‘Alaskan Bush People’ Season Finale: ‘Wind and a Prayer’ (RECAP)
In the Alaskan Bush People season finale episode “Wind and a Prayer” (Feb. 22), the Browns try to close a deal to help restore their dream of a wind turbine, but simultaneously get thrown a curveball when Browntown runs out of gas, forcing them to get creative. Meanwhile, Noah gets some bad news from his girl.
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WINTER IS RIGHT HERE, DADGUMMIT! The future of Brownton Abbey is at stake again, just like it has been in every freakin’ episode before this one.
We open with Matt pestering bears, because Matt’s only knowledge of bears comes from watching Gentle Ben on DVD. Matt and Bear are trying to “establish our territory and show [the bear] his.” I wish them the best of luck with that.
Ol’ Billy Brown’s got himself in a most worrisome bind with the lumber situation, and he fears Matt won’t be able to fulfill his outrageous expectation of 5,000 board feet of wood to barter with Wes for wind turbine parts. Better for Matt that he walk away forever in shame and let nature take its course on him.
But Lost Footage may prove to be the Browns’ saving grace. The show finally gets around to showing us that Matt and Bam did some roofing work while they were on P.O.W. a few episodes ago, and the guy gave them a nice stack of red cedar boards for their labor. Assuming Matt’s talking about Western Red Cedar, he says the wood is rare in their area because it only grows at certain latitudes. He’s overstating their value a bit, but the red cedar planks are vastly superior to the garbage wood Matt milled on his weak Bush sawmill, and it would help complete Billy’s end of the barter. Matt says he’ll give up his portion of the cedar planks for the greater good, which isn’t that much of a sacrifice because Matt only builds shoddy structures out of tires or plastic wrap. This good wood would be wasted on him. Bam’s cedar stash would complete the barter, but since Bam got out of Dodge to get his freak on in the Lower 48, he’s not there to speak for it. You may recall that Bam had ambitious plans to build a huge Bush McMansion on the outskirts of Brownton Abbey, and this cedar was intended to be used for his flooring. I say once you leave the Bush, your stuff is considered abandoned and is then up for grabs. And let’s face it, Bam’s never coming back to this craphole or his loser family.
RELATED: Channel Guide Magazine‘s AWESOME And EXXXXTREME Alaskan Bush People Archive
Let’s check in on Bear, the Brown family’s rodeo clown. Here we see Bear barbecuing himself alive, his sleeveless man fur coat ensuring that his meat stays moist and succulent.
Bear is making himself useless by painting a design on the plywood tail for the wind turbine that they don’t actually have yet. He’s going for fire, because it is “one of the most AWESOME and EXXXXTREME things all rolled into one.” He cuts off a deer tail and starts painting with it. The design looks very similar to Bear’s awful back tattoo. When he’s finished, he marks it with an X, the most EXXXXTREME of letters. The letter X also represents the full extent of Bear’s literacy.
Here is our Bush Picasso’s finished work:
This episode’s description mentions something about Noah getting “bad news from his girl,” so I suppose we have to find out what that is. Noah received an “urgent” message from his beloved, Rhain With an H, so he takes a 90-minute skiff ride to Hoonah to waste all of the family’s precious remaining gasoline. When Noah meets up with Rhain, she has trouble spitting out her lines. “I have something I got to kind of tell you,” she says. “I have to end up leaving probably back to Oregon soon. I don’t want to go, but my place in Hoonah is come to an end.” Due to “jobs” and “housing,” Rhain will have to find somewhere else to live. Noah’s not going to let Rhain go as easily as he did Christy. Noah thinks he can get Rhain a job as a deckhand on one of the boats in town, because Noah is so well connected with all of Hoonah’s boat captains. I think she’d be more qualified for an apprenticeship at Kenny’s dump.
