Do the Alaskan Bush People get paid? We asked! Read our interview with the Brown family.
In Season 2, Episode 10 of Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People, “Rise of Browntown,” the Brown family moves into their new home, while Matt builds a house for himself out of tires.
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
“If we’re going to continue the Brown way of life, we’re going to need to bring more people out here. We’re hoping that the family’s going to grow,” Billy says. You just don’t see a lot of “Congrats On Bringing More People Out Here” gifts at baby showers.
Noah apparently hand-built Billy’s bed, and they’re going to move it to the upstairs of their cabin. They’re rigging up a pulley system to make it look more complicated. I’m curious to see what this bed looks like. I’m expecting some lavish, ornate, full king-sized chestnut canopy bed. Instead, they haul out what looks like a pallet that was made from wood reclaimed from that whole lumber-raft business. And like hell does that thing weigh 2,000 pounds. The Browns finally get the bed upstairs because of PHYSICS! or something.
Billy and Ami claim the bedroom upstairs. Rainy and Birdy will share a room. Gabe’s going to sleep in the corner somewhere. Bear is going to sleep under the stairs because it’s EXXXTREME! Plus, a DVD of the 1991 Wes Craven movie The People Under the Stairs finally made its way up to Alaska and Bear misinterpreted what that movie was all about. Noah Da Vinci will have his own studio space. Bam is going to take over the trapper shack, so he can have a place to bring some poor, desperate lady. Bam’s place will hence be called the Trap Her Shack.
And then there’s Matt. Billy and Ami want him to have a place that’s not made of Saran Wrap, and he should act like a grown-ass man and get a real house. Matt says his plastic-wrap shack was never intended to be permanent, but merely a temporary place where he could die from exposure and/or suffocation in a few days. Plus, the tight seal from the Saran Wrap would keep Matt’s corpse fresh days longer than the other leading brand.
It’s laundry day in Browntown, and the Browns wash their clothes in a creek, because people in the bush are not privy to the Ancient Chinese Secret.
Birdy uses a “tea-bagging” washing technique, which means exactly what she intends and has no other meaning and definitely not one that is sexual innuendo. Billy wonders if Noah can engineer some clothes-drying device, because the family’s run out of quarters for the laundromat next to the Icy Strait Lodge. A few of the boys take the “hour-long” boat ride into Hoonah to scour the junkyard for supplies and maybe the partially decomposed body of Matt’s friend Crazy Kenny. Matt spots a pile of tires and has an epiphany. He will build his home out of tires!
I get super creeped out when Ami and Billy have their talks about grandbabies and expanding Browntown because they don’t sound like parents who want their children to be happy and have families of their own. They sound like people who are trying to create new followers for some cult.
“I love the smell of rubber in the morning,” Matt says.
Matt, Gabe and Noah are bringing tires to the dock, and acting like 10-year-olds. Where are the Skaflestads when you need them? Matt gets into two tires and tries to roll down the dock. It does not go well. And so is born Michelin Matt.
Matt would really be in a lot of pain if it weren’t for all that meth he smoked at the junkyard.
When the boys get back to Brownton Abbey, Michelin Matt continues this colossal waste of time and energy while Noah works on building the clothes incinerator. Matt has no plan for his tire house. He has tires of all different sizes. I’ll bet he didn’t even research the proper load index or speed rating of those tires. Dumbass.
It’s time for Billy and Ami to spring the matchmaker thing on the boys. “It’s a little bit out there, a little offensive,” Noah says. Besides, Noah still pines for Minnie from Ketchikan. Gabe just likes to let things happen naturally, because that’s what worked so well for him so far. “The matchmaker seems a little forced,” Gabe says. YA THINK? “It sounds a bit like you’re pimping me out,” Bam says.
Noah’s got his clothes-burning barrel ready to test. Bear’s awesomeness is called upon to light the fire under it. But it’s not nearly EXXXXTREME enough until you get inside the thing yourself and feel the metal searing your flesh. They throw a bunch of clothes in there, spin it a few times, and pull out a steaming shirt and say “Wow, look at that!” Bear throws on his scalding-hot and probably still very wet sweatshirt and runs off to resume his awesomeness duties.
Michelin Matt’s Steel-Belted Radial Deathtrap is coming along nicely. Soon it will be big enough to collapse.
Susie, the matchmaker of AlaskaMen magazine fame, arrives at the camp and Ami immediately starts in with the grandbabies business. “I will try to pick girls that will fit into the family group,” Susie says, already realizing she’s just going to resort to the Russian mail-order thing again. The boys groom themselves, even though visiting with the matchmaker IS NOT A DATE. “I like a girl, too, that when I howl, would howl back. That’s awesome. I love to howl,” Bear tells Susie, who finds it funny and cute because she hasn’t suffered through hour after hour of this kid’s stale schtick like I have. If you go to Susie’s Facebook page, you’ll find this and similar vomit-inducing stuff:
“You have to show your kids that they have to work for everything. Nobody’s going to give you something in this world. You have to work for it,” Billy says. Oy. I’ll let our commenters from Alaska handle that one.
The boys have to go to Hoonah to pick up mail from Susie, and they hang out at Misty Bay Lodge to see who got paired up with what. Bear and Gabe get matches, and they’re attractive ladies who are interested in being on the TV. Gabe phones his gal Christine and makes an ass of himself. Christine giggles and finds Gabe cute, because that’s what the script says. Then it’s Bear’s turn to pretend he doesn’t know how to use a phone. Bear calls Sara. “Hey, this is Bear. Is this Sara?” Long pause while Sara rethinks this thing she’s gotten herself into. “Yes,” she says. Sara works at a sewing embroidery shop. “Do you ever embroider any, like, trees or anything?” Bear asks. “Ah … no,” Sara replies. “Just thought I’d check,” Bear says. Sara does not hang up. She’ll regret that.
Michelin Matt’s Galvanized Rubber Hut of All-Weather Traction looks like someone from a Destination America lifestyle series got a hold of it. Could Queer Eye for the Bush Guy be in the works?
Sitting around the dining room table, Ami won’t shut up about the grandbabies. Matt tells Ami that Bear and Gabe talked to girls on the phone today, which if Rosemary’s Baby has taught us anything, it means that both Sara and Christine will be mysteriously impregnated overnight.
[Update: Smilin’ Susie Carter takes time out from pimpin’ the Brown boys to pimpin’ her mag.]
