American Hoggers wrapped up its season Wednesday night on A&E and the Campbells supposedly triumphed in a winner-take-all contest against the dreaded Creek gang, but did they?
When we last left our American Hoggers, Jerry, Krystal, Robert and Lea were reeling from the inability to finish customer jobs and losing others.
Krystal the Pistol had almost severed her thumb and was out of commission with a huge cast on her right hand.
Dad Jerry’s physical handicaps became more of a problem and kept him from being of assistance to Robert and Lea.
Ranger, the Campbells’ lead hound was lost for a day and not only made it impossible to efficiently catch hogs but also took Jerry to the brink of despair.
It was all played out alongside the decision of a bunch of competing hog hunters, the Ronnie Creek gang, to swoop down and take advantage by stealing customers from the family and hurting their ability to stay afloat.
In the first of the back-to-back season finale shows, “The End is Near…” the Creeks were again in competition with Jerry to get a big job done for a pig farmer.
He feared he’d be out of business if one wild hog infected his animals with a virus of any sort.
The customer decided the problem was so big that he’d hire both teams and pay them for what they caught.
It was the ego rising in Jerry’s spine, despite being one worker down and his own condition worsening that drove him to make a bet with Ronnie Creek.
Whoever caught the most hogs would earn the whole pot, not just their share.
Jerry must have been having flashbacks to when he ruled the roost in his part of Texas and his family had to deal with the bet when Creek happily accepted the proposition.
The horror stories began and just continued. Jerry maintained his stubborn and clueless ways with driving his Jeep, then Lea’s ATV. He got both stuck on uneven terrain.
Lea’s was driven too close to a tree stump that ripped the oil pan from the bottom of the ATV, leaving it without oil and ready to burn up after Jerry kept trying to get it going.
Jerry kept falling on the least bit of uneven ground and was as useless with two hands as daughter Krystal was one, when she tried to fire a gun with her good hand and failed.
The Creeks kept racking up the big scores and gloating in that disgusting way they have. Krystal came up with a plan to thwart the Creeks and it worked.
In “Piston Whipped” the Campbells herded the hogs into heavily shrubbed terrain that the Creek’s ATV wouldn’t be able to manage.
As a result, hogs were being caught like mad on the final day of the assignment for Jerry and company, while the Creeks were whining like babies.
The series ended with the Campbells winning the money, but it seemed fake.
Instead of us learning how many hogs Jerry’s family caught with that late push on the final day, we were left to wait until the cameras caught Jerry handing a wad of cash to the kids.
If you had been keeping track, it was hard to come up with a total figure of hogs that pushed Jerry over the top. What did it seem like to you?
While it appears all is well in American Hoggers’ land, it just doesn’t feel like more than a way to keep the show going another season, if in fact it will be picked up by A&E.
Fans: please add your two cents, or three, or four in the comments section below.
American Hoggers will be in replay on A&E and if you need to catch up on any episodes you missed, read them here at HULIQ or check out the show’s website, here.
