TV-Reviewed

I missed the original airing of the season premiere, but had a chance recently to catch “Big Animal Vet” and got to see Mike Rowe in his usual form, performing dirty jobs and cracking jokes along the way.

Mike’s first job took him to a BBQ joint in the state of Georgia. The smoker was a week past due for a thorough cleaning, which meant Mike would have an even bigger mess to clean up. I’ve seen a number of ovens from restaurants on television and they’re NEVER clean. So it’s easy to assume that the smoker in this case was dirty. Covered in soot, the BBQ smoker was clearly ready for a cleaning.

Mike climbed in and went to work, scraping the crud off of everything and of course using a sprayer for the fine work, but the entire segment was lacking. It didn’t really stand out in any way. It was just a run-of-the-mill segment.

Next up was another veterinary job. Mike has had plenty of these. He’s worked with cows, pigs, horses, and a few other animals on the show. Here he worked with horses and alpacas. He met up with a vet who had to make a few farm calls. The poor horse featured had a respiratory problem and the vet needed to take a sample of the mucous. It was a little disgusting, but uncomfortable at the same time. I felt bad for the horse who had to have that tube shoved up his nose like that. It wasn’t in any pain, but it was obviously wasn’t comfortable either.

The alpacas were a little more fun because we learned that the male alpacas like to use some of their specialized teeth to attack certain portions of other male alpacas… namely the legs and genitals. I guess that’s one way to get rid of your competition. Poor Mike just couldn’t believe this. He thought the vet and owner were pulling his leg, which made the segment all the more funny to watch.

After the veterinary work was over, Mike headed from Montana to New Jersey where a company was removing an old heating oil tank from the ground. There’s just something about having to remove something from the ground that makes me think something is going to go wrong. Not only was the tank larger than records showed, the hole the crew dug ended up partially collapsing.

Of the three segments, the veterinary portion of the show was the best. Those jobs were certainly dirty at the same time, not miserable. Mike was able to make a number of jokes during the segment. The light-saber leg kick comment about that alpaca was hilarious. The outtakes at the end of the episode were terrific. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Mike get his foot caught under the tire of the John Deere equipment. If the editors had included that in the segment instead of throwing it in with the outtakes, I would have enjoyed the opening segment a little more.

Dirty Jobs - Big Animal Vet
Original Air Date: January 8, 2008

Rating: 6.8