‘Alaskan Bush People’ Season Finale: ‘Blazing a New Trail’ (RECAP)

In the two-hour Alaskan Bush People season finale episode “Blazing a New Trail” (Aug. 23), as the Brown family adapts after closing their dream homestead, they charge toward a new beginning with the skills and knowledge they’ve acquired over 35 years in the Alaskan wilderness.

We’ve reached the miserable conclusion of a depressing season of a piss-poor show that should’ve been canceled two years ago and shouldn’t have existed in the first place. So let the good times roll.

“Blazing a New Trail” is two-hours long, which is an hour and 45 minutes longer than it needed to be. This season has been roughly 90 percent recycled footage, yet Discovery feels the need to devote another hour to recycling the already recycled material. And now I have to recap the recaps of the recaps. I wonder if Arby’s is hiring.

Southern California. The Browns’ future hangs in the balance. Sound familiar? Their future has hung in the balance every episode of this series. If you want to get existential about it — and who doesn’t? — everybody‘s future hangs in the balance at every moment their lives. At this moment, Cupcake’s future hangs in the balance. Will he or will he not get to ride with the family in their SUV to UCLA Medical Center? Alas, he will not. It’s ennui for Cupcake.

We find Bear and Rainy occupying their time by throwing dowels into a piece of styrofoam. EXXXXTREME! Bam observes, and being the wet blanket that he is, he says there doesn’t appear to be a point to the game. He is correct. But when has pointlessness ever stopped the Browns? NOTHING CAN STOP THE BROWNS!

Bear’s excited to go to Colorado and start punching some of the local fish. He says Colorado has “all the animals.” Does Colorado have dugongs? Yes, because Colorado has ALL THE ANIMALS! Bear can’t wait to punch a dugong.

Bam is also optimistic about the future. “We’re the Browns,” he reminds us. “We don’t spend all our time looking backwards.” Too bad your TV show does, Bam.

Billy blows out a bunch the same buzzwords he’s been using for three years: Blah blah blah freedom blah blah independence blah blah blah no constraints blah blah blah faith blah blah blah family blah blah blah Good Lord blah blah blah. Billy’s talked so much about how the Browns just want to be left alone to do their own thing away from people. That’s well and good, but people who want to be left alone to do their own thing DON’T PUT THEMSELVES ON REALITY TV! Moron. I hope fans pester Billy for photos for the rest of his life.

And then there’s Matt. Since damn near killing himself playing with explosives, he’s been letting his Soooouuuuul Gloooooooooo in California.

I think Coming to America deserves much more appreciation than it gets.

Matt also has a little of a Unabomber police sketch thing going on in this scene.

We get Lost Footage of Matt in Brownton Abbey putting together a flaming sword and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I wonder if he used the flaming sword to cut off the crusts.

In more Lost Footage, we find Bear cleaning up Brownton Abbey. He pauses to reflect on the smokehouse they built. “It seems just yesterday were were smoking all sorts of good stuff in this thing,” he says, making one of many subtle drug-related references in this episode. That smokehouse could be turned into one big bong.

The Browns are people of the sea, as Billy’s “bleeding sap and seawater” B.S. constantly reminds us. The Browns like to have scripted adventures on the ocean, but now they’ll be moving to landlocked Colorado, where Boat Malfunctions, fake hauling jobs, rammed docks, sunken vessels and Magically Appearing/Disappearing Weather will be scarce. Bear remembers being on the family’s boat, the Gypsy Girl, when he was a toddler. That must’ve been last month.

We get a little more footage of Birdy throwing things at peacocks, but we don’t get to hear her peacock mating call, which is a damn shame.

You can tell that Park Slope is scraping the bottom of the Lost Footage barrel when they show Matt at Brownton Abbey making kitchen cabinetry hardware out of deer antlers.

The Browns still make pointless bushcraft in SoCal, as Bear demonstrates when he turns a curtain into a hammock. It’s a nice hammock, but Bear’s not satisfied with it, so he stabs it with a kitchen knife for reasons unknown.

