‘Alaskan Bush People’ Episode 4: ‘A Very Bush Wedding’ (RECAP)

On the Alaskan Bush People episode “A Very Bush Wedding” (January 1) the Wolf Pack prepares for their first ever wedding in the bush. But as the family prepares to welcome a new member, emotions run high and the Browns struggle to keep their most ambitious project on track.

Happy new year! Let us ring in 2020 with more of the same old, tired, fake ABP nonsense. I hope the Good Lord will see to it that this show is canceled before Earth completes another full orbit around the sun.

It is early summer on Brown Star Ranch. Birdy and Noah are pretending to care for their cattle by giving them an application of Ivermectin, a parasiticide that kills intestinal worms, lice and such. The solution is supposed to be applied along the animal’s back. But instead of doing this while Brutus and the cows are secured inside the barn, Rainy and Noah try to do this while the cattle are roaming free in the pen. Birdy and Noah start recklessly splashing this stuff all over the cattle, probably getting a full dose on themselves in the process. They could probably use it, though. I’m sure Birdy is full of roundworms.

Elsewhere, preparations for Gabe and Raquell’s fake wedding are reaching the point of Fake Urgency.

Let’s get this annoying thing called the truth out of the way. Gabe and Raquell were legally married on January 14, 2019. The ceremony we’re seeing in this episode is just staged for the purposes of the show and took place on June 14, 2019. It was the best Flag Day ever!

Raquell is also about four months pregnant at the time of wedding No. 2. Their baby daughter was supposedly due in November, and while there were reports of Browns appearing at the hospital in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, around the expected date, there has been no public birth announcement from any of ABP‘s PR flacks or media cronies.

Either Raquell is on her 11th month of pregnancy, or ABP is just sitting on the news until it makes more sense in the show’s Bush space-time continuum. Perhaps they learned their lesson from Noah and She Who Will Not Be Named getting premaritally preggers.

Gabe is just a big-hearted lug who gave up sexting Swedish women to settle down with a woman eager to find a dimwitted reality TV personality who might be able to support her and her two pre-existing children.

Billy gathers the family to talk about how astonishing it is that someone would actually want to marry his oafish ogre of a son.

But in true Father Billy fashion, he’s also very adamant that his kids remain focused on his monthslong dream of a fully self-sustaining ranch, specifically completing that tedious windmill water-pump project so we never have to see or hear about it ever again.

Water will have to wait another day, since the herculean task of “fixing” Gabe for his fake wedding will require tremendous manpower and perhaps a bulldozer.

Rainy draws the short straw and has to give Gabe a mani/pedi. “It makes me want to gag,” Rainy says, forgetting that she was the winner of the legendary stinky foot contest. Rainy also mentions that Matt’s feet were the absolute most disgusting. Wow. Someone finally acknowledged that Matt exists.

Bear and Birdy have the duty of completing the final windmill (pronounced “wind-meal”) task, which is attaching the push rod (a.k.a. “sucker rod”) to the hub assembly that will create the up-and-down motion that will draw water from the well.

But first, Bear must act like a 7-year-old with a cordless drill. Good idea! Use up all your battery life shooting at imaginary zombie deer.

Like all windmill-related activity, this is boring and uneventful, and the possibility of Bear getting vivisected by the blades is just a tease.

Birdy ascends the rig, though I’m not sure what she actually does up there. Perhaps she was hindered by that deeply entrenched wedgie.

The job is done and it’s time to gather the family ’round the windmill to see this thing draw its first trickle of water. Billy approves of all the hard work his kids did while he was asleep on the couch.

Water springs forth from the well, and there is much rejoicing. The water tastes like victory and metabolic acidosis.

And just to rub it in our faces, they howl. Except Bam doesn’t howl, because there is a limit to the indignities he’ll suffer to collect a paycheck from this awful show.

Meanwhile, Noah is up to some insanely creepy stuff in his tent. He’s fashioning a toy for his infant son Elijah out of an animal skull.

Noah is hellbent on making his son grow up to be as ghoulish as he is.

Oh, you don’t say. Let’s ignore the creepiness factor and look at this from a child safety angle. He’s going to give a skull with all its sharp bony protrusions and teeth to an infant. He’s going to put fox teeth inside of the skull so the rattle makes noise and Elijah can ingest the teeth when the teeth inevitably fall out. Might as well just give the kid a Bag O’Glass. Thankfully, She Who Will Not Be Named probably has enough sense and won’t let that thing anywhere near Elijah.

