Review: 'Ice Road Truckers' season 2, the boys are back

Smallscreen Reviews

By April MacIntyre Jun 7, 2008, 14:43 GMT

History's top rated "Ice Road Truckers" are back this Sunday, June 8 at 9 pm ET/PT. Welcome news, as our old friends from last season are joined by some new faces, as they tackle the frozen undulating ribbon of the MacKenzie river that connects them and their rigs to the Northwest Territories.

More lucrative yet dangerous work in a limited window of time for the intrepid he-men truckers of Canada. This job isn't for the faint of heart. As Colbert would bluntly summarize, these men have balls."Ice Road Truckers," was cable networks' Cinderella story last year, capturing the hearts and minds of a worldwide audience who fell in love with the manly men. Read: not metrosexual hip, but flawed, physical, brave, gruff and full of all the essential good stuff that makes men what they are. These guys aren't pretty boys, and thank goodness for that fact.We catch up once again with Hugh, Rick, Alex and Drew in this second season launch of History's monster series. Drew

Drew

Newcomers are Eric Dufresne, a French-Canadian who has been driving trucks since age 19, he's their resident green eco-trucker warrior. Jerry Usdal also joins the gang, a seasoned supervisor for Mullen's Trucking, he is "Oz" to the truckers he dispatches, running the show from behind the scenes. He misses his driving days.This season sees the guys taking their rigs over open ocean; let me repeat: OPEN OCEAN, frozen for a brief spell from the base camp of Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories, to north of the Arctic circle where natural gas is being mined and exploration continues. The job for the truckers is now focused on these new ventures in natural gas and gas hydrate exploration, and the truckers are at the mercy of these ice roads as they transport heavy machinery and supplies. Millions of dollars are at stake this winter; if the deliveries are not made, the projects will not be completed and revenue will be lost for the town, the truckers and the trucking companies. These fellows have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders, and many dependent on their success.The sea ice averages three feet in thickness, yet the sound is amplified and the guys can still feel the ocean waves underneath rising the rigs and making hellish noise keeping their adrenalin levels amped up. Alex

Alex

We get to learn more about Alex Debogorski, "the man" of the Yellowknife trucking community, a jovial husband and father to 11 children. There's a few scenes where he is caught reacting to one of his daughter's expressed fear of his death; it weighs on him.

There is prickly Hugh "the Polar Bear" Rowland who has some interesting comments regarding last season. Side note: Hugh has the best hats. The B Roll also shows his personal life and softer side to him, as he gears up once again for the abbreviated season to haul northward."Ice Road Truckers" - of all the manly outdoor-sy job shows (Deadliest Catch, Ax Men) - is by far the most skillfully produced, compelling and thought-out series of this stripe. I have no doubt that the below the line crew's stories about making this show are fascinating, and with a little luck we just may be able to speak with some of them to bring you some behind the scenes secrets to the making of this series soon. Stay tuned.Hats off to you, producers Thom Beers and Philip Segal, along with their skillful camera crew who all do a fine job giving us backstory on these characters. Real men who are probably tickled that the whole world is on the edge of their seats for them, pulling for their working class heroes of these behemoth global corporations. Filthy-rich entities who probably didn't even know these men existed on their payrolls until the notoriety that History's platform gave them.Bravo.

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Review: 'Ice Road Truckers' season 2, the boys are back

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