"I Shouldn't Be Alive" and Other Guilty Pleasures

I know I should be reading Milton’s Paradise Lost or at least the new Ian McEwan novel, but in lieu of more intellectual pursuits, The Animal Planet program “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” most definitely deserves the Best Trashy TV award, or the most harrowing hour award, and is fast becoming my favorite show. I don’t  understand why anyone would want to watch such drivel as American Idol or Dancing With the Stars, but I Shouldn’t Be Alive, how can you not love a program about people lost in the desert, at sea, attacked by grizzly bears, and other various mayhem? The coolest thing about it are the interviews with the survivors, who provide a gritty, somber contrast to the reenactments, which are surprisingly high budget. My favorite episode? Hard to choose. They’re all good. At least that I’ve seen. But one is hard to forget: it’s about a world class runner who falls in a canyon near Moab, Utah, and breaks her pelvis, survives four days basically lying on the ground, crawling in agony, in freezing weather, until her dog finally saves her by barking at the rescue people and leading one of them to her.