To the makers of Beastmaster;

I would like to talk to you frankly, if I may, about your show Beastmaster. I'm not overly familiar with it, to be frank (there's that frankness I warned you about). But like most of your viewers, I suspect, I've seen enough snippets here and there while channel-surfing to get a pretty solid impression of what the show's all about: namely, a well-muscled guy and a foreign-looking sidekick wandering aimlessly around a forest for interminably long stretches of time.

There might admittedly be more to your show than this. I'd think, anyway, that with a title like "Beastmaster" there would at some point be actual mastery of beasts in the program. It's entirely possible that as soon as I lose interest and change the channel, the well-muscled guy and the foreign sidekick bust out all kinds of astounding beast-mastery that's really interesting to watch, with lots of great animal-themed dance numbers.

I wouldn't know, as I've only ever watched five minutes of your show at a time. From what I've seen, it seems to consist of the well-muscled guy walking around in a forest, with that creepy sidekick walking close behind, checking out the well-muscled guy. There's invariably some flat uninteresting dialogue about a Crystal of Amarsil or a Cave of Sham'Hamharoth, and a lot of gazing into the distance and sudden cuts to shots of eagles soaring, and then a lot more walking around. I can only assume all the staring into the distance and aimless walking gets the job done with that Crystal they were looking for, because it's usually at this point that I switch channels and watch monster trucks or something.

The law of averages tells me that if every time I channel-surf into Beastmaster you're trotting around a forest doing not much of anything, most likely you're doing this pretty solidly for the hour-long duration of the show. Oh, maybe every twenty minutes or so you'll break into a saunter or even a brisk trot to mix things up a little for the fans. But mostly, you stick to what works: big goddamn forests, and walking around in them looking up at eagles. This is my only explanation for how your program's managed to stay on as long as it has, actually. I can't see the budget being terribly high for a show that requires only a hand-held camera, some decent-quality footware (to avoid sores from all the walking), and a campsite day-pass.

Which would all be relatively harmless, were it not for the sneaking suspicion I get that, whenever the camera's off zooming in on that eagle, the two Beastmaster guys are getting up to other, far far more unsavory things in the forest than walking around in it.

It's a curse that follows any same-sex crime-fighting duo, I admit; be it your Hercules and Iolaus, your Xena and Gabrielle, your Starsky and Hutch. I should note, however, that Beastmaster takes your average homoerotic undertone and just goes to the mountain with it. For one, you don't get the easy guy-talk vibe you get with Hercules and Iolaus. At least they could be counted on for the odd assurance that, whatever might be happening behind the scenes, it was most likely kept above the beltline.

"I tell you, Herc, with a High Priestess looking like that, I'd get down on my knees any day."

"Ha ha ha." Hearty, non-gay backclap. "Now now, Iolaus. Let's focus on the task at hand in a non-threatening unhomosexual manner."

With the Beastmaster guy and his shaved man-boy sidekick though, I get no such assurances. Just two guys walking around in dense foliage, one of whom is shirtless all the time for no discernable reason. (Maybe they're playing touch football a lot and he's skins?)

Given that a) the idea of anyone watching your show for an entire hour is not in the realm of possibility, and b) I've over the years probably watched over 30 five-minute segments of the show while surfing, I can reasonably conclude that I'm in all likelihood Beastmaster's biggest fan.

Consequently, I feel justified in offering a few suggestions.

I hope you find my suggestions helpful. Please consider them, and continue to produce the dull, plodding episodes of your show that mildly entertain your audience for up to five minutes at a time before losing them completely to whatever else might be on.

Your fan,

Jaytholemew Q. Pinkerton