Dirty Jobs...

...are not for the fainthearted. And Mike Rowe is a dirty, dirty man.

I've just jumped on this fandwagon recently, and I must admit I had no idea how many dirty, filthy, and very necessary jobs there are that make our lives easier. I've been to farms, I've worked in nasty restaurants, and I've had two kids, but Mike Rowe really knows how to find the dirtiest of the dirty. This is largely--Mike would say entirely--due to fan suggestions.

In this television clusterfuck of reality TV idiocy, Dirty Jobs is a ray of sunshine. The handsome host thing has been done to death, but Mike Rowe really gets into his job. He's artificially inseminated pigs, changed a giant pump in a sewer treatment facility, salvaged a toilet flooded basement, and has even wrestled an alligator. He only does each job for one day, but it's all him. On-the-job training has a new meaning. Especially considering a vast number of the people he works with have gotten degrees to do what they do, and the rest have been doing it since they were just tots. (That's a potato farmer joke, for those who haven't seen the show.)

From a viewer's perspective, Mike Rowe's snarky comments and earnest interest in the jobs he "slows down" are refreshingly entertaining. He makes his crew as much a part of the show as the workers he highlights. After all, they're "in it" with him. He enjoys himself (mostly, I'm sure, because he only has to do each job for one day), and sincerely appreciates meeting and working with the people he meets.

His father was a pig farmer, and as an actor who was often in between jobs, Mike started this show as a tribute to him. His resume is quite impressive. Especially now that he's been doing this "gig" for three seasons.

Ranging from bug breeding, to exterminator, and abalone feeder to fish farmer, Mike Rowe has done it all. Or so you'd think. He still insists at the end of each episode that he'll soon be out of a job (dirty or otherwise) if his fans don't keep sending in suggestions. From what I've seen, there's no shortage of dirty jobs, at least not in the near future. Not for nothing, but if Mike Rowe wants dirty, he can watch my kids for a weekend. They're not even in diapers anymore. ;)