Geek Girl Navigating the World – Putting it in Top Gear

I’m not a gearhead.  I’m not even close to qualifying.  My own vehicle is old and kind of shabby, but it has a name and it’s functional, so I’m pretty happy with that.  That doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate the beauty of a car, or that I don’t look at newer (and older) cars from time to time.  I still don’t like the way the new Dodge Chargers look because that back end is just ugly.  The new Dodge Challengers, though, are something else, entirely.  I think those are gorgeous. While I hold those opinions, I’m a casual car enthusiast at best.  As long as the car starts and gets me where I want to go, that’s really all that matters to me.

Most car shows bore me nearly to tears.  I could care less about the specs or how it handles or even how much it costs.  Often, the information is presented in such a dry manner you can feel your eyeballs going gritty as the moisture is sucked from them.  It’s usually some guy in a mechanic’s shirt pointing out some of the metal pieces under the hood out to people who may be watching that might actually care.  That’s not to say that I don’t respect mechanics.  Mechanics are the people who keep my car functional.  I can change the oil and change the tires and swap out a battery if I need to, but when it comes to things like wiring and pulling out engines to get at the clutch, that’s best left to experts.

Everyone needs a hobby and there’s no reason that the people who are really into cars shouldn’t have shows like that to watch.  If they enjoy them, more power to them.  I’m going to go ahead and stick with my usual geektacular pursuits and leave you to it.

While waiting for an episode of “Black Books” to start on BBC America, though, there was nothing else on, so I left it on BBC America and figured that whatever might be on would have to be better than another rerun of “Seinfeld”. The show that was running was “Top Gear” and the episode they showed that fateful day was the one in which the hosts purchase cars in Africa and race them across Botswana.  They were given a pretty tiny budget and  told that the car was supposed to last the entire race.  If it didn’t, then they would have to ride across the finish line in a Volkswagen Beetle.

Over the first two or three minutes, I occasionally glanced up as one or the other of the hosts sounded excited about something or other.  Then, when Richard Hammond gleefully announced that he would call the Opel Kadett he purchased for the race “Oliver” and then immediately  backpedaled because they do not name cars on “Top Gear.”  I stopped doing what I had been doing and, instead started actually watching the show.  I was astonished with how funny the show was.  I was consistently laughing through the entire thing.  It was clear that the Botswana episode was a special one, but I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to try watching a couple more episodes to see if I liked the show in general or just that one episode in particular.

What I found wasn’t just a car show.  James May, Jeremy Clarkson, and Richard Hammond don’t just host, they operate their show as if they’ve been given free rein to conduct the kinds of experiments that any self-respecting geek would absolutely love to try given enough money, time, and a decent supply of cars that don’t necessarily have to be kept in pristine condition.  When it comes to their personal, high-end vehicles, there is obvious pride of ownership.  During a challenge, though, it’s sometimes a remarkable thing for the car to actually be recognizable when they finish.

There is a good mix of real world, practical challenges, like the episode in which they purchased British manufactured vehicles on a very restricted budget and had to do things like drive up a hill and put on the parking break, get out, and then get back into the car again.  One of the cars rolled back down the hill almost immediately and another one filled almost completely full of smoke.  Then, there are the challenges that have very little to do with anything an average driver would ever have to face.  On that same challenge, each car was filled to the bottom of the windows with water and each of the hosts was required to drive the car until all of the water leaked back onto the pavement.  The one who drove the farthest was the winner.

They have played soccer with compact cars to demonstrate maneuverability.  They have made their mothers participate in a sub-compact car challenge that involved stages of a relay type race, in which Jeremy Clarkson shamelessly cheated to help his mother get the car started, all of which was captured on camera. There have also been demonstrations like pitting a Land Rover against
a Sherman Tank in a land-based war game and testing the acceleration of a sports car against a jet on a runway.  These are the kinds of things that geeks can fantasize about almost endlessly.  These are the kinds of things that geeks will do if we’re given the opportunity, just because we can and we desperately want to see what will happen when we do.

“Top Gear” even has celebrity segments, in which a celebrity is supposed to drive a particular car around a track in a timed lap.  Some of the results are very impressive.  Many of the celebrities involved are actually very good drivers and quite adept at handling a particular car.  Sometimes, things don’t go as well, especially when the featured celebrity does something like forgetting how to work a stick shift.  Once the lap has been finished, the celebrity’s name and time are posted on a huge board.

I found that I enjoyed the show so much I became a regular viewer.  It wasn’t long before I was figuring out when the new season would start, what time it would be on, and when the reruns would be showing so that I could catch up as much as I possibly could.  Then, they started releasing the seasons on DVD.

With portable copies of “Top Gear” in tow, I had to start sharing it with people.  My parents don’t have cable TV, so I took the DVDs back home with me when I went to visit them.  I knew that my dad would love “Top Gear” because of the things that they did to those cars and the segments that they aired about rarities like the Peel P50 (it’s hilarious to see Jeremy Clarkson crammed into that tiny car, driving it around an office).  I know that if he ever got the chance to test a Land Rover against a Sherman tank, he’d leap at the opportunity (even if he’d rather try the challenge with a Dodge muscle car).

To my surprise, Mom liked the show, too.  My mom likes chick flicks and old westerns and “The Big Bang Theory”, so to have her enjoy “Top Gear” enough to actually sit and watch episodes was pretty amazing.  Of course, I started them off with the Botswana episode.  It required almost no background information, other than “this is a cool car show from Britain”, and had enough set-up within the episode itself that viewers pretty much know exactly what they need to in order to thoroughly enjoy it.  Mom also liked the relay race with the subcompact cars and the soccer match.

“Top Gear” could end up being gimmicky and bogged down in technical jargon.  Instead, it’s entertaining and fun to watch.  It does help me appreciate the cars in more than an aesthetic sense, though they’re pretty big on the aesthetics of car design, too, both interior and exterior, so that helps quite a bit.  Most of all, though, they have fun with their jobs and, really, if they can’t look like they’re having fun it makes a show like “Top Gear” lose any kind of joy that might be vicariously transmitted to the viewers.

Of course, the US had to make a version of “Top Gear”, too.  Because I was a fan of the British version I thought that I would at least try watching the American one.  I was woefully disappointed.  The camp and gimmickry of the British version was retained, but none of the enthusiasm or spirit of fun that permeates “Top Gear” in Britain seems to have translated.  It’s impossible to miss how much the trio of hosts on the British version love their jobs.  They’re having a blast doing some really cool stuff with cars both excellent and junked.  The American guys?  I’m not entirely sure, but I think that they might be more concerned about being famous and getting seen on a “manly” car show to actually enjoy what they’re doing.  I ordinarily try to give a new show at least 2 episodes before I truly decide whether or not I like it.  I couldn’t make it through the second half of the second episode, it just wasn’t as entertaining to watch.

Sadly, my cable provider switched BBC America in favor of OWN, a move which still makes me wince whenever I think about it (though that is a significant improvement over the need to hold back tears when I discovered the switch).  I don’t get to watch “Top Gear” anymore as a regular part of my normal TV schedule.  Instead, I have to wait for the DVDs to be released.  When the new season shows up in my mailbox, I gleefully tear it open and watch as many episodes in a row as I reasonably can and still get up for work the next morning.  If the DVDs make it during the weekend, I just watch episodes until I crash.  I don’t know if that’s actually better or not, all I know is that I’m thankful for the DVD releases so I can still get my fix of good “Top Gear” episodes.