God I hated Shittown. It's been a long time now, so I can't remember everything. But I know the whole thing felt exploitive of the subject, whose name I can't remember. I mean, he must've agreed to have this documentary made about him, but he obviously wasn't well. And then they reveal that, during the making of their documentary, the guy fucking killed himself. And they just kept going. Tried to make some minor drama between a friend of the guy's and some estranged family into a fracas. And then there definitely was a big element of 'big city liberal come to the boonies.' Maybe it's because I've never been in the PMC, but I've been in cities and in the boonies and places aren't really that different. It's not like you've suddenly stepped into a totally different culture where they speak a different language and have totally alien social customs. Things are different, sure, but not that different.

But in the end I felt like Shittown just didn't have any point to make. It's like the reporter found one dude who was willing to rant to him and then just sorta hoped a story would materialize around that. But instead it meanders. Hey here's this guy who hates his home town and is an eccentric clockmaker and also probably a closeted gay man and he killed himself. Is there drama after that? No? Oh, all right, it's over then. It ends up feeling like the point of the show is 'let's all gawk at these freaks', rather than, I dunno, 'look how capitalism is failing rural Americans' or something.