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Discovery Channel Alaskan Bush People recap: Ballad of Billy Brown

Ryan Berenz

Go Here For All Of Your Hole-Digging Alaskan Bush People Needs!

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

What did Discovery intend to do by using this Alaskan Bush People as a lead-in to Racing Extinction? It’s a weird juxtaposition of the insipid trash Discovery has churned out lately and the enlightening, important prestige documentaries it used to air regularly. Was it purely a ratings move to boost Racing Extinction? Was it an effort to remind viewers that there’s stuff on Discovery that won’t make us dumber?

This special episode, “Ballad of Billy Brown,” is more like “This Is Your Life, Billy Brown” or “The Idiot’s Guide to Alaskan Bush People.”

We see the Browns out doing Brown stuff the Brown Way. Carving stuff. Digging stuff. Being EXXXTREME! Matt goes out fishing for crabs, the Fast Food of the Bush. Matt’s very meticulous when it comes to Alaska’s crab-fishing regulations. Only males of a certain size can be kept. It would be nice if the Browns were as concerned about, you know, lots of other laws. BTW, this just in (from 2013): ‘Alaskan Bush People’ Star Matt Brown Arrested For DUI Following Wild Night Of Partying & Sex. 

It’s a special day, though. Some of Billy’s old friends from Texas made the long journey up to Brownton Abbey. Bill and Margaret Fuller get a tour of the Browns’ “fairy land.” Bill brought a bunch of old photos from Billy’s youth. How Bill acquired these photos and why they look brand new is none of our business.

We get a rehash of the seminal event in Billy’s life that led him up to the Alaskan bush — the death of his parents and sister in a plane crash when he was 16. It’s a sad story, one of the few things on this show that isn’t fabricated and one of the few things I won’t snark about.

It was so nice of the Fullers to come up all this way and spend 10 minutes being a plot device. Now GTFO.

The Brown kids want to do something nice for Billy after this major bummer the Fullers brought down on him. They want to take Billy on a surprise trip to do his favorite thing that we are only now just learning about: prospectin’! Yes, Billy has gold fever!

Everyone keeps saying that all of this celebration is for Billy’s birthday. Well, according to this story about the Browns’ latest court appearance, Billy turned 63 on Thursday, Dec. 3. (Yesterday!) Doesn’t quite look like December out in Brownton Abbey, does it?

On the Integrity, everyone marvels at how little Rainy has grown! Must be the eye makeup.

Matt says that Billy caught gold fever up in Haines — Matt’s pronunciation makes it sound like “anus” — when Billy hung out with some logger dude named Delbert Bart, who has one of the great prospecting names of all time.

The family sets up a camp and reminisces about how the Browns started their annoying howling B.S. It involved the family setting up a camp when they discovered they were surrounded by howling wolves. Matt (of course!) gets the idea to howl back at the wolves. This somehow prevents the dingoes from eating the babies. Stupid wolves.

The Browns go panning for gold. It’s boring as hell. By this point I’ve stopped paying attention to the show and am just working on PhotoShops.

We get a little cameo appearance from Cowboy Dean, one of the more underutilized characters on this show. As the Brown kids pan for gold, Noah sits this one out and decides to meditate and “elevate his thinking higher.” Noah’s Bush Shaolin Monk act is just as big a waste of time as all this panning for gold.

“Bush Martha Stewart” Ami’s going to do some Bush Baking. She’s making a “miracle cake” that does not take eggs. It uses the chemical reaction between vinegar and baking soda to make the cake rise. Later, she’s going to use the same reaction for a fun volcano science project.

Billy and Ami share a story about eating beaver. “If you look at a beaver and smell the beaver and get close to the beaver, that’s what they taste like. It’s a beaver,” Billy says. Billy then gives us TMI about his trip to the Bush Bathroom the next day. Somehow, all the iron and protein in beaver meat made his excrement “glow.” I would try to research that but I’m terrified of the Google results.

Matt and the boys are going to light torches for the festivities. They’re using old T-shirts, deer fat and kerosene. This reminds them of that one time the boys fought off a bear by igniting a bunch of gas. The fire spooked the bear, who is “not used to that sort of EXXXTREMENESS.” They’re setting up the torches around a campfire and the whole scene looks like a Survivor Tribal Council. I hope they vote Noah out.

Nothing like wrapping up a terrible episode with a bunch of complete jackassery. The Brown kids wasted valuable wood constructing a stage for a Bush Talent Show. It goes pretty much like you’d expect. Noah is Professor Dark, an illusionist. Gabe does Sean Connery, because Gabe is a one-trick pony. Bear throws knives into a flaming log, because it’s EXXXXTREME! Bam does Bush Shakespeare. Rainy tells jokes that most 3-year-olds would enjoy. Rainy and Birdy sing a duet.

The Good Lord gave Billy the best fake birthday ever and the best gift ever: another delay in his court case.

We get a preview of the rest of this season. Billy has to go to Seattle for his seizures. We know he’s in Seattle for quite a while because he’s been phoning in his court case and media appearances from there. Bam rams the Integrity into a dock. The boys damn near kill themselves and sink The Skiff. More young aspiring actresses are trucked into Brownton Abbey to produce grandbabies. The film crew stages a bear attack inside their cabin.

And still more f***ing howling.

 

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