End of 'Luck' shows urban-oriented entertainment has an uneasy marriage with rural horse industry

"Farm kids are educated early about the events that bookend life," Max Watman writes for The Daily Beast. "Time spent around barns and pastures will provide quick, and valuable, instruction regarding how life begins, and how it ends. Agriculture is, at its core, a system that attempts to control these two events, and the key lesson of husbandry is that while it is worth trying, one cannot achieve total control of the situation. Animals will be born, and will die, in ways that are unexpected. When one combines the very urban pursuit of the production of entertainment with the very rural pursuit of agriculture — as on the HBO series 'Luck,' which was canceled this week due to the unfortunate death of a horse while the show was filming — one is guaranteed to find that the marriage of the two will be fraught." (Photo by Gusmano Cesaretti, HBO)

The subhead on Waltman's article reads, "In canceling the show, HBO has ensured that 'Luck' will be known, unfairly, as the show that killed horses about a sport that does the same." Waltman writes, "Cancelling the series won’t change anything about the death of the three horses, but I can’t see any other option. If horses are dying while your cameras are rolling, you must quit." (Read more)