Alaska News

Reality Check: On 'Ultimate Survival,' Seavey gets soaked, Team Lower 48 gets Clucked

We were #blessed with a new season of "Ultimate Survival Alaska," premiering on Sunday night. As previously stated in my cast breakdown column, there is a mixture of new blood and old rivals. One big difference this year is that each team races to the starting line to get their maps and tools to help them on their expedition. This is helpful for all the skeptics out there, because instead of "stumbling" on kayaks or dog teams, the producers are explicitly providing them with these tools.

Dallas Seavey, Iditarod champ and Alaska's future governor, is back to hold onto his title of Ultimate Alaska Survivor, but he's got a team of rookies with him.

Seavey decides to lead his team across the sketchiest of sketchy spring ice, after the Military Team forges across it to try to beat him. To quote Marty Raney, whose team takes the longer, safer route around the lake, "I'm not talking about (getting) wet, I'm talking about dying."

Seavey falls through the ice, but luckily he's roped into his teammates, who help to pull him out and lend him dry clothes. I caught up with his new teammate Lel Tone, who seems to the most positive person on the show and maybe the planet. She was ski patrolling at Squaw Valley while we chatted on the phone, and she had to leave because of an accident on the mountain after about 15 minutes.

I asked her about her experience as a woman on a male-dominated show and she said, "I've had to work really hard to be able to hold my own against my male coworkers. But it was definitely intimidating to come in on a winning team and hope that I could be bigger, better, faster stronger than a lot of the amazing other people out there."

She said she hasn't watched reality TV, but had spent a ton of time in Alaska with Chugach Powder Guides and Tordrillo Mountain Lodge and spent some time here in the summer salmon fishing and skiing.

After Seavey's fall, the team has smooth sailing into a first place finish. Unlike the Lower 48 Team. These guys are a hot mess because of some personality conflicts between a North Carolinian named "Cluck" and Jim Sweeney, who by all accounts is actually an Alaskan (he lives in Hope). After Sweeney crosses a river without his teammates, he says, "I don't need Cluck and Kasha for anything. We're stuck together. I know how to stay alive. I know how to make something happen. I can rub my hands together and make fire."

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Cluck then calls him "a mean old man" and "moody old bastard" while they are hiking across a glacier and he's wearing a hat that looks like the scarecrow's hat from "The Wizard of Oz." Eventually, they end up ice climbing, which is new to Cluck, who is on the U.S. Olympic kayaking team. After Cluck slips while climbing, Sweeney says, "I heard him down there cry. He had a little whine. That's the first thing my buddy taught me about climbing: 'You don't cry like a little girl.'" I just feel bad for their seemingly normal, nice teammate, Kasha, who has to deal with them.

We'll see how this all shakes out, but it brings some of the typical "I'm not here to make friends" reality TV drama into a program that hasn't had that before.

Speaking of drama, the scandalous "Alaskan Bush People" is back, and according to TV by the Numbers, Friday's premiere had 3.13 million viewers. It would be surprising to me if 250 people watched this program, so 3.13 million is shocking. Finally, MTV will not be picking up "Slednecks" for another season; you can almost hear the people of Alaska rejoicing and Busch Light sales in Wasilla tanking.

Emily Fehrenbacher lives in Anchorage, where she reviews Alaska reality TV and can be reached at play@alaskadispatch.com (subject line: Reality Check).

Emily Fehrenbacher

Emily Fehrenbacher lives in Anchorage and writes "Reality Check," a regular look at reality television set in Alaska.

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