Alaskan Bush People

Some time ago Karen started watching this show called Alaskan Bush People.  It was understandable, since we're drawn to shows involving people living and working in Alaska.  So I started watching with her and immediately noticed some weird differences between ABP and the other shows we watched.

For the uninitiated, ABP involves a family of nine, a couple and their seven children, who insist on living in the bush, as they call it, or the wilderness as it used to be known.  The show follows their efforts building shelters, hunting and trying to carve out a town, called Browntown, based on their surname, in the wilderness.  The children range in age from the low thirties to the upper teens.  There are five boys and two girls.  The parents are originally from the south, Billy Brown from Texas and Ami (pronounced AH mee) from Louisiana).  Billy Brown worked on fishing vessels in Alaska and wrote a book called One Wave at a Time that apparently provided the basis for ABP.  Someone must have read the book and decided this was a modern spin on The Swiss Family Robinson. 

Initially, there were some interesting episodes.  The family is, to say the least, eclectic.  Some of the children go by the names of Bear, Bam, Raindrop and Birdy.  They all have given names that are mostly Biblical, but one never learns that from the show.  As if that weren't weird enough, several of the children speak with weird verbal ticks or inflections that aren't necessarily regional.  Unless one's seen the show and heard the voices, it's hard to replicate in writing.  But the speech is affectatious, overly mannered in a couple of instances. 

Then there's the behavior.  Bear, one of the middle children (who's thirty-years-old) absolutely loves to show off, climbing trees, running and jumping over logs, beating a freshly-caught fish in the head to kill it.  Noah is the mechanically-inclined child, five years younger than Bear, who tries to play the Renaissance Man by writing poetry, engaging in jousting, wearing spurs and a top hat (?) and keeping his hair in a long-flowing ponytail.  He is gifted when it comes to inventing things for Browntown, but the rest of his schtick is cringeworthy.

Were the show just this, it would be easy to ignore.  Unfortunately for the Browns, reports seeped out that they weren't living so remotely on Chichagof Island as they'd have you believe.  Apparently, they have neighbors barely two miles away and there are nearby towns so that the Browns are hardly living without a safety net.  Online reports debunk the hardscrabble lifestyle the show presents, although the Browns and their TV network are silent about the allegations. 

There have been attempts by the Brown boys to meet women, with the almost obligatory follow-up reports online that it was all staged.  The purchase of a milk cow to make the family more independent was criticized as being staged.  A lot of the things these folks do seem to be set-ups; skillful editing makes up for myriad ugly spots. 

But now, reality has intruded.  The matriarch, Ami, has been diagnosed with lung cancer.  Almost unbelievably, there is a discussion as to whether they can continue to live in the bush or whether they have to abandon it for California, where Ami is being treated for her Stage 3 or 4 cancer.  While we were watching this unfold, I derisively said, "Now we get to watch Ami die," which Karen almost immediately criticized.  I wasn't being heartless; the network is being heartless.  They are going to milk her illness and probable death for all the ratings it's worth.  Throughout the show, a legend appears on the screen as they come back from commercials telling the audience that Events Continue to Unfold in Real Time; in other words, Death Watch 2017.  Look, I'm no fan of the show.  Whether this is a Potemkin village is beside the point:  A woman's dying.  Our Mother died from lung cancer.  Is it too much to ask that the network let this woman live out her life in peace?  Or is it going to milk this for ratings and therefore more revenue?

The show's been a crock from the beginning.  It's offered up a manufactured reality for entertainment purposes, and that's fine. 

Let this woman go in peace.

(c) The Truxton Spangler Chronicles