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Voyage of Discovery

Mike Rowe has drawn a crowd. Again. This time it's on a chilly December night in Florence, South Carolina, at a local joint called J. Michael's Grill and Raw Bar. In between autographing beer naps and posing for pictures, Rowe, the craggily handsome star of the Discovery Channel's hit series Dirty Jobs, is officiating an ill-advised drinking contest between one of the show's crew and a friendly waiter. The crew is enjoying a rare night off, and by the time Rowe joins them, the challenge--be the first to chug an Irish car bomb (a shot of Bailey's dropped into a pint of Guinness)--has already been negotiated.

After watching two increasingly boisterous elimination rounds, Rowe decides to jump in as judge and jury. He sets the stage while his fans gather round. "I'll say, 'One, two ...'" He thumps the table. "Then you drink." He eyes the two gladiators. "When finished, glasses down. The one with the least remaining liquid wins."

"What about spillage?" someone yells.

"I'll be factoring that in," he deadpans. "And as always, the decision of the judge is final." The crowd roars. Rowe beams. The Dirty Jobs soundman puts on his game face and prepares to power down. Sadly for him, his fellow crew members have loudly bet on the local. Not a good sign. "One, two ..." Thump! Some six seconds later, Rowe studies the glasses intently. "Too close to call. There's one simple solution." He pauses. "Drink-off!" The place erupts. For years, Rowe was a master of the simple solution. Largely free of ambition, he got by as an itinerant actor, taking on an infomercial here, a pilot or two there. He spent three years as a pitchman on the night shift at QVC, a job he lost for appearing to do ungodly things to a nun doll on the air. His was a life of guiltless underachievement.

But Rowe has stumbled in the past couple of years into international celebrity through a most unlikely route--by doing other people's dirty work. On Dirty Jobs, he performs the sorts of tasks most of us couldn't bear to do but are really happy someone else will. He has tried his hand at more than 165 of them. He has sloshed around in sewers, peeled roadkill, cleaned up epic septic explosions, castrated horses, and hunted plagues of vermin--all while being coached (and sometimes mocked) by the real people who do it every day. (Unlike most shows in the reality-TV mold, it's the star, not the civilians, who ends up the butt of the jokes.)

Dirty Jobs, which first aired in November 2003, is an homage to George Plimpton, with a nod to Studs Terkel--an introduction, Rowe says, to the "men and women who do the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us." Watching Rowe struggle with a forklift or wade through raw sewage is good, nasty fun. But for all the bathroom humor, his real curiosity about and respect for his subjects telegraphs a powerful message: There's dignity in hard work, expertise in unexpected places, and deep satisfaction in tackling and finishing a tough job.