XPac
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Posts posted by XPac
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I doubt he was interested as it would have involved him in the drama he wanted to avoid.
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.
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leadership skills & courageous character could have made the difference for shane and Dan I
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.
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Why r the freelancing camp followers never shown boiling water after shane's epic well dig? Much footage of them draped about campfire gossiping, but mysteriously there's no struggle to stay hydrated mentioned
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).
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I don't know. I think a couple things might have worked in their favor for them not getting clickish had Hakim not tapped out. I think the big thing is that the guys pretty much went their own way during the day and had Hakim not been forced to leave so early, he too probably would have been going out alone so just being apart that much would have kept issues to a minimum. Plus, frankly, some guys are good at keeping it ever from being personal thus skipping the drama. I think EJ, Jeff, and Hakim just might have managed that. They were all different yet similar enough that I think they might have been very balanced. One thing I appreciated is once they took Shane in, they didn't whisper behind his back with each other.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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Les would kill it. Absolutley kill it. On his own show, where he doesn't have most of what they all got to bring nevermind 10 items to choose, he is able to establish a base camp with a decent shelter, start a fire, find fire, and find food. Then he says something like "If this was a real Survival situation I would stay here and not move because that is stupid but we are going to pretend that I have to move." then he packs up and moves. He makes his life more difficult so that he can show what type of survival skills are needed if someone has to move.
So yeah, I have no doubt that Les would crush this show badly. Heck, Bear would be more then fine on this show. His shows might be faked like there is no tomorrow but he does have solid skills, which is one of the reasons his bogus shows are so disappointing.
By day 50, Les would have a full shelter, a smoke shack to preserve fish, a boat and probably a rain catchment system built. Especially if he had the gear that these guys had. Les might have done the stupid Big Foot BS but he has done more then enough to demonstrate that he knows what he is doing in the wild. And I think his family lives off grid. Yes, they have solar panels but I think he aims for as off grid as possible.
The show needs people who are on Mitch and Lucas level of skill but not folks at Cody, Les, or Bear level skill. They cannot afford for a seaosn to run a year. Paying to have a crew on hand 24/7 to monitor folks is expensive and who knows how exciting the footage will be. If they wanted this to go on for a long time, they would drop people off at the begining of spring when they would have time to build up a good camp, forage for food, preserve food, collect fuel and really prepare for a winter. Dropping them off during the fall greatly reduces the chances that these folks will make it longer then three or four months. The ones who have the skill to do it are going to get bored after they have themselves set up and are less likely to care about the money. Money is great but folks who are hard core survivalists are probably comfortable with living with what they have and less worried about making tons of money. The ones who are there for the money are less likely to have the hard core skills to last a winter.
Alan and Sam are good men who have some solid skills but neither of them showed that they had the abilities that Mitch or Lucas have, never mind Les, Bear, or Cody level. They had a great deal of perserverence but the massive weight loss and lack of building a camp that would last the winter makes me think that they are not folks who are real hard core survivalists. I would be fine stranded with them because they know enough to keep you safe and help the group be found by a search party. I don't think I would want to be with them long term because I don't think they have the same skills as Lucas and Mitch.
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.
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Watched the reunion show again.
Any idea what they are paying these people that motivates them to make the trip to wherever the show was staged? There would be absolutely no reason for DaniJ or Honora to attend this otherwise. This may be reinforced by one of the participants mentioning upholding a "contract".
It also became clear as they were talking, that there is really no question about survival. Everyone on the show will survive, barring some unfortunately fatal accident. It is about enduring the hardships and challenges of making it to extraction. Maybe I do not understand the meaning of the work survival.
Also the exposure of how the camera crew is "strictly instructed" not to interact with the characters, hurt their franchise. The more we find out the less authentic the show becomes.
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.
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ITA - I thought they picked some guys they knew would freak out and leave early so they'd have a smaller group to manage, and only a few guys they knew could go the distance. It's drama either way, but at least with a smaller group they could spend more time on each of them. Plus yes to them putting them in a tough environment purposely with lots of predators. That place and time was thought out very carefully and chosen because they knew they wouldn't last once the weather got really bad. All in the name of drama, of course.
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.
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I agree with this. I think that sometimes people are suspicious of those who don't act the way they "think" they should act.
As for Honora, I don't get her at all. If she felt the show was SO fake, why did she come back for XL?
