Whisker Wars

This reality show tracks, with admirable and hilarious straight-facedness, the follicularly oriented infighting that plagues Beard Team USA (a name I will never tire of writing), as well as their attempt to dethrone the presumably more regimented Germans as planet Earth's top whisker warriors.

Although that dictum doesn't fill Whisker Wars with Deadliest Catch levels of dramatic tension, this detour into the world of competitive bearding is worth a gander or two.

If it wasn't a docucomedy, it would just be dull.

We get a glimpse of some intriguing characters that we don't, however, quite come to know--not in the episodes I've seen, anyway--because we are being pelted the whole time with exposition and explanation. We're rarely allowed just to look or listen in or to think for ourselves.

There's no time for anthropology, psychology or cultural criticism. Whisker Wars, it seems, is no different from those shows about extreme couponers or the woman who eats the stuffing out of sofa cushions.

Whisker Wars gives a few glimpses into the care regimen of these mens' beards but fails to ask or answer an essential question: Why do they bother?