Wes is due to arrive at Brownton Abbey any moment now, and everyone is nervous. Maybe they think Wes won’t notice their meager offer of hack-job lumber. Maybe they think Wes is a soft-hearted sucker who’ll just take this sad pile of wood out of pity instead of sending his crew to loot and pillage Brownton Abbey. “We put our entire year and a lot of Browntown and blood and sweat and tears into this thing,” Matt says. ENTIRE YEAR? This season started in early fall and they didn’t even start the turbine project until the third episode of the season. The Browns are terrible at keeping track of their own BS. The Browns have to sit around and wait wait for Wes to show up, if he even shows up. Of course, we’ve all seen preview shots of the Browns’ new turbine, so we know the Barter Fairies did their jobs, making all of this a bunch of pointless Unnecessary Drama.
Wes and his crew eventually arrive on the Dirty Oar. Wes has no time to beat around the Bush, as there’s fake bad weather somewhere up near Hoonah, and he wants Billy to make quick with the 5,000 board feet of wood. But Billy only has 3,500 board feet, and Wes is “not too tickled” with this amount.
YES! LET THE LOOTING BEGIN!
But wait. The Browns debate on throwing Bam’s portion of the red cedar into the mix, as if the answer isn’t obvious. Matt somehow thinks he can stand in as a proxy for Bam—maybe this is Matt’s way of getting back at his younger but smarter brother—to decide what should be done with Bam’s lumber. Then they cast a family vote. WTF is this, anyway? An annual meeting of Discovery Communications shareholders? Wes must be rolling his eyes, too. It’s decided that Bam’s lumber will belong to Wes, who is pleased and won’t burn Brownton Abbey to the ground as we all hoped.
Matt gathers up family members to load the lumber, as Noah checks to make sure all the turbine parts are accounted for. The Browns receive a box containing super strong magnets, which have the potential of taking fingers off if handled improperly. Bear hears “super strong magnets” and immediately imagines all the EXXXXTREME things he could do with them. I hope he super-magnetizes all of his exxxxtremities off.
Or, maybe I’ll just watch him bolt things together with his face. “I only have two hands, but I do have a chin,” he says as he tries to affix his EXXXXTREME turbine tail to a metal pole.
Bear is thrilled to get this turbine thing going, because that means fewer trips to Hoonah for gas. It also means fewer trips to Hoonah to creep out the entire female population. Rejoice, oh ladies of Hoonah, for your day of liberation is at hand!
Seriously, look at this guy. It’s like he’s a rejected character from This Is Spinal Tap. He’s a walking Halloween costume.
And so is his brother, Noah, who is wearing spurs on his boots.
Noah seeks relationship advice from Matt, who kind of dances around the subject, but tells Noah that he should follow his heart and know that he has a family that accepts him no matter how weird he is. Noah’s thinking about asking his folks if Rhain might be able to move to Brownton Abbey. “But I don’t want to be alone when I go back to my house,” Noah says. It’s really scary in that chicken coop at night.
The Browns are burying screw anchors in the ground to keep the turbine’s guide wires in place. Noah’s in his Tent of Horrors assembling the generator and attaching the neodymium magnets to the spinning disc thingy. It’s basic high-school science fair stuff. Noah wasted all the gas going to Hoonah to see his ladyfriend, so they can’t use the generator to power electrical stuff around the house. Noah’s using car batteries hooked up to jumper cables hooked up to a welding rod to put together the remaining screw anchors. I’m sure Noah’s welds will hold together long enough for cameras to get a few seconds of the turbine in action before the whole crap comes crashing down.
Billy and Ami are in the house preparing dinner by mayonnaise candlelight and being gross with each other again. They’re reminiscing about all the hardships they had before Discovery came along and started paying them to have fake hardships.
I definitely wouldn’t trade the 30 days Billy spent in house arrest in Juneau. I also wouldn’t trade Billy’s coma days. The rest of it I’d barter for a few Chuck E. Cheese’s tokens.
The Browns decide to work on the turbine through the night, lighting the area with torches. This is pretty much just a setup for another pointless bear encounter. The Browns hear noises and go to investigate. Surprising no one, a bear has broken through Noah’s chicken-wire electric fence. Matt resorts to barking like a dog at the bear, and this is too silly to be considered Unnecessary Drama. Matt notes that this spot is where “that one bear lunged at Bear” that one time. Then maybe they should get out of that bear’s favorite lunging spot. Jackasses.
