If you are not aware of the Alaskan Bush People, this is a quick summary...
The show first aired in 2014, on the Discovery Channel and produced by a company called Park Slope. Advertised as a reality show, the main selling point was to draw viewers to see a family living in the Alaskan bush, cut off from society and never seeing another soul for months on end.
The family is the Browns, led by patriarch Billy and his wife Ami and together with their seven kids, facing adventure and danger at every turn, every week. The show gathered a fan base and quickly rose to the highest viewed program offered on the Discovery Channel.
Billy is a Texas native, lost his father, mother and sister in a plane crash when he was young. He was married once, divorced, and then married Ami and moved to Alaska. Each child was represented as having a certain quality of their own to be shown every week. The oldest Matt, is a happy go lucky but senior leader when needed. Joshua 'Bam' is the calm and collected one to see situations at every angle.
Solomon 'Bear' is the wild child, climbing trees at a moment's notice, scampering through the forest to check things out and so on. Gabe is the muscle, the strong man when heavy duty strength is needed, yet a softy in relationships. Noah is portrayed as the smart, inventive one needed to solve tough problems with his genius. The two youngest are girls, Amora 'Snowbird' or just 'Bird', is the tomboyish excellent hunter and marksman. Merry Christmas 'Rain' is the cute youngest one who is obviously a favorite of both mom and dad.
Their series started in Alaska with them living in a run down self made shelter that was really poorly built and offered little protection from the elements. They seemed to dress in the wrong clothes from the very beginning, wearing leather motorcycle jackets in the woods at all times and so on. On their infrequent trips to the town of Hoonah, they bartered mainly in salmon and labor for everything as they apparently have no cash or savings. In town they also seemed to marvel at the use of cell phones and any type of modern convenience. They professed ignorance of TV and movies yet several times would quote movie lines for comic relief.
Next they had a boat which sank at the dock and left them homeless and broke, yet seemed to carry on in an apartment that was meant for about four people while they got their act together. They decided to buy a large boat called 'Integrity' with money from somewhere, they also moved to Chichagof island supposedly populated with wild bears and the goal was to build a house and call the place Browntown.
Once on the island and with the boat, they would do various jobs hauling stuff around, and start building the house. It seems the jobs were few and each job posed a certain dramatic danger that was always narrowly avoided. The house was finally completed and was actually quite nice for a house in the forest. The cast played their roles famously, while Noah seemed to outdo the others with his steady stream of mostly made up 'inventions' like an outdoor shower, or some other useless and obsolete invention. Bear carried on with his prowness for living the wild life, living in a tree and doing a lot of howling, along with the constant use of the words 'awesome' and 'extreme' to describe himself and the things he did.
And then they packed everything up and moved to Southern Californis to see to Ami's big cancer scare. Critics lambasted the show for the storylines major shift, and the possibility that the illness was fabricated. Ami was supposed to be in fourth stage lung cancer with a small chance of survival, yet seemed to recover pretty fast with little care. At least that is what was shown on the program. The family lived in a residential property and acted like the only thing they wanted to do was strange bush stuff inside the borders of the property.
After the recovery of Ami the family traveled around in a large RV, which of course raised the question of where did they get the money to afford such a vehicle when none of them appear to be employed, ever. About this time the oldest son, Matt, was injured in an accident that was attributed to an accidential explosion and then he entered a substance abuse facility. He pretty much disappeared from the show after that with no mention from the rest of the family ever again.
They drove across the west and settled in Colorado on a property that was never clearly shown why, and decided to live there as the new Browntown. This was the last show of that season and we fully expected to see them once again working together in Colorado. Yet in the first episode of the new season, they were on a mountain in Washington ready to make it into some kind of a ranch, with no explantion of why they left Colorado.
Once on the new location, the show shifted into a more bizarre programming genre. The Browns started projects and seemed to finish them with little interaction. Animals appeared out of nowhere and a lot of the stuff started on the show just seemed to fizzle out. The ever inventive Noah seemed to create the most stupidest stuff, like he was grasping at straws. Billy and Ami seemed to hardly be anywhere near the ranch as they were shown mostly telling the kids to get busy with some useless job or another, and then disappearing. It seemed almost embarrassing and awkward to watch any longer.
Noah met a girl and got married, after much ballyhooing, in a ceremony that lasted about 45 seconds of airtime. Gabe got hitched also and that was pretty much the last time we ever saw his bride. The producers made a big time event of Bear meeting his new love, which seemed about right as most viewers thought a girl would have to be insane to hitch on to his wagon. He got engaged and knocked her up and then proceeded to go down in flames when the wedding day arrived and either she ran away or he refused to show up, we never really got the gist of that plotline either, a lot like the rest of the show.
A fire broke out on the mountain, which consumed a lot of their possesions and then the father, Billy, passed away from a seizure.
So that about sums it up. Billy and Matt plead guilty in Alaska for misdemeanor fraud charges and were sentenced to a month in jail. Noah and his wife have two kids, Gabe and his wife have a daughter and Bear has a son with his girlfriend.
It seems the writers have a habit of making two or three small stories to follow every week, and a week later those are forgotten, or left behind, as the family attempts to tackle more stuff.
I write about the show discussing the clearly absurd situations and endeavors that they go to to prove that they are living a life of self sustainability, where it is pretty clear they are not. But the scenery is magnificent...
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