Beth’s Niece Sings

According to dogthebountyhunter.com, this is Beth Chapman’s niece singing. To see the video go to, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGn7wBkUfyk

Negative NYDAILYNEWS Review

Beth and Duane Chapman (c.) and children Leland (l.) and Baby Lyssa (r.) in ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter’

Billy Bretherton with a baby alligator in ‘The Exterminators.’

If you think TV has been too highfalutin lately and you feel the need to slip away for a night on the low road, grab a bag of pork rinds and a case of Rolling Rock and turn on A&E Wednesday night.

Between the return of “Dog the Bounty Hunter” and the premiere of “The Exterminators,” the network that was born as “arts and entertainment” gives us a double shot of the world that makes Jerry Springer smile.

It’s not that everybody on both shows is a bad person, or does bad things.

Dog, real name Duane Chapman, has a small posse, mostly family, that hunts down bail jumpers and other unpredictable criminals. Okay.

“The Exterminators” follows a Louisiana family that runs Vexcon, a pest extermination service. The premise is that if you film someone wading into combat with enough bee swarms, bats, raccoons and bobcats, eventually you’ll see some action.

The main character in “The Exterminators,” Billy Bretherton, is good-natured and likable. He talks a “catch and release” game, wherein he tries to captures and relocate a problem animal rather than just blowing it away.

Okay, he does wipe out a nest of honeybees at a time when honeybees are in trouble.

But the main concern comes back home at Vexcon, where Billy’s brother Ricky has an ex-wife, Pam, whose presence is turning the office into a low-rent soap opera.

Suddenly, this becomes a very different show.

It seems Billy and Ricky’s mother, Donnie, thinks Pam shafted Ricky before and now has come back just to get some of the company money.

If this were a minor side drama to Billy’s battle with 8-foot alligators, it would be fine.

But the cameras like the Pam-and-Donnie story better than the varmint stuff – just as the “Dog” cameras spend much of their time in this premiere episode trying to manufacture loving, homey vignettes around the Chapman family.

The episode starts with their 7-year-old son disappearing for a few minutes on an ATV. When they tearfully find him, they don’t seem to spend a minute wondering if it’s a good idea for a 7-year-old to have his own motorized vehicle.

Later, when they go bounty hunting, they all join hands and pray. When they capture two bail jumpers, who are brother and sister, they talk with them at excruciating length about family and values. Then they congratulate themselves because their own family values are so solid.

There’s no mention of the well-publicized off-the-air incident in which Chapman was caught on tape cursing out his son’s girlfriend in colorful racial terms.

No matter. The truth is that both these shows, like the Springer show, give viewers a cheap stroke by encouraging them to laugh at the low-rent dramas and people on the screen.

It’s TV whose only real purpose is killing time.

 

Article By BY DAVID HINCKLEY 

DAILY NEWS TV CRITIC

Letters to  voicers@edit.nydailynews.com.