The following day, we find Noah and Birdy attaching the turbine blades to the magnet disc doohickey. The turbine blades are made of weathered wood, and they look like they’ve taken quite a few spins over the years. If you though Noah’s scene with Matt was awkward, it’s got nothing on Noah talking with Birdy. They’re lining up the turbine blades with the bolts, and when the bolts poke through the holes, Birdy cheers, “I see its head. It’s a boy!” Gross. “Since Noah’s gotten a fairly serious girlfriend, we have done less things together,” Birdy tells us. That is also gross. Birdy’s not very keen on Rhain shacking up in Brownton Abbey, since she prefers the company of felines and bovines who can carry on a conversation closer to her intellectual level. “Actually, human beings are my least favorite being, actually,” Birdy says, actually. But she says she’ll put up with Rhain being in Brownton Abbey “if there are NO other options.” Eh. Whatever. I’d put more stock in Cupcake’s opinion than Birdy’s.
Oh, look! The Browns must’ve put all this other complicated stuff together while the cameras weren’t rolling! I wonder if the trail cameras caught the Turbine Elves at work overnight.
“This is the first thing that really makes us cotton-pickin’ independent,” says Billy, forgetting that he said pretty much the same thing about the cow. “We put our entire year and a lot of Browntown and blood and sweat and tears into this thing,” Matt says … again. Guys, repeating stuff does not make it true. Maybe Rhain can get a job as an editor for ParkSlope.
It’s time to hoist this thing up, and the Browns have pulleys and stuff rigged up by people who actually knew what they were doing. Doing the heavy lifting is an electric winch, which is not the chainsaw winch they used to hoist Wind Turbine Version 1.0. Where did this new winch come from? Why weren’t they using this winch before? If they have no electricity, what’s powering this winch? Man, I hate this show so much.
In the interstitial segment, Birdy and Rainy are putting gasoline and motor oil on the wind turbine blades to preserve the wood. A minimum of research reveals that used motor oil can be repurposed as a wood stain and water sealant. Mineral spirits and other petroleum distillates are used to condition and preserve wood. I guess this makes sense. Birdy likes the smell of gasoline because it reminds her of childhood. I like the smell of gasoline because it smells like victory.
All right. Can we hoist this thing up and get this over with already? “Success would be complete self-sustainability,” exaggerates Asa, Our Dear Narrator. “Failure could stall the progression of Browntown for years to come.” They’ve been stalling the progression of this episode for years. “¡Avante!” cries Noah in his worst Spanish/Portuguese. They fire up the winch, which appears to be anchored with rope to a log, but Bear has to keep the winch positioned so the cable doesn’t slide off the spool, which, of course, it does.
We have to suffer through a little bit of Unnecessary Drama by way of Winch Malfunction, but it does give us a nice shot of Worried Billy.
Yeah, yeah, they get the winch working again. They raise the turbine into position and it spins just fine. Congratu-freakin’-lations. I’m so bored I no longer care. “It’s so large! We can power anything now,” Ami says. As long as Billy is around, there’ll always be enough wind blowing.
“We have so much power, we won’t know what to do with it all,” says Bear, who is clearly drunk on this power. Be mindful of Lord Acton’s proverb: “Power tends to corrupt, and EXXXXTREME power corrupts EXXXXTREMELY.”
It sure is, Billy. It sure is.
Billy breaks into his usual season-finale spiel: “There’s nothing the Browns can’t do. There’s nothing that’s gonna stop us. There’s no way. With faith in family, faith in God, sticking together as a family—what can stop that? Nothing.”
Nothing, except maybe Rich Ross, Group President of Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and Science Channel. He is pictured below.
These were his words at the 2015 TV Critics Association Winter Press Tour.
