The Island - My Thoughts

 The Island is a reality survival show hosted by "survival expert" Bear Grylls. Participants, who are supposedly regular Brits who have little to no experience in island survival, are marooned on pacific islands with only a handful of supplies and are expected to work out their survival on their own.

For 6 weeks, participants are to survive by building shelters, starting their own fires without modern means, hunting for food, and gathering fresh drinking water. The show is filmed entirely by the participants themselves with emergency response teams supposedly nearby on another island to provide support if needed. Bear explains it as an experiment. To show whether or not modern day Brits, who are so used to modern conveniences still has what it takes to survive.

Training is provided before the exercise, but little information is shown on how much survival training the participants receive.

So far I have seen seasons 2 and 3 and am now watching season 4. Each episode is an hour long and usually always shows the groups hungry and on the edge with most if not a majority of the group doing nothing. Someone almost always cries in every episode whether because of an argument, or of sheer joy for being able to eat a decent meal that almost always comes just at the right moment to keep the group going.

There are those who quit for one reason and another. Sometimes the reason for quitting seem quite absurd and sometimes unreasonable. Sometimes the drama is too much too. There are also participants that are just horrible human beings. Without the cameras, they might have resorted to cannibalism.

In my mind there has always been a question of, "Can I do that too? If I were put on an island with 13 other people, will I be able to survive alongside them like the people in the show?"

Coming from a tropical Asian nation, I can't help but wonder why these Europeans are having a hard time surviving on an island yet there are a lot of them to do tasks and help out to make things work. Then again, I am not there on the island surviving with those people. While it is easy to judge and criticize in the comfort of my own home, I can't help but wonder why it seems to be a very difficult struggle for a group of people to accomplish what would seem basic on islands that have most if not all the resources they need. Including modern stuff washed ashore as trash like countless containers, rope, nets, clothes, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if someone found some cooking pots and knives and other stuff. Again, "Why do they make it look so difficult?"

Everyone is always hungry, grumpy, and generally lazy. That is what is mostly portrayed per episode - people sitting around while some go off to "try" to fish or forage or whatever. The participants also stay along the beach and not go hunting in the island's interior.

Bear's narration is repetitive at best. With words like, "critical" and "beyond critical" to describe the group's state.

Which now begs the question, "Can I do better?"