This is totally true. I HEARD what Shane was saying too. He was abandoned and institutionalized. He did say that according to the "experts" he should be a serial killer. That would have meant nothing to me as I know that a lot of these "experts" are full of shit and will say anything as long as the insurance or government money keeps rolling in. To me, Alana and Dani being afraid of Shane proved how stupid and ignorant they were.
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.
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I've gotten to the point where this doesn't bother me. Producers are interested in "story," and so they cast a variety of character types. One of the forums I read -- can't remember which -- identified the character types in this season, and when they point it out, it's uber obvious. Wish I could remember what they were.
Beyond character types, they stacked the deck to make it tougher. They dropped the participants at the north end of the island in mid OCTOBER, right before the worst weather of the year. If they had wanted them to spend a year out there, they would have dropped them in April. They chose people with families -- some even with babies on the way -- because they WANTED them to struggle with the emotional side.
It's not in the show's interest to have the participants last a long time. That's expensive! They have to have a team on the island ready to evacuate someone ASAP. They have to have medic out every week, and they have to process all of the film that comes in. Imagine if the show had lasted 10 months. They STILL would have had to cover the events in 10 episodes. Talk about lack of depth and lack of cohesion! That would be a nightmare for a producer.
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.
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I think Les should try this show out and see how he does. It's one thing to armchair quarterback and say "I'd have done this....." and another to actually try it.
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.
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Also, Les Stroud posted a recent update on his FB page, and in the middle of it, he listed the various survival shows -- including Alone -- and said they were all fake. Someone asked about Alone specifically in the comments, and he said it was producer staged.
Dustin replied to Les on Twitter and said he was at his limit of being called a liar -- that Alone was NOT staged.
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.
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Hey, have y'all read this?
http://woodtrekker.blogspot.com/2015/08/alone-most-realistic-survival-show-or.html
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.
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Whoever recommended Alone was so spot on. Great filler until N&A Original comes back in October.
Yeah, Alone is cool. Feels a lot more real and less produced than a lot fo the Discovery survival shows.
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My frustration with this is that Alana and Danielle stopped listening to what Shane was saying. Shane had a HORRIBLE childhood. It very much sounds like he was abandoned and kept in an institution by quack doctors that were making crap up about him to fit their theories and expectations. Shane said that according to what the "experts" were saying about him he should be a serial killer but he was saying it in the context of it being crap and his life proving them wrong.
If he was some total stranger I was completely alone with I too would keep a part of my attention on him just in case, but he's a known entity, that has already gone 21 days alone with just one person during the nights and that person survived and even said good things about him at the end of it. And he was being filmed and followed around all the time during the day. They manufactured the drama, purposely reacting in a way that didn't match up to what they really knew. It's classic mean girl behavior, to pluck out the most exploitable bit of information without worrying about context. Instantly makes them feel superior.
I think the only reason they had drama with Shane was because Alana stepped up and created it for them. And then once he was off with the boys, they sent them running after to keep messing with his head, so yes, Discovery did fan the fires with Shane. But Dani, I think was an accident.
I think they intended or expected the Alpha males and the Alpha females to thrive while they set up drama bombs in the other two groups. They took a passive personality like Danielle that probably could have rolled with Shane's ups and downs but by making sure to also include Alana, who besides being intolerant and judgmental had the exact opposite approach to survival than Shane did (and a chip on her shoulder about men thinking she needed help), they were sure to get some friction but they may not have been known who would side with who.
In the other group we have Luke who normally is extremely patient and is basically trained to deal with conflict paired with Honora, and just the two of them MIGHT have made it. No promises since that chick is seriously off, but I do believe she was trying and so yeah, if she hadn't emotionally felt attacked, this time she might have held it together. But with Chris who was opinionated and blunt and kind of a known ass towards women, they KNEW that bomb was going to go off but again, not knowing the depth of Honora's instability, they couldn't have known for sure who would have been run out of the group.
With EJ, Jeff and Hakeim, they all shared the same sensibility toward surviving and were all basically stable personalities. Would they have had a clue that too much of a good thing would conspire to make them mess up priorities (finding water first and then building a kick ass shelter)? I think Hakeim tapping out was very much a surprise as was Dani not meeting up with her intended group for four days.
I think they intended for Eva, Laura and Dani, all contestants that seemed level headed and worked hard and were hunters, to be one of the super groups but with Dani not being there at that start of the group, the dynamics were messed up and those 4 days alone took a high mental toll on Dani that she had trouble rebounding from. I can't imagine how traumatic those nights alone must have been.
