A woman named A.K. appearing in the Season 2 premiere of Discovery Channel’s Naked and Afraid asks the musical question, “Who the f*** could come out here and survive naked in the Amazon jungle?” Swap out “dressing room in the lingerie department of Bloomingdale’s” for “Amazon jungle,” and she sounds just like me when I was shopping last weekend.
The excitable A.K. is joined in her pixelated nudity and clearly discernable despair by a man named Tyler, in an episode entitled “Brace Yourselves.” They’ll have to construct those braces out of vines lashed together with toad legs.
For those new to the series, N&A documents a duo of male and female “survivalists” who are allowed just one personal item–but no food, Poland Spring, or clothing–as they struggle to survive and provide entertaining television for 21 days while stranded with a few dozen crew members and producers in a remote location with one of the world’s most extreme environments. They can film this show in my bathroom–it’s the world’s most extreme environment for mildew.
The show claims the human body will shut down after three days without food. I know mine shuts down after 12 hours without a Little Debbie Nutty Bar. Here, in the Amazon jungle, there are relentless mosquitoes, piranhas, and deadly anacondas, which sounds even worse than my landlord when the rent is a couple of days late.
We meet A.K., a dour stay-at-home mom and teacher. She’s studied how Native Americans survived in the wild, which may not be so useful since we have no rainforests in North America. She is joined by Tyler, a 29-year-old married student and former military man. They undress in the boat when they land at the meeting point, which the camera enjoys documenting.
He brought a machete as his one allowed item–seems like an obvious choice; not very creative, Tyler!–and she brought a fire-starter (not the Stephen King book). They also have a map, since they have to hike two miles to someplace else and then boat down the Amazon to where they get picked up after the 21 days.
Before coming on the show, they’ve each been assessed to establish their PSR (Primitive Survival Rating) by some purported experts who developed a system for determining whether people who participate can continue to conduct interviews in between eating crickets and fleeing charging boars.
They chat about their kids as they start their barefooted hike through the dense foliage. Monkeys screech from the branches, and there are numerous close-ups of tarantulas, enormous caterpillars, and other fauna even more terrifying than what’s in that Tupperware in the back of my refrigerator. All you can think of is how can you sit down when you’re not wearing any pants, because what if one those hideous slimy bugs they keep zooming in on were underneath you.
The crotch pixelation makes Tyler look like a store mannequin who hasn’t been to the gym for a few months. When the two arrive at a clearing, he starts to build a shelter while A.K. tries to make a fire, but it starts raining. The tension of the situation compels their first spat. “With no fire,” intones the narrator, “they are at the mercy of the Amazon.” I said those exact words the other day when I had to contact customer service after some books I ordered failed to arrive.
At nightfall, mosquitoes descend like Biblical locusts to eat their flesh, and there’s no Off to be found. The rain continues, but A.K. is determined to get that fire going. I didn’t sell a lot of cookies, but even I was enough of a Girl Scout to know you can’t build a fire with wet wood. Without the smoke to repel the little bastards, the mosquitoes return for another all-you-can-eat buffet as surely as my grandma went to the early bird special at the diner.
Finally, the rain stops; they try igniting the fire again, and succeed. Now to find something to eat. Tyler discovers a termite nest and rubs ground-up bugs on himself as a natural mosquito deterrent. Either that, or he’s just trolling us.
Nevertheless, throughout the night they’re ouching and groaning the hours away as their flesh is devoured yet again. At this rate, forget the termites and find a natural calamine lotion. Then, the next day, Tyler breaks the fire-starter. A.K. cries, “Suck ass!” which I did not know was not a bleepable term on basic cable. We are treated to a close-up of all their bug bites, which looks like a “before” shot from a ProActiv commercial.
A.K. starts to cry. “The Amazon claims another victim,” the narrator says mournfully. Another? Who was the first one? Tyler plans to continue without her. They hug goodbye while the guy in charge of the pixelating heaves a sigh of relief. A.K. tells us that this experience has shown her how much her family means to her, because you can’t know the depth of your love for your husband and children until you voluntarily spend a few days wandering in the Amazon jungle hacking down trees and stepping in jaguar droppings.
Now that A.K.’s gone, who is Tyler going to be all irate and disgusted with–a python? He is desperate and malnourished, and his private parts are chewed up, he complains. Yeah, but his Q score must be through the roof! To try to ease his discomfort, he leaps into the river, where crocodiles lurk menacingly. When he emerges, his private parts are chewed up and damp.
He builds another shelter, and tells us how alone, hungry, and exhausted he is. It’s like your average vlog recorded by a person on Jenny Craig. These five days in the jungle have been a far worse experience than when he was in Afghanistan being shot at by the Taliban, even after he went to the USO show when Jessica Simpson performed. Now he is “tapping out,” the third casualty. I still want to know who was the first? A bug someone stepped on? For being such wusses, both A.K.’s and Tyler’s PSR rates plummet, and along with it, their chance to get into a the college of their choice.
Now we meet E.J., an Army vet with a PSR of 8.2 out of 10. Laura has the same rating. They’ve previously survived 21 days in other environments. Arriving at the same location in the Amazon, we learn that they have use of the same survival items as those losers A.K. and Tyler. “The bug activity is much higher,” EJ observes helpfully as they walk off into the jungle and are immediately attacked by ants.
