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Discovery Channel Alaskan Bush People recap: Now or Never

Ryan Berenz

Alaskan Bush People

Do the Alaskan Bush People get paid? We asked! Read our interview with the Brown family.

In the midseason finale of Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People, “Now or Never” (Feb. 20), the Browns work on building the walls and roof of their house, but snow and setbacks threaten to derail the family’s hard work.

I’ll live tweet the Bush People “Now or Never” episode tonight, since I had a great time last week and the Bush People Twitter Nation is a fun, vibrant community of hip cats. And this is apparently what I do with my Friday nights now.

You don’t need to know anything about Twitter or even have an account to follow along. Just view my Twitter feed here at @ChannelGuideRAB or the #AlaskanBushPeople hashtag (ignore Twitter’s Sign Up! crap), watch the show tonight at 10pm ET/9pm CT. Apologies to fans on the Left Coast, as it won’t be a live tweet for you.

Look for the usual recap of the show sometime Saturday afternoon.

ALSO SEE: What Happened to Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People?

Alaskan Bush People Season 1 Recaps: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | The Wild Life

Season 2 Recaps: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5 | Episode 6 | Episode 7 | Episode 8  | Wild Times | Episode 9 | Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 12 | Episode 13 | Episode 14 | SHARK WEEK! | Episode 15 | Episode 16 | Lost Footage | The Wild Year

Winter is still coming. The foundation of Brownton Abbey is laid, but the family has to get the roof and walls built before snowfall. We learn that the cabin they’re building is just for Billy, Ami, Birdy and Rainy. Noah and Bam are going to live in either the tent or the trapper shack. “Matt, I have no idea,” Bam says. “He might curl up under a log.” I give Matt 10 hours before he comes knocking on the cabin door, “Mom? Dad? I’m scared. Can I sleep with you guys?”

The Browns tell us how hard it was to build that cabin in Chitina in the snow and cold. (It would be the same cabin they spent all of Season 1 building and then just abandoned after alleged gunshots were supposedly fired at them, reportedly.) “You can feel the winter trying to kill you,” Matt says.

With the boys rounded up, Billy gets out the architectural drawings for the house and waves his fingers over them as if to demonstrate he knows what he’s doing. “We’ve built so many houses before, that I don’t think I can count them,” Billy says.

No one trusts Matt to do anything right, but yet they delegate important stuff like crucial measurements to him. “It kind of hurts my feelings when my family doubts that I can get something done. … People doubt me sometimes, but in the end of it, I always get the job done [clicks tongue].”

Jobs done by Matt: 0

Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Noah Lisa”

Noah gets assigned the project of building a meat smoker out of a speaker box and a metal filing cabinet. “People that I’ve met have called me a genius, a Da Vinci of our time. I guess to an extent, I am a genius.”

It’s time for another EXTREMELY IMPORTANT hunt, which means it’s time for sharpshooter Gabe to fire at random woodland creatures with the scope cover on. Billy takes the blame for that fiasco, saying he gave Gabe a rifle with an uncalibrated scope and told him to “iron-sight it.” Given that I know practically nothing about firearms, I’ll let our more knowledgable commenters break that whole business down. Of course Gabe gets his redemption and shoots a deer, guts it and makes a backpack out of it.

Back at Brownton Abbey, Noah completes his meat smoker and tags it with a cross, believing that God is everywhere and in everything Noah creates. I agree with this. The Lord works through us and our creative endeavors. All of these recaps have been divinely inspired.

It’s now time to test the Holy Smoker with the fresh meat. “You do not adjust the grate size to fit the meat, you adjust the meat to fit the grate size,” Noah says. “It’s a great grate, man.” The well-adjusted meat will take eight hours to smoke.

The following day, Billy asks Bam and Matt to build some temporary stairs to ease construction.


“Every time I put Matt and Bam on a job, they end up doing more bickering than working,” Billy says. They’re at each other’s throats over HOW TO BUILD THE TEMPORARY STAIRS, and I am even more convinced that this rivalry between them is manufactured for unnecessary drama. “I’m just tired of it and I just want you to stop,” Bam tells Matt. Bam has just expressed what we’re all thinking about this entire show.

One morning, Billy emerges from the tent to find a whopping two inches of snow. The death toll will be catastrophic.


Bear comes out of a snow-covered sleeping bag. I don’t even… The Browns weren’t expecting snow, even though they’ve spent this entire episode expecting snow, and didn’t properly secure their tools. The chainsaw is cold and snowy, and they can’t get it started. “Turning on a chainsaw is a lot like turning on a woman,” Bam explains. “You can’t just flip a switch. You have to sweet-talk it. You have to take your time, warm it up and then go.” I taste vomit. Bam gets the chainsaw started and then has sex with it.

There’s a bunch of boring construction and lifting scenes. Then Matt gets his hand squashed during the placement of a huge roof beam. Billy says, “If Matt’s hand is broken, there’s not much we can do about it.”


“With the weather right now, we couldn’t get to town if we wanted to,” Billy says. What a load of happy horseshit.

Matt fashions a splint with a glove, some wood and some twine. Noah’s going to build an X-ray machine out of an old junked Commodore 64, just like Da Vinci used to do.

There’s now a big problem at the cabin. No one noticed that the roof was planned to occupy the same space as a tree. (See “Horseshit, Load of Happy”) Billy says he figured the tree might come into play, but he didn’t want to cut it down because Ami was particularly fond of it. “You have to cut my tree,” Ami says. “This is heartbreaking to me.” The dangerous task of cutting the tree falls on Gabe. The tree may also fall on Gabe.


“I’m worried about Gabe falling and breaking his neck,” Ami says. “I think I’m going to stick around and watch this.” Ooooo! My son could break his neck and saw his face off! THIS I MUST SEE! Of course we know that Gabe is fine and does not saw his face off because he is talking to the camera and is not horribly disfigured.

And then there’s more boring construction and hammering and sawing. The snow is gone already, and it doesn’t look much like winter when the Browns put the finishing touches on the house. It looks like this stuff was filmed in spring or fall and then edited out of sequence. There’s this ceremonious house unveiling scene at the end, almost as if they were on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and didn’t actually build the house themselves.

“We have our own home on our own land,” Billy says of the property they “own” under Special Use Permit on the (Hoonah Ranger District) Tongass National Forest. [Update: Commenter Tim has some clarification on this.]

Ami sees a great future ahead for the family. Everything is sunshine, lollipops and rainbows for the Browns.

At least until June…

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