Do the Alaskan Bush People get paid? We asked! Read our interview with the Brown family.
As we prepare for the midseason* premiere of Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People May 29, Discovery Channel presents this “Wild Times” recap special, in which the Browns discuss memorable, extreme and most certainly not fake moments from their show so far. Because I am a complete disappointment to my family, I’m going to recap this recap show.
*Discovery has started promoting this as a new season, yet I’ve not heard any mention of “Season 3.” So we’ll just call this Season 2B until the Supreme Court hands down their decision.
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
So ABP is going to repeat a bunch of the pointlessness we’ve already seen and throw in a little of the pointlessness yet to come in Season 2B. I’ll try to make this as painless as possible and will try to stick to stuff we haven’t seen or heard in previous episodes.
“You can do anything you want. You can eat anything you want, and have anything you want,” Birdy says of the bush lifestyle. Let’s examine these statements. You can do anything you want, so long as it’s legal, won’t get you eaten by a bear, and fits the ABP production schedule and budget. You can eat anything you want, except for that time when food was scarce and you had to eat the berries that the bears didn’t. And you can have anything you want, so long as it grows in nature or is subsidized by the taxpayers of Alaska. So other than all that stuff, Birdy’s living like the Queen of Sheba.
Some great ABP legends get some screen time, as we see Lumber Guy Rick, Grizzled Gale the junk man, Uncle Tom of Uncle Tom’s Tavern and the Guitar Guy who bartered for the box of DVDs that had no porn.
I usually watch ABP with the captions on, and the captions for tonight’s episode read as if they were being typed in real time by a chimp. Chitina was displayed as CLITINA. A cord of wood was a QUART of wood. And I don’t know what the hell was going on here:
This show would be vastly more entertaining with the sound off.
Matt’s upcoming architectural failure involves building a home out of old tires. Bam realizes this idea is so stupid, there’s no way he’s sitting this one out. “What’s the plan?” Bam asks. “I’m kind of … there’s not really any plan,” Matt answers.
Matt and Bam are in tight competition for the Creepy Misogynist of the Year title. “Hardest thing to barter for: women,” Bam says. “Nobody wants to let them go. They don’t like being bartered for for some reason.”
Noah is going to assemble some kind of clothes dryer out of a segment of chain-linked fence and some bicycle wheels. This thing is going to go above an open fire and be like a rotisserie for laundry and burn the hell out of all their clothes. Like most of Noah Da Vinci’s contraptions, we get to see them built, but we never actually get to see them work effectively.
Matt is just awful. Even worse, he’s become aware that he is awful and he’s playing it up for the camera. Matt describes what I think is his ideal date with a woman. “I found a way to get underneath the roads, right? And so I’m going to take her underneath the road like the Ninja Turtles and we’ll eat pizza.” And then he tells the matchmaker Ami hired for them, “I’m afraid I’m going to break you, actually, with your whole date doctor thing, because I like a pretty smile and a girl with an interest in me.” Is he hitting on the matchmaker?
During this fully edited, revised and abridged History of Alaskan Bush People, we get a scene in which a bear walks through the Browns’ campsite at night, Billy gets out and grabs a rifle, and the boys go out to chase the bear off. You’ll notice in the footage that the bear rearranged a bunch of items on a table in front of the tent. (Rumor has it the Browns don’t even spend the night in Chicago Bears Island and that they were snug in bed at the Icy Strait Lodge in Hoonah when the bear visited the camp.) We also don’t get a recap of why the Browns were “chased off” their land in Chitina.
Gabe tells a story about the time the family was being chased by an angry moose and their dog heroically “just broadsides” the moose. I do not know who holds the most victories in the longstanding Dog vs. Moose species rivalry, but my guess is that Moose leads the series by quite a lot. Any Pacific Northwest friends want to weigh on in this one?
In an upcoming episode, we get to hear Billy and Ami bitch and moan about how they’re so oppressed by civilization. “We feel the encroachment,” Billy says. “It’s almost like it’s getting harder and harder to live an independent lifestyle.” What Billy doesn’t realize is that everyone wants him to be independent. They just want him to do it somewhere far, far away.
And then Ami gets a visit from some Alaska troopers for being suspected of doing God knows what at a restaurant in Hoonah. Perhaps you even noticed that there’s a cellphone on the table in front of Ami when she’s at the table speaking her mind to the police. They’re not even trying any more.
Thanks for coming back to check out what I hope will be fun and therapeutic recaps of a total dumpster fire of a TV show. I couldn’t do it without you guys, so keep the comments coming. You give me strength. You are the fire that warms the bush clothes dryer of my heart.