the tattoos of war

Miami Ink Vs. Inked: Which show is better suited for dude-bros and wankstas?

Since the weekend was marred with boring ol' Superbowl XL, I decided to sit around and analyze the two tattoo shows that are taking over formerly respected cable networks. There's "Miami Ink," (TLC) a show that seems like it's more of a "Real World"-styled experiment. Ami James and his motley crew open up a shop on South Beach in Florida and try to stay afloat. "Inked" (A&E) takes an established shop (Hart & Huntington) in Vegas and exhibits all the wonderful things that happen when you have a tattoo shop in a casino.

As far as setting up interesting stories, "Miami Ink" is clearly better than "Inked." "Miami" has a runtime of 43 minutes, 20 minutes longer than "Inked," so establishing a story arc within the episode is a little easier. In the duration of any given episode, James emphasizes the story behind the tattoo, an idea that's included in his monologue during the opening.

Since "Inked" runs at half the time of its competitor, the stories tend to focus on the staff a little bit more than the clientele. In the five shows I sat through, many of the stories were about staff members butting heads with each other and very little screen time is focused on the folks bleeding on camera.

I couldn't help but notice the David vs. Goliath-element when comparing the shows. While I'm sure that James' beach-front tattoo parlor isn't cheap, he doesn't have the luxury of placing his shop inside of a busy casino where any drunk person who won $125 at the Price is Right slot machine will walk in and get a tattoo of something ridiculous.

In one episode, Hart & Huntington co-owner, Carey Hart, talks about expanding his company and making it into a franchise. While that's pretty ambitious, Miami Ink's crew seems a little bit more blue collar since they have one shop and often talk about how they can't afford to take any days off.

Both shows run into other commonalities aside from tattooing: marriages, problems with the apprentice, and drag queens.

Interestingly, "Miami" only has one female staff member, Kat Von D, a stunning beauty who is probably above and beyond any Suicide Girl. I do think that, so far, they haven't really hammered away at the fact that she's a woman, thus separating her from the rest of the staff. She's a good fit in Miami Ink's boys club. In "Inked" there are several female staff members and they all average about five to seven minutes of screen time. In the episodes I saw, only one woman was featured prominently, Quinn, whose plotline was contemplating if breast implants were right for her (side note: she was already pretty busty).

In the end, "Miami Ink" comes off as a far superior show because, like tattooing, each episode is well thoughtout and it ultimately seems like less of a trainwreck than "Inked." Not to say that "Inked" is completely terrible, but given the small amount of time allotted to the relationship between its staff and clients, it's harder to care about a bunch of beautiful people who just seem to complain a whole lot.