“The most important thing that this network, the flagship of this company, can stand for is, if there was one word, it would be ‘authentic.’ And it’s really important that we look into this incredible brand and all the programming that we make and make sure that’s what we stand for. And it’s a filter in which we’re looking at everything we have on the air and everything we’re talking about moving forward.”
Conversation31 Comments
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Ryan you put your entire year and a lot of Wisconsin and blood and sweat and tears into this thing. Another great recap! So they expect to get the same amount of energy from a windmill located as far away as it is from Browntown and three car batteries that they do from a 5000 watt generator? They better have a lot more batteries hiding somewhere than the three shown on Wes' boat and a whole lot of wind if they ever expect to get close. Personally I think they should try to figure out how to convert B.S. into electricity because there's a lot of it on Chicago Bears Island and I'm not just talking about Sabrina's!
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That's an AWESOME idea! The Browns could try to harness Sabrina's farts for methane gas and burn her cowpies for fuel.
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I recently found this site after another discontinued their analysis, (much to my dismay). First I'd like to thank you for the deep rooted laughter I've gained here! I have to admit, the one thing I really thought you would elaborate on was the winch malfunction, or sort of. How desperate Bear was to keep it from sliding off the log with his Dad..HIS DAD, standing right behind him not lifting a single digit to help him out. I was literally screaming at the telly!! Billy goat talks a lot about all the work "they" do...I don't remember him doing much of anything but yapping all season. Lord, if it wasn't for the laughter it would almost be too much! Thanks again!!
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You're welcome! Thanks for coming! Just curious: Which site were you visiting before?
The winch was difficult to elaborate on, since they don't show us much of it. The winch appears to be anchored to a log with a rope. I don't know how this would be safe or effective. Without watching that scene again, I think the actual raising of the turbine was done safely by the construction crew off camera, and Bear was just pretending to handle the winch.
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The site was Stoopid Housewives. Originally you just had to be approved to read. Now you have to register, basically start a website to even be considered...way to much work for this gal. I want my humor NOW dangummit!
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I know SH well. We had a lot of fun on Twitter when they still covered ABP.
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They probably used a vehicle or external winching unit. Notice how the cable came off the spool under load and was not much of a problem to get back on? That would have never happened if the turbine was anywhere off the ground. It would have to be lowered and then raised again, cause there is just too much load on the line to be safe. At least nobody was injured or killed.
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My hat's off to the Parkslope construction guys. They actually came up with something that any idiot could raise without danger of killing themselves and the Brown idiots managed it. They even put in a little motor to spin the propeller thing because by the look of the trees (and the drone camera flyby) there wasn't any wind. Even if spinning those magnets round and round somehow produced electricity are we supposed to believe that that setup could replace a gas powered generator?
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Ryan, I know you want to run away and hide for years to come or until some idiot at Discovery decides to renew this piece of junk, but.......you ain't quite through with this year as what you reviewed was a "special edition" of the prior weeks show.
As I don't want to spoil the real last version of the show, I will only state there is a lot of "lost footage" and one heck of a ton of slobbering between Noah and Ms. Rhain.
You got to watch and your review can simply be WTF.
Back to the desert for me. Keep the shiney side up.
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Oh, yeah. I am halfway through my recap of Lost Footage. It will probably post on Monday. Until then, here's a little preview:
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Unfortunately for you, Ryan, this was only the penultimate "finale" of this season, as we were regaled with another semi-"new" episode this week. Do you have enough left in you to write another recap? Perhaps you could recharge your batteries at Browntown since it has all that extra "power" to power anything.
Regarding this episode, I wonder how long Bear's plywood flame turbine tail will last in the Alaska weather.....
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Yep. Powering through the Lost Footage recap. Look for it on Monday!
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Okay, I really can't help it....I like Matt. He is so goofy and nice. He seems pretty sincere.
Bear is so damn ridiculous! Oh wait, I should say EXTREMELY ridiculous!
But he thinks he is super cool. His head keeps getting bigger and bigger.
I still just can't get over how tiny their stupid garden is.
They might get 3 meals worth of food from it....
