Survival of the Dumbest: Naked and Afraid

 

I don't watch much TV, but when I do, I watch the most mindless shows. On my "idiot box," or should we say "idiot panel" now, I prefer two things, people struggling and nudity.


I watch home shows because as a long time home improvement guy who is on a first name basis with the cashiers of my local hardware store, I relax by watching other people smash their thumbs with Estwing hammers. If the cops ever need blood evidence to link me to a crime, all they need to do is take a sample from any of the projects I've done around the house. Tell Dr. Lee there's a particularly good pattern behind the fridge where I full on pummeled my thumb while installing a water line.

Humans are strangely interested in nudity. My wife swears that she doesn't look at the opposite sex, wondering what they look like full monty. Admittedly, I do. Before you go lecturing me about how wrong I am for objectifying women, consider that if it wasn't for people like me, human beings would be on the endangered species list. You might be thinking that the extinction of mankind would be great for the planet, but you're wrong again. Just yesterday, I spent 35 minutes waiting on the phone trying to order a part for my log splitter before I gave up. The last time I did that was in the 70's. If the population begins to thin out, the first thing that will go is customer service. Yes, not only do I like nudity, I cut down trees too.

Recently, I've stumbled across the Discovery Channel's smash reality survival series, Naked and Afraid. Apart from being a perfect mating of my two favorite concepts, nude shelter building, the show also offers the ancillary theme of man versus nature. On its fifth season, the series has been quite successful, having been nominated for several Emmy's including Best Bits and Pieces Pixelization. The people on the show are not really contestants. They're more like participants because you don't actually win anything for completing the 21 day challenge. At the end, they don't wipe the bugs from their butt cracks before jumping into a newly won car and drive away smiling. They get nothing, except maybe long lasting organ damage from some tropical parasite.

Yeeha, sign me up!

When they start out they're assigned a Primitive Survival Rating or PSR based on their experience, training and attitude. The PSR is reevaluated at the end, going up if they complete the challenge and down if they are carted off on a stretcher to the nearest Primitive Hospital Setting or PHS. Some of the participants are very confident announcing that they are "going to make Mother Nature their bitch." They usually end up puking up their pancreas after eating undercooked lizard innards. Who's the bitch now? I miss the days when they used to pixilate on screen cookie tossing. It wasn't censored like nudity, under the watchful eye of the Federal Communication Commission. It was voluntarily omitted because the television brass came to the executive decision that vomit wasn't good for ratings. But times change. Just look at legalized marijuana.

The participants, one woman and one man, get individually dropped off by a local guide, who does a great job at not staring at their jambalaya. I guess when you're navigating a dugout canoe in crocodile invested waters to drop off a nude American in a malaria invested jungle, you don't have time to look at someone's junk. The participants meet up and introduce themselves, engage in small talk, then get down to the business of survival. They're given a few paltry items of their choosing. Some people select a fire starting kit, a flint and steel sparker that lends itself to easy ignition. Others select something more labor intensive like a bow drill. If you've ever started a fire with a bow drill, you know that editing on the show makes it look easier and shorter in duration than it actually is. I often wonder why they don't just choose matches or better yet a lighter?

Someone usually opts for a survival knife, a good tool to chop firewood, skin animals and ward off rabid monkeys. The survivalists use a map to set off on an epic trek into the insect invested jungle to survive for three weeks. Judicious pixelization for the rest of the show must irritate the Free the Nipple folks. The only part of the human anatomy that is rendered unaltered is the back side. This show has taught me that the average male ass is not very attractive. Not to be accused of ugly ass shaming, but I have to say that a lot of men would benefit from some daily lunges. Surveys indicate that the favorite part of the male anatomy according to women is the butt. I find this difficult to accept. A lot of male asses look like they have a lot of miles on them. One day, I caught a glimpse of my ass in the mirror while getting out of the shower, and I thought there was a troll in the bathroom with me.

