True Life: I Spent the the First Week of 2019 Obsessively Watching Naked and Afraid
I’m four days into my Naked and Afraid binge and convinced it’s imperative I learn how to start a fire with a bow drill. Imperative.
Seth emerges from his office, where he’s been playing video games for hours, to find me in the recliner, where I’ve been watching Naked and Afraid for hours. (Marriage is exciting!)
“The guy on this episode is from Nebraska! Grand Island!” I blurt, possibly foaming at the mouth.
“Cool,” he says as he ascends the stairs.
“Could you grab me some water while you’re up there?” I shout.
This scenario repeats itself over the course of the next few days:
Seth leaves his office for food or water.
“These two are totally gonna fuck,” I tell him with relish.
He glances at the TV. “No they’re not.” And heads upstairs.
“Yes they are!” I insist to his retreating back.
He re-surfaces an episode or two later. I still have not moved.
“This chick’s all by herself but she just caught a tiny pig! Don’t worry, she let it go.”
“Wow,” he says, not sounding particularly impressed.
(Later, I will convince him to watch some of my favorite episodes with me. They’re just that good.)
***
I’ve been fan of Naked and Afraid since I was in college, when I caught some of the first season while back at my parents’ house during a break. Alas, as I moved into my adult life as a cable-less Millennial, I didn’t keep up with the show (which airs on the Discovery Channel).
Over the 2018 holiday season, in my aspiration to do as little as possible outside my daily runs, I was looking for some plotless entertainment, and then, what I can only guess was divine inspiration led me to wonder: Is Naked and Afraid on Hulu?
And over the next week, I watched a bunch of naked people eat approximately 35 snakes over the course of six-ish seasons.
***
If you are unfamiliar with Naked and Afraid, here’s what you need to know:
Each episode features one man and one woman, who the show refers to as “survivalists,” as they attempt to survive in a remote location for 21 days.
It is not entirely clear a) where Discovery finds these people or b) what qualifies someone as a survivalist, but it seems like the majority of the contestants are either wilderness instructors, ex-military or stay-at-home moms or dads.
The contestants have no clothes and you spend a lot of time wondering how many bugs the women find in their labia. (Most of the remote locations are to mosquitos and sand flies what fraternity houses are to date rape.)
The contestants have no water other than what the land provides. If you watch the show chronologically, as I have, you will notice how few contestants get dysentery from drinking bad water in later seasons compared to the first.
The contestants have no food, and, as I mentioned, there is a LOT of snake eating, and also a lot of bug eating.
Because it’s reality TV, the most enjoyable part of the show is, of course, the interactions between the contestants themselves.
Also, because it’s reality TV, what you see is not necessarily what you get. Fortunately for me, knowing this in no way ruins the magic of the show.
***
Moments on the show tend to repeat themselves. I get it—after all, how many different ways can this premise possibly play out? Some of my favorite tropes include:
One of the contestants boasts about their primitive fire-making abilities. Then they proceed to unsuccessfully make a fire for at least a week into their 21 days, if ever. (It’s apparently a little easier to start a fire in California than it is in the Amazon rain forest.)
The male contestant is ex-military or ex-police and a low-key misogynist who comes into the challenge screaming about how he will “make nature [his] bitch!” The female contestant is a hippie who knows better than to try to control Mother Nature. There is Tension.
One partner wants to cuddle at night for body heat. The other partner is Not Into It (if it’s the woman who doesn’t want to cuddle, it’s because she feels weird cuddling with a “strange man” and if it’s the man, it’s “out of respect for his wife,” as if the hot 20-something he’s paired with for the challenge actually wants to get carnal with some middle-aged dude with a gut and receding hairline) and sometimes a fight ensues.
The male contestant boasts about his hunting skills, but actually cannot kill anything without some sort of rifle. His partner ends up getting their food, and he explicitly says he’s upset because not providing the food for the team makes him feel like less of a man. Other than reading any news story ever about Trump, where else can you get this kind of stunning insight into the fragility of the male ego?!
One of the contestants may not have “primitive survival” experience, but is an “endurance athlete,” meaning they run marathons or something similar. That apparently gives them a chance in hell at surviving in the wilderness for 21 days without food or water, even though aid stations, where people literally thrust food and water at you, are a staple of endurance events like marathons and ultramarathons.
One of the contestants taps out before the 21 days are up, leaving the other alone. When this happens early on in the challenge, the remaining contestant often starts to totally lose their shit without significant human contact. This scenario generally plays out in a Wilson-esque fashion, but sometimes it gets a little more real—like when one guy sobs into the camera, as, alone, he processes the grief of his three-year-old daughter dying a couple years prior. That’s some heavy shit, and also a producer’s wet dream.
***
This binge has spurred a lot of self-reflection for me. Why do I like Naked and Afraid so much? Is it the juxtaposition of seeing the triumph of the human spirit against the elements in one episode, then watching people quit because of bugs in the next? Is it the gratification of seeing lots of over-confident bros get their asses handed to them by neature?
The interesting thing about Naked and Afraid (besides the nudity and snake eating) is the range of highs and lows the contestants—and, by extension, the viewer—experience. Some episodes portray the experience as an exercise in misery. Others make the whole 21-day survival challenge look totally doable, even fun. Even within an episode, you see the hopelessness brought on by dehydration and starvation contrasted with the elation of finding a resource that makes it possible to survive another day.
Even in civilization, life can be that way—things can go from fine to shit to awesome in the span of a single day. Naked and Afraid shows us, albeit in an extreme way, the tumultuousness inherent in being human.