On with the fake wedding preparations. The fake ceremony is two days away, and Gabe and Raquell have yet to get an officiant for their nuptials. Gabe and Bam go out to the woods to build a wooden cross, because the Browns like to pass themselves off as God-fearin’ folks for the cameras, and the easiest way to do that is just to get tattoos and a bunch of crosses and mention the Good Lord a lot.

Gabe asks Bam if he’ll officiate the fake ceremony, and Bam is honored to accept the job. His cockles are warmed.

It’s time for Gabe to get some clothes that don’t make him look like an Amish lumberjack, so he and his brothers hop in the family SUV and head out to do some shopping. They arrive at the store and immediately start sullying up the merchandise.

Gabe settles on a white buttoned-down shirt and … suspenders. Somehow, he manages to look even more like an Amish lumberjack.

Back at Brown Star Ranch, there is important work do be done, such as putting bowties on chickens. No, this isn’t The Muppet Show and no one is Gonzo. This is Alaskan Bush People, a show on Discovery Channel, which long ago was a reputable outlet for quality educational television programs.

Gabe is not so sure about the chickens attending his fake wedding ceremony. “I don’t know if chickens spell magic or romance,” Gabe says.

Silly Gabe! Chickens can’t spell anything!

Rainy is concerned that chickens might get in the way of the wedding procession. She doesn’t want Raquell (her name is mistakenly translated as “a cow” in the captions) to accidentally step on one.

Gabe decides to nix the chicken idea, because he doesn’t want the fake wedding ceremony on his family’s farcically bad TV show to turn into a joke.

Gabe’s siblings want him to enjoy his last day as a single guy (even though he hasn’t been single for months), and they somehow manage to make his sad bachelor party look like a night at Gatsby’s house by comparison. They play a bunch of silly schoolyard games, one of them being the Wheel of Misfortune.

The contestants spin the wheel and have to do whatever gross act it stops on. I played this game and landed on Watch Alaskan Bush People.

Do you want to know about Billy cutting Gabe’s hair? Didn’t think so.

The big fake day finally arrives. Wedding guests—all 10 of them—come filing in. Bear, the best man, brought the family’s friggin’ parrot as his date. The parrot gets to sit in front. The parrot was Gabe’s first choice to officiate the wedding, but the show’s producers felt that being married by a bird lacked authenticity.

The Browns’ obsequious old friends, Bill and Margaret Fuller, are attending the wedding. They delivered the ostriches from Texas a few weeks ago and have been hanging around Brown Star Ranch and sleeping in the ostrich trailer ever since.

Rainy and Birdy take their seats and…helllooooo, Birdy!

The interstitial segment involves Birdy and Rainy playing with their dolls. They’re reenacting the nude courtship of Gabe and Raquell, with the occasional appearance from the lazy-ass Father Billy figurine to “check on the process” of everyone else’s work.

Finally, here comes the blushing bride. Raquell is escorted by an unidentified green-haired woman (possibly her sister).

It’s all nice and stuff, and Gabe and Raquell say their fake wedding vows and exchange rings. You’d think Park Slope could’ve hired some extras or gotten some crew members to fill the empty seats.

Birdy realizes that her heaving bosom is upstaging the bride, so she covers up.

And just like that, Gabe and Raquell are married again. Instead of tossing the wedding bouquet, they’re going to toss the wedding chainsaw.

The wedding cake is shaped like a log, so fittingly, Gabe cuts it with a chainsaw. Who’d like a piece with bar and chain oil? Anyone?

And then there’s archery for some reason. Raquell appears to be drawing back a flaming arrow, like she just walked into a Dukes of Hazzard episode. That’s a pretty sophisticated compound bow she’s got. I’m no expert, but she’s drawing the string with the left hand and that bow appears to be upside down. I suppose I’ll give her a break, though. She came really close to having chickens wearing tuxedos at her wedding.

Raquell’s mom, Rhonda, is very pleased that her daughter is now an official performer in the Brown Family Circus.

Billy pontificates on the institution of marriage and that “little feeling inside” that must be the Viagra kicking in. Gabe says he wants to follow his parents’ example of married life.

You’ll remember that Billy divorced his first wife and abandoned his two daughters. He then stole a 15-year-old Ami away from her family, and kept her barefoot, pregnant and totally subservient for decades. Nice role models.

It’s time for this week’s edition of “That’s Matt!,” in which we take a social media look at Matt Brown’s sober adventures in Southern California.

Matt spent his Christmas enjoying “an app that sees how long you can go without blinking.”

I’m assuming the 397.0 indicates the number of seconds Matt went between blinks. Hey, at least he’s not blasting his scalp off with fireworks.

Join us next time for another edition of “That’s Matt!”

Alaskan Bush People, Wednesdays, 8/7c, Discovery Channel