The participants find a suitable location to set up camp. They build a shelter, maybe a fire, and set some traps to kill unsuspecting wildlife. That's pretty much the whole show. There's no immunity idol, no Tribal Counsel nor inane Dorito food challenge. That's because unlike other shows, participants on Naked and Afraid are really starving to death. Occasionally there is some drama, but it rarely has anything to do with badmouthing or backstabbing. It usually is about more immediate things like taking a shit too close to camp or having to endure the guttural sound of your partner spewing on an empty stomach. You don't get voted off on Naked and Afraid. You get carted off on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance. Now that's great TV!

After a few days of skipping meals, people start getting hungry and dirty, and the chances of any on screen shagging drops off as the basic need to procreate is replaced by the basic need to consume some small animal. I'm always amazed that their isn't more outrage over Naked and Afraid. No protest by PETA, Green Peace or the American Gerbil Society. I think that’s because on this show nature always seems to be winning solid. It's hard to object to someone squashing a mouse when they spent the last three nights with six billion mosquitoes drilling into their unclothed flesh. Sometimes it rains at night while the participants are huddled in a little stick fort like we used to make as kids. The good news is the rain usually brings relief from insects. The bad news is it heralds the start of hypothermia.

 

Water always needs to be boiled to kill the myriad of living things that you don't want inside your body like giardia, an intestinal parasite. Sometimes, the participants can't get a fire going so they get desperate and chance it by drinking tainted water. You can always bet that when they return from a commercial break, they'll be plenty of bobbing for spumoni. Whenever humans hurl, Maslow's Hierarchy of Five Basic Needs, physiological, safety, belongingness/love, esteem, self-actualization, and self-transcendence gets wholly replaced with one basic thought,

"Oh shit, I think I'm gonna puke."

When hurling grits people usually are taken over by much lower needs. Way lower. There's not going to be any self-transcendence when Mount Human erupts. Rational thought gets wholly put on hold which is why people vomit in their own car rather than rolling down the window. As civilized humans, we lost the ability to freely drink from any water source like the rest of Mother Nature. Hippos shit a pitcher's mound in the water where they live and drink. Somehow, the symbiotic nature of their cycle of life keeps them from ralphing when they drink feces infused water. Good for them, because it's not likely hippos would have any success with a bow drill.

If the participants make it to Day 21, they're instructed to embark on an arduous hike across a sun scorched tundra or swim in a crocodile infested river to make it to the extraction point. They usually are quite depleted by the time they make it through this fun activity. So spent that some look like they're going to drop dead in their tracks, or be dispatched suddenly by a cackle of hyenas. Yep, that's what they call a group of hyenas. A cackle.

 

When they reach their destination, they're picked up and driven off to the nearest fast-food joint for a super-sized fries and burger. Most lose well over twenty pounds. The finale is somewhat anticlimactic. I always imagine at the end, they'll go to Tribal Council to be awarded a million dollars by Jeff Probst, but that never happens.You might think the participants of Naked and Afraid are communing with nature and living the way humans once thrived. I believe they're climbing down the evolutionary ladder. In one episode, a dude with liver failure, as indicated by his jaundice eyes, was given the advice by a local medic to get out of the bush right away and get to a hospital. The guy was adamant about “finishing the challenge.” I know sticking it out is noble and all, but the smart thing to do when you’re messed up is to seek proper medical attention immediately. Hanging in there for nothing but bragging rights and elevated PSR when the local witch doctor is telling you to get to the hospital is going to get you killed. That's survival of the dumbest.

There are spinoffs like Naked Dating and Naked Dancing With the Stars, neither of which is as edgy as Naked and Afraid. I, for one, would pass on the latter series even if they had a couple’s edition. The last thing I want to do is run bare assed in the jungle, pull ticks off my monkey wrench and consume rodents all while trying to protect my wife from being mauled by an congress of baboons.

Yep, that's what they call a group of baboons. A congress. Imagine that.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on September 6, 2016.