‘Alaskan Bush People’: ‘Mountain Emergency’ (RECAP)

Ryan Berenz March 25, 2019, 4:30 pm

On the Alaskan Bush People episode “Mountain Emergency” (March 24), a medical emergency on the Wolfpack’s ranch forces the family to become more resourceful as they continue to build their dream on the mountain. Gabe’s hasty leap toward marriage has the family concerned.

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“Mountain Emergency” is an incredibly dull episode that just regurgitates every tired Alaskan Bush People trope that we’ve seen countless times over nine-ish seasons. Pointless squabbling? Yep. Terrible Noah inventions? Oh, yeah. Fake house construction? Hell yeah. Billy Brown Syndrome? You betcha, dadgumit! Howling? Oh, Dear Lord, please make it stop.

Birdy and Rainy kick things off by debating the sex of one of their goats. They can’t tell the difference between goat udders and goat scrotum.

I’ll bet you didn’t have “Goat Scrotum” on your ABP recap bingo card.

It’s fall on Brown Star Ranch, but WINTER IS RIGHT THERE! There’s a nip in the air, but the interior of Noah’s meat locker is a comfortable 65 degrees. Noah and She Who Will Not Be Named are trying to insulate their tent, taping together a bunch of thermal “space blankets” to put over their bed. If that doesn’t work, they can always skin the cat.

Noah doesn’t want his newborn son living in a tent, so he wants to build a more permanent structure. Fortunately, there’s a more permanent structure already waiting for them in Las Animas County, Colorado. Noah doesn’t even have to pretend to build it.

Noah is the proud owner of a house in Las Animas County, Colorado. He bought it from Billy for $0. #AlaskanBushPeople https://t.co/bY1yWhHmgy pic.twitter.com/9bfMi7VSmK

— Ryan Berenz (@RyanBerenz) March 20, 2019

But for now, just enjoy this shot of Noah and She Who Will Not Be Named gazing longingly at the dump and dreaming about their future home in an abandoned semi-trailer.

I can’t believe how much screen time is eaten up by the Brown kids just pointing at places and saying they’re going to build their homes there. This episode mainly focuses on Birdy’s future house, which is going to be — wait for it — a birdhouse.

“I’m definitely gonna miss not living with Rain,” Birdy says, though she probably means the opposite of what she says. Fortunately, she has her cats.

Oh yes, you will be, Birdy. You will be.

Meanwhile, Billy and Mother Ami are hand-wringing over Gabe and Raquell’s nuptials, which are happening in one week. In this rare footage of Billy and Mother Ami not sitting on the couch, they say they wish Gabe and Raquell had taken some more time to find out “the worst part of each other and all that.”

Back on the couch, Mother Ami says she is fine with the short engagement, since she and Billy got married 10 months after they met. (Billy snatched Mother Ami away from her family when she was 15 years old.)

Mother Ami likes Raquell and believes she belongs with them on the mountain, unlike that Gorgon that Noah married.

Man, I know she’s been through a lot with the cancer and all, but Mother Ami is 55 years old. She looks at least 20 years older than her actual age.

Preparations are under way for the Gabe and Raquell’s wedding, which is going to be a lavish event with a wooden plank bench and an arch made out of branches and stuff. The reception will be catered by Louie’s Canned Meats of Oroville. Gabe asks Bear if he will be the best man. “I’m not 100 percent sure what the best man entails,” Bear says. It probably has something to do with the rings, and running around and setting stuff on fire and crap.

Will Bear be the next to get married? He doesn’t think so. He hasn’t been hit repeatedly in the head with the “Love Hammer” yet. Love Hammer sounds like something wildly inappropriate.

Noah is busy in his laboratory “using his gift of ingenuity” to “kick-start the build of his future home” by building a “bush brush whacker.” Or, more accurately, Noah mutilated a perfectly good Dewalt cordless circular saw and morphed it into an impractical, unwieldy, unnecessary and outrageously unsafe tool. Noah’s entire repertoire of innovation is just taking things and sticking them on armbands. Seriously, look at this thing. Look at that blade! There’s not even a protective guard on it. Someone’s gonna die!

Bear has awful ideas of his own. He wants to build a castle out of metal shipping containers that are standing on their ends. He then makes a model (not to scale) out of rocks to show us what that looks like. Very nice, Bear. Now why don’t you sit down and join the rest of the class for story time?

