On TV: “My Big Redneck Vacation” in the Hamptons

Yeeeeee Haaaaaawwww!!! “My Big Redneck Vacation” premiered last week, it’s essentially a reality television show about a family of rednecks from the South who come up to vacation for the summer in East Hampton at a luxurious estate.

The premise is great. The show though, well, if you are a local in the Hamptons, you might think it is pretty lame.

The show desperately tries to make the family feel like a fish out of water, and by far the best part of the show, is the family themselves. They honestly don’t come across as a racist group of hardcore rednecks, they just seem to me like a nice southern family and quite frankly, not all that different in terms of values than a family from Long Island. [expand]

“Do you have wildlife up here?” asks a redneck in one part of the show.

“There will be deer running in your back yard,” says realtor Patrick Christiano.

“Well that ain’t good news for the deer.”

Yea, we get it, you guys hunt a lot. So do a lot of people on the East End of Long Island, that really doesn’t make you all that different.

At one point the family does show a display of incredible skill that I will attribute to the South, and that is a bow shooting contest to decide who gets which room in the gorgeous house that is rented for them in the summer time. Every arrow from 40 yards out hits a styrofoam turkey target dead in the face. I was impressed.

The show features Tom Arnold as the narrator, who literally pops out onto your screen and says something like, “What will this family eat for dinner? Will they be eatin’ deer tonight? Will they be eatin’ snake? Tune in and find out!”

It’s awful. It’s just God awful. I don’t know what else to say. His narration simply does not work.

At one point two of the alpha males in the family go fishing on a small motorboat in Three Mile Harbor in Springs. “I’m not so sure our boat is going to fit in here,” says one of the characters.

But it just isn’t that funny, because quite frankly, there are a lot, like A LOT of people who fish on old beat-up Boston Whalers in East Hampton, especially in Three Mile Harbor. Yes there are yachts, but that’s not everybody, I wouldn’t even say it’s the majority, but again the show makes every effort for it to seem like it’s an odd thing for a 12-foot motor boat to be fishing in Three Mile Harbor.

The girls in the family go shopping at the Hampton Market Place in East Hampton, and this is actually quite funny, because yes, the price of marinade really is $11 there. But guess what, Waldbaums is right around the corner from that place, and you ain’t paying $11 for a thing of marinade there.

But I digress, all locals, and even city tourists get a little sticker shock when they go into a local grocery store that caters to the wealthy who are looking for specialty food items.

“What are we gonna do if they don’t have a Walmart there?” says one of the mothers in the show.

“UMMMM…DRIVE TO FREAKING RIVERHEAD!!!! “I yell at my television screen.

The show is definitely watchable. It is quite hilarious to watch Patrick Christiano, an openly gay man who surely has never touched a hunting bow, get talked into giving it a shot. And, the family really does seem close knit and very nice, so I want the show to succeed just because they genuinely seem like nice people.

I’ll be watching further episodes of this show out of curiosity to see how many locals I recognize in it. And yes, it will be funny to see a bunch of rednecks crash a Hamptons party (something of a hobby of mine during the summer time), so I’ll be tuning in.

You can catch the show on Saturdays at 9:30 p.m. on the CMT Network.