ropewalk

Sunday night brought two massive television events – highwire specialist Nik Wallenda attempting to walk across the Grand Canyon with no net or tether… and the season finale of Mad Men.  Discovery Channel gave us a bloated prewalk show for Wallenda's journey that would rival the Super Bowl complete with cameos from Jim Cantore and Joel Osteen.  As the walk began, Wallenda encountered some difficulties and had to take his time.  Scores of viewers around the country began to get nervous.

Not for Wallenda's safety or wellbeing or survival for goodness sake.  No, anxious over missing the beginning of Mad Men.  As always, these are Real Tweets from Real People…

I think it says something about us as a culture when we can say, "a guy walking across the Grand Canyon on a highwire is great, but I've just gotta see the first couple minutes of this scripted cable series" while forgetting that it's a GUY WALKING ACROSS THE GRAND CANYON ON A %#*&ING HIGHWIRE.  By the way, does nobody own DVRs or picture-in-picture anymore?  It also says something that we could become bored that the walk over the Grand Canyon took over 20 minutes.  If only he had to dodge flaming knives or something.  (We're definitely inching closer to going back in time to our Roman Coliseum days, just on live TV this time.)

Wallenda must have listened because he ran the last few steps across the wire so folks could switch to the Mad Men season finale in time…

So yea, good job on not dying Nik Wallenda and surviving your death defying walk across the Grand Canyon.  Better job on making sure everyone could see Mad Men on time.  Who knows, maybe it was divine intervention after all.