Average Traveller is about how regular people usually travel. Departures is about how most people wish they could travel (egotistically assuming that most people think exactly like I do).
I came across this show a year or two ago when I searched for shows about Vancouver on my PVR. The premise of the show is that two twentysomething guys decide to take a year out of their lives to travel the world. Since very few people have the money to do that just for kicks, Scott and Justin brilliantly bring along Andre, an ace cinematographer, so that they can later make and sell a TV show about their trip. Episode 1 was about them renting an RV back east and driving across Canada to Vancouver, where they would set off around the world.
What Scott, Justin, and Andre pull off is pretty much the ultimate dream of just about every travel blogger on the Internet – the tr-avalanche. If you can write a sufficiently interesting blog about travelling maybe you could make enough money off of it to pay for more travelling, which you could then blog about for more money. Repeat until you can quit your dumb day job. Scott’s competitive advantage is that he worked in TV. That and he just happened to know an insanely talented camera guy named Andre Dupuis to make it all visually stunning.
In addition to a great travel premise it’s also a TV version of your basic buddy movie set-up. Scott is the straight laced Mr. Responsible and Justin is more or less Owen Wilson from You Me and Dupree. They also manage to work Andre into the show as the everyman who literally and figuratively represents the viewer. Who among us hasn’t laid drunk and regretful while stuck between a motel bed and the wall?
This all works because the show is a genius blend between travel documentary, reality TV, and goof-ball comedy. In one episode they’re chugging along a river or a lake on a super loud boat and one of them yells over all of the noise “I have to tell you about the future!” LMAO.
The only inexplicable part about all of this is that I can completely imagine hating these two in high school but somehow you can’t help liking them once you put them into Jordan, Tokyo, Cambodia, and the Arctic circle. I’ve also got a soft spot for them since they’re good Canadian kids, which is another reason why I decided to blog about their show. They seem to have a decent home country following, but the rest of the world really needs to discover them.
Departures airs on OLN in Canada and on National Geographic Adventure Channel worldwide. Look for it. Seriously. Go now. If you think exactly like I do you won’t regret it.