XPac

These days they're provided with a firestarted, right? That that pretty much almost always gurantees one person bring a pot while the other bring a knife (personally I'd probably bring a small ax over a knife). Though in rare instances we've seen people go outside of the box and bring climbing rope or duct tape... and they actually worked pretty well. I wonder if you could starilize water in a duct tape container. I assume you can't straight up boil something in duct tape over a fire. But maybe pasturize water or stone boil. Maybe.

At the reunion show he apologized for not playing more of a role as a chaperone or whatever for the other group. But yeah... I imagine he was more than happy to avoid all of that. His crew came off smelling like roses while the other group were essentially cast as the bad guys or whatever of the season. Regardless of what he apologized for I'll wager he was pretty happy with the choices he made.

I think Laura at the reunion was sort of being a bit critical of EJ for not providing leadership over the larger group. I do wonder if EJ being there would have made a difference. THen again, they're adults. They're not high schoolers. They shouldn't have needed EJ there to play yard duty monitor.

I think the show made the decsion to focus more on drama than survival. It became more of a social experiment rather than a survival show. They showed things like them hunting for food, but was less about educating people on the proper way of hunting heels and more so we can see how different people handle managing limited resources (to share, not to share, etc). If this show is ever on DVD I'd be curious to see what sort of additional footage the put on there. I bet that along with commentary would be pretty darn interesting since there clearly was so much we didn't see (as the large group has been telling us over and over and over again on social media).

The one thing working on the Alpha Males favor is that all of them seemed to have the same mentality and survivor philosophy. It's why Shane ended up fitting in well. They seemed to be on the same page, so there may not have been as big a difference between having 2 or 3 or even 4 people.

Lurking on various peoples face book pages, Alana included, it's sort of interesting to see how the vibe of these people are changing. I think people like Alana got so much hate that people started defending her. Similar to how people began rallying around Shane and Dani for being victims of the mob, I think people are starting to do that for the people from the show being "trolled" by viewers of the show. I guess everyone loves the underdog.

Yeah, I think that's where you start getting those Wilson moments. I recall on one Naked and Afraid when the guys partner tapped out early, he befriended a turtle shell. I think that's perhaps the most uncomfortable part of the show. As it drags on you can kind of tell some of the contestants are losing it a little. Not that I blame them one bit... even with food, water, shelfer, and fire I'd probably tap out pretty quickly too if I were entirely alone that way.

I'd like to see them try a different enviroment. But not necessarily something too hard. Watching them die of thirst in some dessert would probably make for pretty depressing TV. Swamp maybe? The Bayou might be just easy enough, but still offer plenty of drama. Though I can see the cotton mouths being a real problem.

Plus, having real survival experts would make for boring TV. Give a Cody Lundine or a Matt Graham as much gear as the Alone guys got and it's essentially just them setting around camping. It makes for boring TV (though I'm sure we'd learn a heck of a lot more watching them establish themselves). I think this show definately needs people who aren't survival experts. Outdoorsman, but not guys who will turn it into a vacation. People like Matt Graham do this sort of thing for fun, and likely with far less gear.

I imagine they are contractually obligated to attend the reunion. I know on Honoras face book Q&A she said she flat out didn't want to be there and was stoned. And I still wonder if she pass whatever she had to Vegi Dani because she looked pretty darned stoned too the whole reunion. And certainly the show is designed for everyone to survive. Anytime a survivalist is in any sort of life endangering situation, the crew will of course attempt to intervene. I think the survival aspect is that these "experts" are supposed to educate viewers on survival tactics should they find themselves in situations like this in the wilderness. Course, XL in particular did a pretty terrible job of that. It was more a social experiment than a survival show.

In a way though it sort of makes sense to put them in a place with large predators. If there isn't enough food for large predators, odds are there isn't enough food for 10 human beings.

I think the problem with having groups of 3 is that in almost every group ended up canibalizing itself (I think those were Honoras works on the reunion) with 2 people grouping and the last being a third wheel. Shane was the outside with Alana and Vegi Dani. Honora was the outsider with Chris and Luke. Dani was an outsider with Eva and Lauren (though that didn't really get too bad until the super group formed). The only group where this didn't happen was the Alpha Males, though they did lose one person for entirely different reasons. As a sociological experiment it's just interesting that in 3 out of 4 groups, there was one person which became an outsider. In the case of Shane and Honora, I frankly think that was almost by design since anyone in theory could have seen potential problems there. But it even happened in the female group to some degree. The alpha males seemed the only group immune to that for some reason.

A tougher show creates more drama. Given that they are reasonably well supplied as opposed to a lot of other survival shows, it's really a camping trip if things aren't tough. And that doesn't necessarily make for good TV. In addition to the cost, like you mentioned. That said, I'll wager even for unmarried people being alone out there for months would take it's toll eventually. I'm sure there are mountain men out there who live those sort of lives... but those sort of people probably aren't trying too hard to get on a TV show anyways.

