Anyone watching Texas Ranch House, the newest saga in the "modern people living in the 'past'" reality series that started with the British 1900 House?

Either the franchise is just wearing thin or this one is particularly boring to me (I've never been much on Western living, although there's several cowboy films I enjoy). All the people involved seem pleasantly nondescript. As usual, they are acting out of character due to their own 21st century mores and restrictions put on them by the production. For instance, the cowboys were complaining about their monotonous diet of dried beef and beans. On a cattle drive, that's might be all real cowboys got to eat, but certainly at the ranch the cook should have had more supplies—I know from my reading that these cooks were capable of producing biscuits, pies, and stews with the correct supplies (the ranch owner seems pretty parsimonious to the guys who are doing the work for him!). To supplement their diet real cowboys would have gone hunting after their chores were done and brought back rabbits, prairie hens, squirrels, etc., but of course these guys are not supplied with guns (I'm certain mostly for safety's sake as none of them have any training, but of course because We Can't Do That as well).

The cowboys have been shown not being openly rude, but still being rude to the "womenfolks," which was a big no-no in those days. The ranch foreman was criticized (and finally left) for making his cowboys work—the guys thought they were there for ridin' and ropin' and workin' the cattle and, horrors, they find they have to build corrals and do chores. Well, duh.

At least the ranch owner's girls are not whining about not being able to wear makeup like the last bunch!

I wasn't sure whether to feel bad for the recently fired cook or not. Certainly he was not getting the support a good cook in those days would have received. A cook on a cattle drive could make or break the deal. The guys needed good sustaining food to keep them going on the long days of work and he certainly wasn't getting the supplies to provide that type of food and he was short an assistant as many of these frontier trail-drive cooks had. On the other hand, this guy had an attitude—the way he snubbed the ranch owner's wife on her tour of the ranch was just plain rude. God knows what they would have done to someone back then who did that. I was also "grossed out" when the women cleaned out his food prep area: granted this guy was overworked, but the spoiled food and other unsanitary conditions they found were appalling. No wonder the cowboys came down with a case of "stomach flu" at one point! What makes it worse is this guy was actually a real chef!

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:31:00 AM

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