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The are now completely energy independent, except for gas for the boats, and chainsaws, etc..., at least when its windy out.
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Yes! Now they can power ANYTHING! (I think there was also a propane tank hooked up to their kitchen stove.)
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My favorite thing is how much gear Noah unloaded from Wes's boat.
The first "turbine" was literally some old looking blades.
Let's assume they got it up, which were were the batteries and inverters that they needed on the second one?
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Another great recap! The whole paragraph about Billy and Ami in the cabin sums up the show. I find it odd that Browns aren't jumping on the opportunity of having Rhain(with an h!) move in with Noah. Even Noah seems reluctant in a way. He needs to take what he can get. And the spurs...REALLY? Just having a cow does not make a guy a cowboy.
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I'm curious to see just how far Rhain With an H is willing to go with her "Alaskan adventure."
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Rhyan, I will never want to SEE how far Rhain is willing to go......I'll just have to read about that in your recap!
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Thanks for the additional wind turbine failure video. So back to bush engineer basics. To cure a concrete footing it requires a a minimum curing period of seven days for ambient temperatures above 40 degrees Fahrenheit.Where did the mount come from as it was not installed the week before? Where did all the structural pipe come from, cause I did not see it on Wes's boat - I guess they had to drive it in on the road behind the property. At least the structural engineer's assembled the gin pole correctly to hoist the tower. Can't wait for their bird killing turbine to take the first victim. I think they will be very surprised at how little power will be available for use - as it all has to be provided by an inverter. Now to pass 120V the distance between the wind turbine and Browntown Abbey Power Company, the will need the assistance of the Alaska Power Association to get some high tension lines in.
Noah needs to install a phone exchange so Billy can call 1-900-IMA-BOZO.
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Excellent insight! The Browns received the structural pipe from the Turbine Elves, who also assembled everything overnight while the cameras weren't rolling. As for the transmission of electricity from the turbine to Brownton Abbey, the Browns are just going to put their faith in the family, the Bush and the Good Lord.
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Good observations there para. Whoever did the setup and layout knew what they were doing. I noticed that the guywire cables were the correct length and double clamped. Important details like this never escape the keen eye of our spur wearing, bush douchebag, No-Uhhh. Yeah....right!
I love the way the Brownclowns, including the old woman, were standing around with their hands in their pockets watching the raising of the "turbine" that THEY built. If this were real system they would need they a large bank of batteries, (since the wind doesn't blow all the time),and all of the associated electronics. But, all they really needed was some camera footage of the blades spinning. I assume Park Slope has a nice diesel genset hidden somewhere to supply the power for lighting, etc. to produce this Bush Epic.
As stated, the future of Browntown is now assured. Now, if they could just find a cow somewhere...................
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Way to go, Ryan! Another hilarious recap! Billy's true, TRUE colors came through on this one. It's one thing to screw other people (which he's a pro at), but even Rainy was pissed that he gave away Bam's cedar. I don't care how badly they needed to make this barter happen, giving Bam's stuff away without him being there was about as low as Billy has gotten so far. Haven't they run out of "material" yet? Oh, silly me...they've been repeating the same things over & over since season one! The only thing that has changed are the contumes they wear...
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I think Bam should be able to find more free cedar that someone has lying around unused. That is, if he ever decides to come back to the Bush. Which he shouldn't. Ever.
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Oh, no doubt, Ryan. It's not so much the product, it's the principal of the action. And, I agree...if Bam has an ounce of sense, he'll steer clear of BrownTown...forever.
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I would think lying about his age and being divorced to take 15 year old Ami away was worse...
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It is so valuable up there it just sits around unused, too valuable to use.
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Fact...everything that Billy's done throughout his life hasn't been on the up-and-up. We could go on forever...
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Alaska is the Land of Plenty. They have a vast surplus of wood, wind turbines, water tanks and skiffs.
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There is so much that is wrong with the ABP show, and Ryan, you manage to sort out the material, and review the, let's say, most interesting parts! Keep up the good work!
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Thanks, man! Thanks for all the support!
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