[DIGRESSION! My grandfather could’ve given Yogi Berra a good run in a malapropism contest. Maybe it was because he grew up in a household that spoke German, but my grandfather often used the wrong word, to the amusement of everyone he talked to. The knife that Bear uses on the hammock is a serrated knife. My grandpa would’ve called it a saturated knife.]

“I’ve never really considered myself much of a builder, to be honest, or an artist or anything like that,” Bear says. “The main thing that I do is like, smash, destroy things, run fast and look good doing it.” Cool. When this show gets canceled, Bear can get a job at Super Mario Bros.

Bear sees Colorado as a blank canvas where he can paint “fire or EXXXXTREME things.”

Bear says some of them his family members are “professionally good” at carpentry and construction. Carpenters and construction workers across America just vomited. It’s in their union contract. Bear also likens the Browns’ engineering abilities to those who built the Sphinx. “Like the old Egyptians, they moved massive amounts of stuff with just the force of people because they used their minds in order to do it,” he says. The Old Egyptians had centuries and millions of slaves. The Browns had a few contractors that Park Slope hired.

Bam says the Browns are talented in doing everything to build a house, but “we don’t really know how to do any of it correctly … with the exception of our dad.” It’s odd that the one person who knows how to do it correctly never does anything at all.

Just when you thought we wouldn’t have to see the Fullers, we find Bear in the kitchen with Margaret helping her make “Texas Trash” snack mix. Bear punches the Goldfish crackers and wants to set the whole thing on fire.

Margaret also makes a fruit tart pie that Bear remembers has some powdery stuff in it. They present the snacks to Ami, who needs to eat them to keep her weight up.

On the subject of trash, we find Bear cleaning up around the house. He needs to save some of that can so Matt can do whippits.

Bear takes out the trash, and also compacts it EXXXXTREME style!

The Browns aren’t sitting around lamenting the loss of Brownton Abbey, even though it was their dream and blah blah blah. Billy says, “Browntown, there’s a bunch of blood, sweat and tears in that thing.” Most of it is Matt’s.

Our Dear Narrator says the family is ready to get a move on to Colorado after “months of exile in California.” Ami has a week before chemo and radiation treatments begin at UCLA, and she wants the whole family to go check out the new property and have fun. Billy says that most “normal people” would think he’s crazy for taking his very ill wife on a long road trip through the intense summer heat of the Southwest. He would be correct.

But common sense be damned! They load up an RV and it’s onward to Colorado! Unless Billy wrecks the RV coming out of the driveway.

Billy, how do you feel about this whole thing?

Did you know that “apprehentious” isn’t a word? Add it to the lexicon of many words (like “discoherent”) that the Browns have either made up or misused.

It doesn’t take long for the Browns to discover how hot the Southwest is. Oddly, the A/C in the RV doesn’t work because the “generator overheated.” I know almost nothing about RVs or generators or vehicular HVAC, but this sounds like total nonsense to me. At least their RV didn’t burst into flames like the one they took last time.

The heat is getting to the Browns, especially Bear, who claims to get heatstroke when the temperature is in the 60s. “This heat is actually EXXXXTREMELY hard,” Bear says. “It physically is hard on the body. It’s hard on the mind, it really is. It literally just like sucks all the power and awesomeness out of you.” It literally sucks the power and awesomeness? Is there some kind of vacuum cleaner specifically designed for this? There should be. Notify the good people at Dyson.

Birdy cools off by dumping a bottle of water on herself. I’ll remember this the next time I need to think unsexy thoughts.

The brain trust of Bear, Birdy and Matt go for a walk in the desert. I assume they’re going off to eat peyote, pound drums and sing songs like in The Doors.

Hey, where’s Gabe been during all of this? Gabe has been taking Ami’s illness really hard. He doesn’t want to be on camera. In fact, it sounds like he wants nothing to do with this show any more, and he seems to have signed off for good via his Instagram. (Yes, Gabe’s on Instagram.) Gabe is much smarter than I gave him credit for.

https://www.facebook.com/alaskanfrauds/photos/a.914151288667995.1073741829.877850308964760/1464264806989971/?type=3&theater

 

Not nearly as smart as he gives himself credit for is Noah, who managed to push, pull or drag his purple Camaro from Juneau to meet up with the family.