They arrive at the previous pair’s camp, and dis the other two for choosing that location. With water on three sides of low ground, E.J. explains, it’s basically ringing a dinner bell for the mosquitoes.
Showing up whatever Native Americans A.K. studied with, they get a fire going within minutes, and start methodically building their shelter. These guys have a much better success arc than poor A.K. and Tyler. Nevertheless, come nightfall, the mosquitoes come a’swarming like people to an Apple store with the release of a new iPhone. This is why no one is building luxury condos in the rainforest.
E.J. and Laura prudently decide to leave the area. But first, there is Adam-and-Eve type bathing scene in the river. The amount of pixelation over Laura’s chest compared to A.K.’s suggests she wears at least a C cup.
Dehydrated and discouraged, they move on through the forest, peered at by a vulture. “It’s so hot,” EJ declares for exposition. They find a particular vine that will provide water, and drink from it like it’s a beer keg.
As they start to construct yet another shelter, with a design woefully derivative of Saarinen, E.J. cuts himself with the machete. The blood is pretty bad. The vulture is delighted. Crew people intervene to stitch him up so they can preserve the production budget. Finally, their shelter starts looking like Gilligan and the Skipper’s hut. If only they had the Professor to build them a coconut radio. Wild animals roar and howl around them as they try to sleep. E.J. nervously announces that a jaguar is close by; if it finds them, it could spell death. And here I’m upset when the kids next door keep me up playing their damn music too loudly.
Five days have gone by, and the two naked people desperately need a source of protein. All that greenery and they can’t just make a salad? They try to catch a piranha, but the fish are just too wiley and bite off the whole hook. Clearly, in the contest of Man vs. Beast, put your money on Beast every time. They then stalk a boa with hand-carved spears. Much like people I have seen in internet forums, the colorful snakes “are aggressive and will attack humans without warning,” the narrator informs us. Also, I don’t think that’s necessarily aggressive behavior for a snake, since it really doesn’t do much but attack things in between slithering around.
By the second week without eating, Laura thinks they may be getting grumpy. They haven’t seen me when I’ve just missed lunch. She and E.J. then discover an electric eel just minding his own business in the shallow end of the water, and decide to kill it for dinner. Do these guys also buy the mystery basket ingredients for Chopped? EJ prepares to stab it in the head, announcing viciously to the rather bored-looking creature that he is going to stab it through its brain. Laura scolds him, telling him that’s disrespectful to the living thing that is going to give its life to provide them with sustenance. After E.J. kills the eel–surprisingly, instead of killing Laura–she’s still upset. You just know she wears Birkenstocks and is a member of a food co-op back home.
Laura continues babbling about the killing of the eel being a sacred act, and how she was shocked at E.J.’s “offensive” rage while spearing a creature that would idly electrocute him just for taking a swim. Still, E.J. comes to appreciate her point that you should kill with compassion. I know I’ll be sure to recite an elegy next time I step on a cockroach in my kitchen. They then make a shish kabob of the victim and eat it with great satisfaction, even though there’s no dipping sauce.
Now to build a raft to carry them to their “extraction point.” Laura is concerned about E.J.’s physical condition, but she doesn’t seem to be much help with the construction process. She did, however, find time to make herself a little grass loincloth. The raft must be “awesome,” explains Laura, using the technical term for watertight. It’s made from long logs tied with vines, with two nice benches to sit on. Add a barbecue, and it looks like somebody’s very small backyard deck.
Off they go into the “unpredictable waters of the Amazon,” which are filled with deadly creatures and a boat full of crew members with boom mikes. Now Laura is wearing a bra made of what looks like tree bark. That can’t provide adequate support. After seven hours of paddline, though, they’ve barely made any progress. That night, E.J. starts sobbing as he tells us it’s his wife’s birthday, and he loves her. “I wish you could see this jungle with me,” he weeps. Mrs. E.J. is thinking he won’t be the one planning their next weekend getaway.
Next day, they continue to paddle glumly along. They need one of those Harvard rowing team people yelling, “Stroke!” from the back of the raft. And a few Luna bars. As Day 20 grows dark, they are horrified to sight some crocodiles swimming alongside them, and then a thunderstorm begins. They scramble to land in the pitch black and crouch without shelter in the storm, worried now about hypothermia. What next, the bank forecloses on their treehouse?
Shivering and crying out to God, the pair can’t hear the narrator tell us regretfully that in a few hours in the 51-degree weather, their organs will start to shut down. Fortunately, the next morning, they’re back on the raft paddling dutifully. For someone who hasn’t eaten very much in a while, E.J. is still looking pretty solid through the midsection. Finally, they hear the sound of a helicopter approaching–they’ve made it! I hope E.J. doesn’t say something sexually offensive to Laura while they’re flying out.
They survived the 21 days. Teamwork did it, E.J. says, and Laura talks about how the need for companionship is new to her. Gee, that’s a shocker. Over the three weeks, he lost 44 pounds and she lost 12. Jillian Michaels is going to be upset about him. Both increased their PSR to 9.1, which I suspect will not make any difference to anyone reading their resumes. The boa’s PSR is now 9.8.
