On May 28, 1989, John William Cooper appeared as a contestant on the British game showBullseye, three years after murdering two people with a shotgun in Wales. “You’ve got an unusual hobby, John, haven’t you?” host Jim Bowen asked him at one point. “Oh yes, the scuba diving,” Cooper replied, adding that the coastline in Pembrokeshire (his hometown) was a good place to pursue his favorite pastime. What nobody knew then, however, was that the very place he described during that exchange would be where his next victims would lose their lives.
One month later, Cooper shot and killed Peter and Gwenda Dixon on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. He also made off with Peter’s credit card, which he was seen using within hours of the murders. An artist’s impression of what Cooper looked like ended up on wanted posters that were hung all over town, but the case remained unsolved for decades. That is, until the police, who grew to suspect Cooper as time went on, discovered that he’d been on Bullseye.
A Serial Killer Appeared on a Game Show, and the Footage Helped Police Catch Him Decades Later
“Watching the Bullseye sequence through, Jonathan [Hill, ITV presenter] then stopped the tape at the moment when Cooper adopted a similar pose [to the man in the police sketch],” retired chief superintendent Steve Wilkins recalled in 2013. “The images were then put side by side with the help of a graphic artist who pasted the still images next to one another on the screen,” he continued. “In my 30 years service I had seen many artist’s impressions and photo-fit efforts, but I had never seen as close a match as this.”
Thanks to his Bullseye appearance and advances in forensic science, Cooper was convicted of the two double murders and sentenced to life in prison on May 26, 2011. In addition to that, he was found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting two teenage girls in 1996. At the trial, Justice John Griffith Williams called Cooper “a very dangerous man” and “highly predatory.” He went on to say, “The murders were of such evil wickedness that the mandatory sentence of life will mean just that.”
Years before being cast as the world-famous Fourth Doctor on Doctor Who, Tom Baker came close to making a name for himself in a much different way. In 1960, Baker married Anna Wheatcroft, whose wealthy parents constantly made him feel inadequate (Baker had grown up in poverty). When Anna’s father, Alfred, suffered a stroke, the family asked Baker to take care of him. “This monster who hated me suddenly became dependent on me,” Baker recalled in 1997. “I found the whole experience so draining and I felt completely isolated and alone.”
The stress of the situation led to suicidal thoughts, and Baker eventually decided to swallow 24 of his father-in-law’s anti-depressants. Half an hour later, Baker awoke to the sound of Alfred banging his walking stick on the floor. “When I realized I wasn’t dead, it felt like I was trapped inside some black farce,” Baker explained. He even remembered feeling envious when Alfred died.
The Time ‘Doctor Who’ Star Tom Baker TRIED TO KILL His Mother-in-Law
Following Alfred’s death, Baker took a job growing roses for Anna’s family. One day, while working in the fields, Baker heard his mother-in-law, Constance, ordering around a couple of his fellow employees. She then turned her attention to him and said, “Come on, there’s work for you, too.” Constance’s commands finally caused Baker to snap and he shouted back at her, but his anger only served to make her laugh.
It was at that point that Baker reached for one of the 10 newly sharpened hoes he had in the back seat of his car and chucked it at Constance. She managed to avoid getting hit and continued to insult Baker in response. One by one, Baker hurled the remaining hoes at his mother-in-law in a rage, somehow missing her with each of them. “When she started to mock me, I really wanted to get her and absolutely intended to murder her,” Baker admitted, “When I failed in that attempt, I went to pieces.”
Baker’s marriage to Anna fell apart after that, and the couple divorced in 1965. He made his way to London to pursue acting from there, and soon landed the role of the Fourth Doctor, whom he played for seven seasons between 1974 and 1981.
Before the Kardashians turned their family drama and extravagant lifestyles into a multimillion-dollar empire, MTV gave us Rich Girls. The short-lived 2003 reality series followed Ally Hilfiger, daughter of infamous fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, and her best friend Jaime Gleicher, heiress to a luggage fortune, as they navigated their final year of high school in New York City.
Between shopping sprees, summer trips to Nantucket, and enough designer handbags to make a Bergdorf Goodman sales associate blush, the girls offered viewers a glimpse into a world most of us could only imagine.
‘Rich Girls’ walked so The Kardashians could run
At the time, Rich Girls was absurd excess. Ally and Jaime weren’t particularly interested in hiding their privilege, and they didn’t seem concerned with making their lives relatable. They shopped, traveled, complained, and occasionally attempted to convince viewers that money couldn’t buy happiness. It was the exact kind of television that made you fascinated while also scoffing at the screen. In other words, it fit perfectly into early-2000s MTV.
Looking back, however, Rich Girls feels like an early blueprint for the celebrity reality TV that would eventually make the Kardashian-Jenner clan household names. When Keeping Up With the Kardashians premiered in 2007, it expanded on a formula that shows Rich Girls had already introduced: give audiences unrestricted access to the lives of the wealthy and let the spectacle do the rest. The difference was the Kardashians (namely momager Kris Jenner), understood how to turn that access into an empire. Their relationships, business ventures, and family arguments became part of a carefully cultivated celebrity brand.
‘Rich girls’ is a Y2K time capsule
Part of what makes the series so fascinating today is how little it resembles the reality television landscape it helped inspire. Rich Girls arrived before social media turned wealth into a constant performance, when audiences relied on television and gossip magazines to catch glimpses of how the other half lived. There were no carefully curated Instagram feeds. Instead, viewers got an unfiltered (or at least seemingly unfiltered) look at two teenagers whose biggest problems often involved deciding where to spend their parents’ money.