The Browns finally arrive at their Colorado property. Billy’s as giddy as a schoolgirl. He’s either really excited or he’s about to have a seizure.

The land is nice. Immediately the Browns go around messing it up. Bear runs around doing his Bear schtick, picking plants and flowers and rubbing them all over himself so he smells like the forest. Matt wants to catch grasshoppers with a net he made from a stick and some duct tape. “Grasshoppers are like gunslingers, some of them freeze, some of them panic, some of them get away,” Matt says, apparently still coming down off the peyote. Birdy and Rainy discuss building their own cabin, but they can’t agree on the color of the house. Rainy says she’s going to build her own cabin once she finally stops taking pictures of herself.

Bear wastes no time bothering the wildlife, chasing away a bear that was just minding his bear business.

This is his home, you troglodyte jackass.

Matt is busy introducing Colorado to his own particular brand of crazy. He makes a pokin’ stick (it’s not for impaling, just for poking) and tries to camouflage himself with leaves.

The family comes together to discuss all the wondrous possibilities this beautiful land holds and how they will do their best to destroy it for the entertainment of Discovery Channel viewers. Birdy’s enamored with the fauna, and she likes the raccoons, bunnies and skunks, who are much cooler than those snooty peacocks. Bear is pleased with the land and the variety of animals he can pretend to kill, as he’s seen tracks of deer, elk and “what looks like cow.” SABRINA FOLLOWED THEM!

One Brown is apprehentious about moving to Colorado. “Noah might have found a different path,” Billy says. “Like what?” snaps Ami. Mom’s throwing serious shade at Baby Boy. Noah says that he wants to chase his dream instead of his family’s. What’s his dream? He wants to go find some small town and be a sheriff or something.

Noah feels like he’s supposed to be a police officer, like somehow rigging up those squad car lights to scare away bears inspired him to go into law enforcement. Try not to laugh while thinking about Noah at a police academy (or in one of the Police Academy movies). Could you imagine getting pulled over for speeding in Mayberry and have Noah ask for your license and registration? It would be worth getting arrested just to say that Noah slapped the cuffs on you. I think Noah might have to be more realistic with his goals.

No one in the family can imagine Noah being a cop, either. Bear says Noah wants to be like Dudley Do-Right.

This could be the last we’ve seen of Noah. Now a third of the nine-member Brown family want off the show.

In the interstitial segment, Bear expresses a desire to stand on top of the moving RV. Billy objects, but Bear gonna do what Bear gonna do. One of the show’s producers also objects, but he’ll fly up a drone anyway so they get an overhead shot of him doing it. If they really objected that much, why doesn’t Billy just stop driving the damn RV? Bunch of farkin’ liars.

I wouldn’t want to be Colorado right now. Colorado is so screwed.

Finally, the Browns (minus Gabe) gather round the tree to thank viewers for their thoughts and prayers during Ami’s illness.

Seems like this would make for a nice way to wrap up the series for good. After all, who wants to watch Ami waste away and Bear be stupid on Colorado Bush People? That would make perfect sense, which is why Discovery, Park Slope and the Browns won’t do it. I am nearly certain that there will be another season of this show, and it will premiere before the end of the year.

Maybe you still need some convincing that the Browns are not really as they appear on TV.

The Browns have been staying in Beverly Hills at the EXXXXTREMELY expensive Beverly Hills Hotel. Gabe has been getting facial treatments, and Rainy has been posting the pictures on Instagram. Ponder that for a bit. Is this not the biggest middle finger to all their fans? Do you know how many people posted comments on these recaps looking for ways to send the Browns money or care packages under the impression that they were in dire need? While their fans pray for them, the Browns prey on the goodwill of well-meaning but naive fans who’ve been swilling Professor Billy’s Bush Tonic & Elixir and keep coming back for more. This is Billy’s ultimate con job.

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Thanks to all of you reading these recaps. Thanks to those of you who take the time to comment. Without you guys, I would’ve stopped writing these recaps long ago. So this is all your fault.

An open letter to #AlaskanBushPeople pic.twitter.com/e8TbIOf72Y

— Ryan Berenz (@RyanBerenz) July 5, 2017