Duck Dynasty: Season 4

What a product.

"Duck Dynasty" is a reality show built for a very specific audience. But what reality show isn't? At this point, aren't all these "family" shows constructed around rejected sitcom plotlines, filmed and aired just to keep merchandise on the department store shelves or the checkout-lane magazine rack? The millions of merchandise sold with the "Duck Dynasty" label should be a clue.

In the case of "Duck Dynasty," the show is built to appeal to the family-values red-state crowd. Each episode is basically the same: The guys are up to no good, the women support them (or make fun of them), the older characters wax poetic about the past and today's youth. It all ends with a family meal, a non-denominational prayer and a moral lesson. In "Season 4," you have the classic sitcom episode formulas filtered through the formula: a wedding-vow renewal, a first date, Halloween, awkward odd-couple character pairings.

The fact that "Duck Dynasty" managed to launch such a "controversy" last month is hilarious to me. Everything in the show is scripted. One episode in particular features a conversation between two characters where they never appear in the same room together. It's obvious they were shot separately. Whether or not these were pick-up shots done later in editing is irrelevant; I just want to highlight the meticulousness of "Duck Dynasty's" design.

Why wouldn't the family patriarch saying something casually prejudiced be viewed as a marketing move on his part, particularly when his interview was released just shy of a month before this very Blu-Ray release? Particularly when his "suspension" was lifted only nine days after the article was released, when it had fallen out of the news cycle.

Are you part of that target audience? Do you believe your media should be filtered through your moral and social values? Do those values align with what the Robertsons are selling you? Then watch "Duck Dynasty." Enjoy it.

If you aren't — if you don't like reality shows, if you're progressively minded, if you're totally over the "rich people acting silly with all their money" stories — don't bother with "Duck Dynasty."