—about their wives’ texting habits, how they would
rather be fishing, having to get dressed up—until the whole thing comes
off without a hitch and they conclude that part of being a man is doing
anything to keep your wife happy, even if you whine about it the whole
time.
The wives of Duck Dynasty are also familiar from sitcoms:
they let their husbands get up to all the mischief, while they roll
their eyes and, ultimately, are proven right. They are the soft power
behind the loveable blowhards. Many of Duck Dynasty’s plots and
jokes revolve around a low-key anxiety about being pussy-whipped (in
the premiere someone makes a whipping sound effect at least three
times), but though the men on Duck Dynasty may fetishize
certain masculine behaviors and generalize about women for the camera,
modern gender relations—in which men and women are genuine partners, not
adversaries—does not inspire in them panic or outright misogyny.
Unlike their sitcom brethren, the Robertsons are not sad-sacks but
successes. Changing social and economic circumstances have made them
more protective of their guns and their religion and their beards, but
have otherwise allowed them to thrive. They are rich and getting richer,
famous and widely beloved: If it is the end of men, it is not the end
of them, and the show’s spirit reflects their good fortune. So
long as they get to keep their beards—much to their wives’ chagrin—they
are content and confident enough not to mind that the joke’s on them.
And the Robertsons, more than any other reality TV family, seem totally in on the joke. Duck Dynasty
has a nearly frictionless relationship with exploitation—as in, you do
not watch it and think anyone is being exploited—an extremely rare feat
for any reality show, but especially one about the personal lives of its
protagonists. Duck Dynasty offers the best of both TV worlds:
As with a sitcom, you can watch without feeling any creeping ickiness at
the lives being upended or mocked for your entertainment. And as with a
reality show, you can enjoy genuinely idiosyncratic individuals who are
too specific—too Southern, too Christian, too into their guns, too
hairy, too rich—ever to appear in a sitcom.
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