ICE ROAD TRUCKS SEASON 5:
Now on it’s fifth season on History Channel, Ice Road Truckers once again takes some of the best big rig drivers hauling some heavy duty equipment on some of the most dangerous roads in the world. It’s a race as 6 drivers try to get as many loads as they can to their destinations within the 2 months of the driving season. With the weather being in the negative degrees, both trucks and drivers are tested to see if they can withstand what Mother Nature dishes out.

DRIVING ON THE ICE:
Suspense, tension, and drama, three of the best and closest words to describe what Ice Road Truckers is about. For a reality show it’s got one major point going for it, it’s different than the majority of the singing or dancing shows. It’s for this simple fact that I got any enjoyment from watching this show. Each episode is basically the same where the format gives a brief description of what has happened in the previous episodes, then what’s going to happen in the current one, and the rest being the drivers picking up the loads, talking about the loads, roads, and other drivers, then finishing by dropping them off. For filler in the episodes they have the drivers talking about what’s going on and their perspectives.

Ice Road Truckers is not a show that’s built on being a thinking show but one that’s driven (no pun intended) on the tension and drama coming from the drivers. Watching this was like watching any other drama based show only it has eighteen wheelers and instead of teenagers it’s truckers. There’s Dave, the new guy who is the trouble maker that no one likes but pulls in the viewer to see what he’s going to say or do next, Lisa the female driver who everyone is rooting for, and then some of the season drivers who have been on the show before that bring in past viewers. The shows are edited in the normal fashion, music that has that intense on the edge of seat beat, camera work that include the hand held professional to just the on board mounted camera, while it’s edited to make each segment build up to make you want to know what’s going to happen next and then commercial.

As far as the show went though I think it should have been half hour long episodes instead of hour long. Throughout the 12 episodes that are on this season I saw some of the same scenes more times than it was necessary. There’s no point or reason to show the same scene again more than once, beyond that it just becomes annoying and a waste of time. If this were a half hour show I would have enjoyed it more without getting distracted from watching it. Though the show does have it’s entertainment value and I got to say that I liked watching this season a little more than I have a previous season. I think the reason I enjoyed it more this time is because I knew what to expect from the show and I knew it wasn’t going to be showing much variance in the episodes. I didn’t expect much from the show, I got what I expected, but it did draw me in at times just because of the tension that was built. This show works because of the editing and without as good as editing as it has it would have been a really boring show.