Bear wants his container castle to have a a disco ball and carpeted walls (to muffle the screams). Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

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“I want to watch Birdy and Bam go antiquing!” said No One Ever. Birdy’s been really crusty toward Bam lately, but now she has to suck it up and beg Bam to drive her into town. She wants to go shopping for some building materials. Bam should tell her to go pound sand, but he’s nice and agrees to help her out.

Bam soon regrets that decision, as Birdy spends the entire time buying old windows, stuffed animals and a picture that we can’t even see because Discovery blurs out that stuff. I’m just going to guess and say that it’s a picture of former CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton riding a narwhal. Change my mind.

Birdy and Bam then bicker about the best way to transport the windows home without breaking them. It’s just awful to watch, and I feel like:

Enter Noah and his Bush Brush Whacker, with which he will whack Bush Brush and perhaps a limb or two.

The brush whackin’ comes to a halt when She Who Will Not Be Named spots a dead rodent stuck in a tree. Either a bird of prey dropped its dinner or the production crew has been hazing a newbie with dead mouse duty.

She Who Will Not Be Named wants to bury it. Noah has other plans.

In many cultures, the appearance of the Dead Frozen Tree Mouse is a bad omen…

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There is a commotion in Billy and Mother Ami’s trailer. Everyone is roused. Even the camera crew, which usually does not just hang around at night waiting for something bad to befall Billy, heeded the Dead Frozen Tree Mouse prophecy and happened to be there right when things went down.

“Please. Please, no cameras,” Gabe implores. OK, maybe just one or two cameras, but definitely no more than that!

The Black Screen of Fake Doom informs us of the situation.

Billy tried to exit the camper? As if! That couch and his body have a symbiotic relationship.

Mother Ami wants Billy taken to the hospital, and Billy is finally in agreeance [sic].

Unlike past episodes of Billy Brown Syndrome, we actually get to see Billy in a real hospital room. So he’s not just trying to get out of work this time. I suppose he no longer needs a reason to get out of work.

You’ll notice that Noah and She Who Will Not Be Named are not allowed in Billy’s room. Everyone thought it would be bad for Billy to see his pigheaded son and she-beast daughter-in-law. They must do their fretting in the hallway.

Billy infuses his latest health crisis with a thousand times more drama than Mother Ami ever did with her Stage 3B cancer. If Bear is to be believed, Billy has a severe case of pneumonia. It is good that he sought medical attention. We don’t want to lose Billy to pneumonia the way we lost Jim Henson, James Brown, Bernie Mac and 19th-century Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.

Then Billy starts in with B.S. that he was in surgery for seven hours.

Seven hours of surgery? For pneumonia? What the hell kind of doctor did he see?

And what kind of doctor measures liquid in pounds?

According to the Bureau of Bush Weights and Measures, fluids should be measured in Dr. Pepper can units.

Billy’s biggest concern doesn’t seem to be his health, but the fact that two doctors say he shouldn’t go back to his lifelong dream mountain ranch at 4,000 feet elevation. It’s not like the Browns are living on the summit of Everest. I don’t think it’s elevation that threatens Billy’s health. It’s the Marlboros.

Even in his fragile state, Billy still has enough vigor to tell other people to work. He’ll be just fine and back on his couch in no time.

So their dad is sick, which means that the kids have to…just do what they normally would do.

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Gabe decides his wedding will have to be postponed. It’s OK. The caterer’s canned meat will keep for another few years.

They burn off the rest of this episode with scenes of construction on Birdy’s house. Birdy enlists Bear to climb a tree with a chainsaw and lop off a bunch of branches. Birdy and Gabe stand under the tree in case Bear drops the chainsaw and someone needs to catch it.

Then Gabe fails miserably at pounding nails — perhaps he needs the Love Hammer — and that’s all the bad fake construction I can tolerate for one episode.

By the way, where’s all this lumber coming from? The Browns used to waste entire episodes trying to acquire lumber or mill their own boards. Now lumber just materializes wherever and whenever the Browns need it. The Good Lord works in mysterious ways. He’s got to pick up Billy’s slack.

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Noah’s raised the bar on his utter disregard for his own safety and attached a chainsaw to — surprise! — an arm band. He also slapped together protective gear out of some football shoulder pads.

Well, if he saws off his arm, at least it will be for a noble cause: Building a house he doesn’t need for a garbage reality show we should all just agree to stop watching.

Next week is the season finale. Yes, already! Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s going to be another season. At this moment, the production crew is hard at work bringing us the informative and inspirational story of the Brown family.