Though it would NEVER happen I'd like to see a sort of Celebrity survivalist Alone... get guys like Les and Cody Lundine and Matt Grahan and Micheal Hawke etc and throw them out there just to see how long they REALLY could last out there. I think Alone was more Survival enthusiests than Survival experts. Not knocking any of them or anything like that... but I suspect it would be potentially a very different show.

Isn't Les Stroud spending his time these days hunting Big Foot? I'm not sure he's one to talk as far as how fake a TV show is.

I think to some degree it had to be in a more controlled enviroment than what viewers may have believed... but it's a TV show so it has to be. I don't think for the purposes of a show they can really drop these guys in the middle of nowhere. If something does happen, you don't necessarily want to take half a day to get to them. As long as they were far enough to the point where none of the contestants could take advantage of modern civilization, I think for the purposes of a TV show it was fine.

Yeah, Alone is cool. Feels a lot more real and less produced than a lot fo the Discovery survival shows.

Yeah, I agree that they probably didn't see the Dani thing coming... the conflict seemed to stem from people who weren't in Dani's initial group. I suppose to some small degree they might have assumed there COULD be an outside in the female group since Laura and Eva seemed to already be friends... but it's not like any of those 3 really had a history of drama prior to this season to any large extent. One has to almost wonder if Dani would have even been on anyone's radar had Honora not left, or if Shane hadn't grouped with the Alpha Males instead. It's obviously impossible to know one way or the other... but they potentially were easier more obvious targets.

I sort of wish the Alpha Males had gotten their own spin-off show. They actually made survival almost look fun.

I personally am not a huge fan of the drama aspect... I find it uncomfortable to watch. That being said, I think it's a draw for a lot of viewers. It became less a story about survival and more a story of Shane and Dani dealing with this seemingly cruel mob. It created heroes and villains and lots and lots of drama. That drama is still spilling over as we speak all over social media. So while it's a bit of a turn off for me personally, I do think it suceeded in making the show something people are talking about at the water cooler at work the next day. It got people emotionally invested in the characters in a way the regular format seldom if ever did. So like it or not, the producers new what they were doing. I'm actually okay with XL focusing on being more a social experiment as long as the regular show stays closer to it's roots of being a survival show.

The thing about XL is that it was frankly more a social experiment than a survival show. In a lot of instances they were placing people with social quirks (Honora, Shane, Dani) into situations where they're almost certainly going to struggle. Drama was pretty much guranteed. I do wonder if we're ever going to see that sort of raw drama ever again on XL. I'm sure the next batch of contestants going in are fully aware of what might happen if they give the producers the proper ammunicion. I'm certain no one can put a happy face on for 40 straight days when you're tired, hungry, and dehidrated... but nonetheless the potential fall out for their actions has to be on their minds. I do also wonder if some of the guys on the next show will prefer staying on their own rather than forming a large group with the females given the relative sucess of the Alpha Males vs the other group. Granted editing likely played a role in one group looking better than the other... but I can't help but think most make contestants would find being in the Alpha Male camp a better experience. Though that probably has less to do with gener and more with the specific people that made up that group.

Based on Chris' comments I presume the MAIN criticism is that she wasn't bringing anything to the table. Maybe the issue is that she was going on walks instead of doing any work. or something like that. Obviously that doesn't make her a psychotic or a lyer or a show boat or anything like that... all of that was likely just mean girl bs.

I have a bit of trouble with the whole notion that they gave her the magnifying glass simply because they don't seem to treat everyone else that way. The gear everyone else brings is pretty standard... some combination of knife, pot, and fire starter (though I believe recently they've been supplying those). It just seems randon that in her case they'd give her something. Maybe it's the same thing with the guys who brougth duct tape and goggles, I don't know... If she's the only person who got an item forced on her, that's wrong. But it's just weird and random that they would do that. If it's true. Sadly I'm not certain I can believe what she says, because editing or no editing she acts like a 5 year old.

I can sympathize with a lot of what she said, and if it's true then I do think she has legit complaints about Discovery. But I still think she handled it like a 5 year old. Throwing their survival tools in the water just makes her look like a 5 year old... there's no reason in the world anyone watching should take her seriously after that. If Discover uses that to make her look bad she has no one to blame but herself because she gave them the tools to do it. Same thing with Matt in her first N&A espisode. If they treated her unfairly that's wrong on their part. But she gave them all the ammunition in the world to make her look bad with her 5th grader out burst over how fat and lazy Matt is. Even if the editing made her look bad, she gave them all the ammunicion in the world to do it.

Yeah, I definately think that's what Luke and many of the others probably should have done. However, as I said in the other thread I think a part of me thinks he didn't for the same reason EJ and Jeff didn't take Dani in the group (even though they themselves would admit they probably should have). I think he wanted to avoid the drama. If you're tired and hungry and miserable for a month I think it's easy to just decide NOT to get involved unecessarily. Doesn't excuse not getting involved... but I think I understand it. That said, I'll bet he wishes he did more now.