I’m beginning to think that the people at the New Yorker purposely deliver their magazine to Brooklyn subscribers one day after they have landed in Manhattan mailboxes. Every Tuesday, I enviously watch commuters flip through the latest issue, shamed to know that the only “Talk of the Town” that I’m hip to is now last week’s news. Coupled with the fact that Park Slope is quickly becoming the de facto neighborhood of ridicule, I’m beginning to develop an inferiority complex. Not that I blame anyone that talks trash about a neighborhood whose bars are populated with more strollers than singles, but we’re not all belligerently stylish moms and dads. Some of us are just ex-hipster refugees looking for a good wine store. God, we’re lame.

Have you seen the new A&E show King of Cars? In general, the flashy, stylized reality of most reality TV shows really turns me off, so when I first heard about yet another show in this vein, I wasn’t particularly enthused. But I have to admit that, within minutes of stumbling onto the show, I was hooked.

If you didn’t watch the premier last week‚ and why would you?, King of Cars follows the employees of Towbin Dodge, a new and used car dealership in Las Vegas, as they do the things that car salesmen do. At the center is the so-called King of Cars, Chop, who might look more at home managing a hip-hop record label than a car dealership. Chop is meticulously well groomed, flashes a tasteful amount of bling, and‚ of course‚ drives a totally fly ride. He’s just the person you want at the center of such an operation: Chop is the kind of guy that his staff wants to be like, and they seem to hang on his every word. At the beginning of the day, he entices his sales staff with a block of cash, then motivating them with team cheers, football coach style. It’s all very masculine.

As you would expect from a show about a car dealership, much of the time in King of Cars is spent meticulously documenting the interaction between pushy salesmen and their reluctant customers. But anyone who’s purchased a car knows one side of this equation; what’s interesting here is the glimpse into the sales rep’s psyche. Their anxieties are frequently on display, as they awkwardly wait for the verdict from a privately conversing couple, or fret about their low sales for the month. Though they may seem callous or even greedy at times, these men‚ and they are all men‚ aren’t the easily vilified hucksters we might prefer them to be. They’re just… dudes. Nothing wrong with that.

I’d love to lambaste this show and the industry that it portrays, but the fact is that I’m kind of charmed by the show and its personalities. It’s easy to sit in front of my laptop in some coffee shop in Fantsypants, Brooklyn and criticize salespeople for their tricky tactics, or blast the auto industry for just being the auto industry. But selling cars is a job like any other, with its own complicated and fascinating workplace culture. It takes a certain kind of person to last in such an environment, but that person isn’t the simple snake oil salesman we often think of. Sometimes that person is actually kind of endearing.

Now if only someone would make a reality show about the American Heritage Foundation so I could stop hating them, too.

More information on King of Cars here.