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I may be wrong about this, but I believe Samantha Brown can turn the world on with her smile.
She can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.
Yes, it’s her, girl, and she should know it.
With each glance and every little movement she shows it.
In conclusion, I would like to say that she’s gonna make it after all.
That’s my torturous way of saying Travel Channel hostess Brown gives off a Mary Richards vibe for me.
In the first few months of my son’s life, I watched a lot of Brown’s “Passport” shows, and I made up a biography for her involving a controlling husband, a strict upbringing, a divorce that was not initiated by her, etc.
I imagined her travels were motivated by a desire to let loose and live a little for the first time in her carefully orchestrated life.
There wasn’t a bit of truth to this, of course.
It was all claptrap cooked up by near-constant crying, only some of which was done by my son.
Brown was around long before the Travel Channel trafficked in gimmicky hosts, guys who are cranky and/or omnivorous and/or reckless and/or pompous.
Her shows are the ones to watch if you are nailed to the couch in the midst of a Midwestern winter.
Brown’s manner – unfailingly pleasant, enthusiastic and informed without seeming haughty – is the cure for what ails you if what ails you is cabin fever.
Like ’70s sitcom character Mary Richards, Brown is pretty, fit, pert and perpetually neat as a pin.
Like Mary Richards, Brown struggles (or so it seems) to reconcile a well-ensconced sense of decorum with an irreverent streak.
Brown is like a particularly passionate grad student in history or architecture, the kind who easily inspires undergraduates to pursue their studies and male grad students in history or architecture to pursue her around Europe.
Oddly enough, Brown says she hadn’t traveled much when she auditioned for the Travel Channel eight years ago.
She hadn’t traveled much, and she didn’t particularly want to travel much.
And as traditional as Brown’s “Passport” shows seem in the current context, she says she was the odd woman out at first.
“It was a little disturbing for me eight years ago to realize that there weren’t that many hosts around who didn’t act like Stepford Wives,” she says. “I didn’t want to go that way at all. I went the other way, and the Travel Channel loved that.”
Brown says her background in acting and improv (she studied theater and the performing arts at Syracuse University in New York state) helped her be comfortable while pretending a camera is her bestest friend.
Unlike Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations,” in which the crew is often mocked by the host, Brown’s “Passport” programs preserve the illusion that Brown is going on these jaunts alone.
Brown says it’s about time her crew got some credit.
“They work so hard,” Brown says. “So many times we’ll be shooting a scene that involves each of them carrying 35 or 40 pounds of equipment and me eating and getting a massage.”
As much information as Brown imparts during an episode, she says it was never her intention to come across as a travel expert.
“It has always been my goal to present a natural, real experience,” she says. “I never wanted to be someone who people look to for advice. I just wanted people to be inspired to travel, and it really means a lot to me when people tell me that’s what happened.
“That’s my role,” Brown says. “To keep people open to travel and open to new experiences. I’m the girl next door, and if the girl next door can do it, they can do it.”
With more of us nailed to the couch in the midst of a Midwestern summer by high gas prices; with more and more of us forced to travel no farther than the girl next door (and she proves to be plenty exotic enough, whoever she is), travel shows become more necessary than ever.
And Brown has designed one that seems reflective of our limitations this summer, “Passport to Great Weekends.” It debuted in late June.
Brown’s destinations are primarily domestic in the show, she says, including her home state of New Hampshire. The show also seems designed to strip me once and for all of possession of the fake backstory I’d made up for Brown.
Brown says she’s funkier, fresher and brasher in this show. There will be fewer lectures delivered to the camera and more intemperate behavior.
Brown even got happily married recently for the first time to an IT guru named Kevin O’Leary who isn’t controlling and doesn’t seem to mind that she travels 250 days a year.
She did it to spite me.
“I call him my computer geek,” she says. “I have no idea what he does. There is the strain to try to make time for each other. We both take time off work to be with each other. It’s a give and take.”
In promos for the new show, which seem modeled after Andrew Zimmern’s funny promos for “Bizarre Foods,” Brown gets to show off her comic chops.
Staffers get caught by Brown while prankishly foiling her office in one of the spots, and she reflects on the respect accorded Bourdain.
In real life, she says, she is on the road so much she doesn’t even have an office.
The fun she had doing the commercials doesn’t mean she’s itching to tread the boards again.
“Yeah, the Travel Channel’s stuck with me,” she says.