Still, even though there was always something just a bit off in the Alpha female trio, I think the producers were as shocked as the viewers at what the lazy6 did after Shane left. I sincerely believe that had there been any lead up to the nasty backbiting and lies being spread about Dani (or any truth to it for that matter) the cameras would have focused on building up that narrative but instead it went from Dani and Eva and Laura all seemingly great and then great again after adding Chris and Luke to just a explosive meltdown in the matter of a few days.
I guess the point I'm trying to get across is that while yes, Discovery did clearly try to create drama in a couple of the groups, I don't see anything that points to them planning drama with Dani J and her group. Which on the bright side would mean that the show process while not free from shenanigans, isn't ruled by them as many "reality" programs are.
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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.
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I sort of wish the Alpha Males had gotten their own spin-off show.
They actually made survival almost look fun.
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Agreed with pretty much everything. Honora is batty as fuck, and how she would even get her hands on anything of Shane's feels dubious to me.
Someone named Russell Beauchemin is also all over the FB pages and is threatening to 'tell all'; either Dani's dad or some other male relative. Alana said Shane didn't give her any problems, so just who is it that was the supposed sexual harasser? Dani J the sociopath? Every single person from the lazy group is acting a fool. This is the kind of ish that bratty fifteen year old girls pull. If they don't like their edit, fine. They seriously need to stop flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks.
I don't know if this kind of drawn out drama has happened on any other reality show (if it has I've no clue as I don't watch that many) but this leaves such a bad taste in my mouth that I'm not all that interested in watching any longer. The show itself went from an interesting idea to drama llama fest pretty quickly.
I hear Alone over on History Channel is a great one and watching a few of the episodes it was refreshing to see just how little drama you can have on a reality show and still have it be a fascinating program.
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.
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I think I read Honore's stuff, facebook or blog or what ever, after the first time she appeared on N&A, at that time she claimed she was beautiful and wanted to be on a show naked so people could see her beautiful body and she could get a role in films. Sher was not off on her being abused and on the show she said quite clearly the magnifying glass was her fathers and meant a lot to her, she said that several times. Since it was obvious she was a self absorbed person who saw the world through what could it get her, I have no reason to believe anything she says and I don't plan to start believing her now.
We all are experienced reality watchers and know the show can edit things out, but it can't add in stuff that didn't happen, it can also rearrange stuff out of order. that is it. I give most people the benefit of the doubt unless they pretty much prove themselves useless.
With Shane, I am kind of all over the place, especially after he said something about he should have been a serial killer. So,I can see someone being nervous with him in the night when the production staff leaves. Doesn't mean I would be rude to him, just careful, some people just don't have a way with words and can appear scary. With Dani, I don't know, they have said they ate lizards a lot, maybe she never caught lizards. we just don't have enough information. I wonder how many of them knew her story about watching her roommate killed?
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.
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Good grief. Dani took some walks to clear her head. So what? Those folks were together 24/7 and she spent a couple of hours exploring? IDK how that is alienating herself.
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.
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I admit she seems a lot more reasonable in her blog than she seemed on TV, and I don't really doubt all she's written. But it's still just her side of the story, so I'm still taking it all with a grain of salt. I still don't understand why she did some of the crazy stuff she did, like sleeping under the sun in her first challenge and throwing the survival tools underwater (if she knew they were going to misrepresent her, why did she give them such ammunition as you said yourself? And why did she come back for XL?).
She also says the magnifying glass thing was something the Discovery people gave her, but she still seemed to rely a LOT on that, as well as reprimand Matt for drinking water without using it to purify it, I don't know, I don't buy that. She also treated him very poorly by calling him names and telling him he smelled really bad, and I doubt that's made up. I do believe they could be exploiting her father's death though.
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.
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I found Honora's blog, in which she whines the show was unfair to her since the first challenge. Funny she came back for more.
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.
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Not to condone the comments from the psycho killer community or anything, but I think people frowned on Luke even because he just lied there and passively went along with the group when they were bullying Dani. No one had it in them to stand up like a grownup and tell the rest of them to cut the crap. It really was like watching a group of teenagers with individuals deferring to the biggest mouths in the peer group.
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.
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What one item would you bring on the show?
in Naked And Afraid [V]
· Edited by 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.