From the editor: Escapist TV

Take the Discovery Channel’s Airplane Repo, which shows the adventures of a band of bounty hunters who specialize in snatching airplanes from those behind in their loan payments. There’s lots of planning behind the ruses to keep the targets clueless, find the airplane, and fly it away. Lots of sneaking around dark airports, breaking into hangars and airplanes, and action-packed engine starts and takeoffs. Sometimes, the airplane is snatched right from under the hapless debtor’s nose.

It’s no surprise that the show is a fictionalized documentary. It’s all an act. They’re repo men, but in the show they’re actors. The snatched airplanes, the sneaking around, the tense getaways—it’s all part of a script. The production values are high. Moving and setting up the scenes for the film crew and its gear must take a lot of time. All of this to drive home the moral of the story: Keep up with your payments!

I don’t quite understand the idea behind Selling Jets, a show put out by the A Wealth of Entertainment network, or AWE. Like some of its other shows—Dream Cruises, Selling Mega Mansions, Selling Yachts, and Private Islands—its mission appears to be the glorification of the super-rich lifestyle, or at least the producers’ idea of what being super-rich must be like.

The action centers on deals made in Dallas or Fort Lauderdale, where brokers showcase business jets, and the wealthy buy them—often on little more than a whim. The customers seem a bit shallow. After thrashing it out between a Beechjet and a Cessna Citation CJ3 in an airport “wine-and-champagne boutique,” a decision is made: John buys Maria the CJ3 as a first-anniversary present. They figure they’ll save money because it only needs a single pilot, and it can be put in a charter fleet.

Guess which one Kelly wants? Yep—the CJ4. It’s more modern, and besides, the Lear 60 doesn’t have Wi-Fi.Then there’s Kelly, a 20-something who needs to convince her dad to buy her a jet so she can go to and from college. It’s between a $2.7 million Learjet 60 and an $8.5 million CJ4. Guess which one Kelly wants? Yep—the CJ4. It’s more modern, and besides, the Lear 60 doesn’t have Wi-Fi. Dad says no. She calls him to make her case, and we’re treated to the conversation.

“How can I do my schoolwork if I don’t have Wi-Fi?” and “Give me a chance to prove myself,” she says.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” says Dad. Finally, he caves, but only if she gets the Lear 60. Kelly wangles a Wi-Fi install as part of the deal. Then dad puts his foot down:

“I don’t want your girlfriends on flights to the Bahamas.” So much for school.

As production values go, Selling Jets is no match for Airplane Repo. The actors—if they are actors—are amateurish. Some don’t seem to know much about aircraft ownership and operation. The shows I’ve seen feature individual buyers, not corporate transactions, but they give business aviation and turbine buyers a bad name by association. Some episodes make buyers seem indulgent and cartoonish, and they reinforce any pre-existing misconceptions. But if the intent is to provide vicarious, escapist fare in these stressful times I guess it succeeds on that level anyway. I’d change the channel but Live Here, Buy This is coming up. I need to find out if I should move to Chile, the British countryside, or rural Arizona.

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