The Last Word On Nothing

I am a very selective television watcher. This doesn’t mean that I only watch the best shows, in fact quite the opposite. I’ve never seen Breaking Bad or The Sopranos or Orange is the New Black. My boyfriend has, I think, almost come to terms with the fact that I will probably never finish The Wire. (Before you rage-close this tab, let me be clear, I have watched two and a half seasons. It is very clearly a great show. But watching it makes me stressed out and unhappy, two things I try to avoid in my life if I can.) I also can’t watch shows that involve a lot of tension or awkward humor, so nearly every modern comedy is off the books, as are any shows that are scary or just unpleasant (looking at you The Bachelor).

But we have cable (mostly to watch sports) and I do have some favorite shows. The programs in my sweet spot are low-stakes, but relatively fast moving “reality” television. Cooking contest shows like Chopped, house-hunting and remodeling shows like House Hunters and Property Brothers. There’s always just a tiny bit of tension, but you know that in the end everybody will get an open floorpan or a weird ice cream and be happy. And in the spirit of sharing things we love, I am going to now tell you about my new favorite television show: Forged in Fire.

The Forged in Fire tagline is “World-class bladesmiths re-create historical edged weapons in a cutthroat competition.” It’s on the History Channel, and it’s delightfully weird, slightly awkward, and genuinely entertaining. It’s basically like Chopped, but for knives.

I have told everybody I know about this show at this point. And now I’m going to tell you about it. Because it is delightful and I like sharing delightful things with you.

The premise of the show goes like this: four blade smiths enter the forge. They are almost always men (the first season featured zero women, and the second season featured two) and they almost always fall into one of three camps: the outdoorsmen who makes his own bowie knives, the Renaissance Fair guy who’s really into medieval re-enactments, and the Japanophile who’s obsessed with samurai swords.  Approximately 50% of them have beards.

One advantage that this show has over some reality shows: it’s hard to find a boring blade smith. These are people who have decided to learn how to melt iron into weapons. They are, let’s call them quirky. Yes, they are quirky. I will refrain from saying anything bad about any of them because let’s remember that they are all very good at making sharp objects designed to kill people.

The first round challenges them to make a blade. Often they are given some strange set of materials — scrap metal, a car, a pile of ball bearings. From those materials they have between three and four hours to make their blade. At the end of this round, one person gets eliminated.

The second round challenges them to finish off that blade — they seem to spend most of this round choosing a material and trying to affix the handle to the blade. I’m sure this is just TV editing magic, but it seems like they have just as much trouble gluing some pieces of deer antler to a slab of metal as they do melting steel, flattening it out, and creating the blade in the first place. Then again, I’m not bladesmith so maybe this is harder than it seems.

At the end of the second round we get to my favorite part: testing. And testing involves our judges. We meet them in the first round but we don’t really get to appreciate them until now. There’s our host, Will Willis (yes that is his real name) who’s a former Army Ranger. Then there’s J. Neilson, a master smith with the American Bladesmith Society, David Baker, a prop specialist and historical weapons expert, and Doug Marcaida, a martial arts instructor and “edged-weapons specialist.” I don’t know if there’ such a thing as a “not edged-weapons specialist” but I suppose I’m glad that person isn’t a judge on a blade making show.

And the testing is really the fun part. They’ve tested the blades doing everything from chopping coconuts to slicing cables to stabbing barrels full of paint. I mean, look at this! (Also, I feel like the internet has failed me. I had to actually make this GIF, nobody had made them for this show yet, come on y’all, get it together).

Here’s a video of a few of the other tests they’ve done:

When there are only two contestants left, they send them home for five days to fabricate a historic weapon. They’ve done a war hammer, a spiked shield, a viking sword, a katana and more. When they come back, you guessed it, more testing. And this test always includes a so called “kill test” where Doug Marcaida attacks a ballistics gel dummy with the weapon, and if it fares well he says in a very strange intonation, “it will kill.”

How did I discover this show? I have no idea. Probably the same way Meghan O’Keefe, a writer at Decider did. “Let me begin by saying that I found this show by accident. It was late at night, I was drunk in a hotel room, and I thought I was about to drift off to sleep watching a documentary about the kitana.” But instead what she got was this wild contest show, and like me, she never looked back.

O’Keefe also asked the same question I did when I started watching the show: where are all the women? The entire first season was devoid of women, and the second season features only two. The producers say they’re trying, but bladesmithing is a heavily male dominated field. The first woman to appear on the show talks about how she can’t find gloves that are small enough to fit her hands.

I know nothing about making blades, which I think makes the show even more interesting. Watching people melt various types of metal into shapes, sharpen those shapes, and then use them to slash and cut things is so outside the realm of anything I have ever done that it almost feels alien. (Although I have considered taking a bladesmithing class because of the show.)

Forged in Fire is ridiculous. The bladesmiths are weirdos, (but I’m sure delightful please don’t murder me!) the hosts are weirdos, the whole show is strange and fabulous. It still hasn’t quite figured out the right pacing, or really what makes the whole thing work, but I hope that it keeps going because I love this show dearly.

And, in case anybody was wondering, I’m not affiliated with the History Channel and they’re not paying me to promote this show. I just wanted to share something I find delightful with the rest of you. If you are looking for a show that is interesting, weird, and very low risk, I highly recommend it.