There’s something particularly charming about revisiting a show like Rich Girls now. The ridiculous oversized sunglasses, gaudy Louis Vuitton bags, and unapologetic early-2000s materialism are almost like a time capsule. Before every celebrity had a personal brand and every family feud became a television storyline, two wealthy teenagers were simply allowed to be rich, young, and a little ridiculous on camera.
Boy Meets Boy was one of those reality shows that could have only existed in the early 2000s. When television producers seemed determined to find increasingly ridiculous ways to turn dating into a competitive sport, Bravo decided to put its own spin on the traditional Bachelor formula. The network introduced something entirely new: a dating show centered on a gay man looking for love. The catch? Not everyone competing for his affection was actually gay.
Premiering on July 29, 2003, Boy Meets Boy was a six-episode experiment that arrived at a particularly interesting moment for LGBTQ representation on mainstream television. Alongside Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which premiered just days earlier, the series helped establish Bravo as a network willing to put queer men at the center of its programming. Unfortunately, its approach was a little more complicated than anticipated.
Hosted by British television personality Dani Behr, the series followed 32-year-old James Getzlaff, a Los Angeles human resources manager searching for a romantic partner among 15 male contestants. Filmed in Palm Springs, California, the men lived together, participated in group activities, and went on individual dates with James. Much like The Bachelor, the show gradually eliminated contestants until only one lucky man remained. James also brought along his best friend, Andra Stasko, who acted as a confidante and sounding board throughout the process.
Bravo’s First Gay Dating Show Had a Cruel Twist That Sparked Controversy
But James didn’t know a key detail: some of the contestants were straight men recruited to compete for a cash prize. If James chose a gay contestant, the pair would receive a monetary reward and a romantic vacation to New Zealand. If he chose a straight man, that contestant would walk away with the money, leaving James empty-handed.
The twist wasn’t revealed until James had narrowed the competition down to its final three. Suddenly, what had appeared to be a fairly straightforward search for love became a ?. Would James find love or choose someone playing along for financial gain. The emotional stakes couldn’t have been any higher.
The show got backlash from the LGBTQ+ community
While the concept certainly made for compelling television, it also attracted criticism from LGBTQ+ viewers and advocacy groups. The idea of deliberately deceiving a gay man about the intentions of his potential romantic partners struck many as unnecessarily cruel, particularly at a time when queer relationships were still fighting for meaningful representation on television. There were also concerns that the premise relied on stereotypes about sexuality and encouraged viewers to question whether they could identify someone’s sexual orientation based on appearance or behavior.
Fortunately, James correctly identified Franklin as the straight contestant and chose Wes Culwell as his final mate. The two walked away with their promised trip to New Zealand, although whether reality television is the ideal place to find lasting romance is another question entirely.
Boy Meets Boy never returned for a second season, but its brief existence remains an interesting footnote in reality television history. In 2004, it earned a GLAAD Media Award nomination for Outstanding Reality Program. Looking back, it’s a fascinating reminder of how far queer representation on television has come, but also how often early attempts at inclusion came packaged with an unnecessary gimmick.
When people think about Halloween-themed animated specials, the first that comes to mind is usually It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. However, there’s a lesser-known special that’s actually quite scary. Featuring everyone’s favorite fat orange tabby cat, Garfield’s Halloween Adventure aired on Oct. 30, 1985.
At the 1986 Emmys ceremony, it won the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program. So if you don’t believe us, listen to the critics on this one.
‘Garfield’s Halloween Adventure’ Has No Right to Be This Creepy
Originally titled Garfield in Disguise, the special opens with Garfield waking only to realize it’s Halloween. He convinces Odie to dress up as pirates so they can go trick-or-treating. As they hope to fill their buckets and bellies with candy, ghost pirates soon loot them. They stumble onto an abandoned mansion and meet an old man who warns them of an urban legend that pirates would return 100 years later to reclaim their treasure. As the 24-minute special goes on, the tone grows darker and more sinister, which creator Jim Davis was hoping for. “I wanted to go somewhere that would at least scare 4-year-olds,” he told A.V. Club in 2014.
Not only that, as family-friendly as it may seem today, Davis admitted they toed the line of what Standards and Practices allowed for scares in the ‘80s. “…It hard to grasp because they said, ‘scaring kids.’ [Laughs.] ‘Too scary.’ We could have the ghosts, but we couldn’t have anyone touch anyone else in a threatening way. It couldn’t be anything that appeared to be physical harm.”
They find themselves stuck on the deserted island, and when the clock strikes midnight, the ghost ship returns as promised. They get chased by the terrifying-looking ghosts (that are, in fact, nightmare-inducing to this day). Eventually, though, they make it home safe and sound.
There’s certainly no shortage of gory horror films to watch during October. For those looking for something much more lighthearted and nostalgic but not necessarily a family-friendly Disney Channel Original Movie, there are plenty of hilarious Halloween-themed ‘90s sitcoms episodes ripe for picking. Whether background noise during trick-or-treat or a cozy night in, we’ve got you covered.
Keep reading for four of our favorite episodes to rewatch before October is over.
ABC
1. Sabrina The Teenage Witch
Sabrina the Teenage Witch is perfect rewatch material for the fall and Halloween season, and unsurprisingly, it has plenty of Halloween-themed episodes. As for which episode makes this list, Season 2, Episode 6, “A River of Candy Corn Runs Through It” takes the cake. Hilda is waiting for their new furniture to be delivered, even though they can just…zap it out of thin air. Witches, they’re just like us! The only problem? The furniture is infested with talking termites.
Annoyed that Libby is hosting a Halloween party Valerie and Sabrina weren’t invited to, Valerie blurts out that she and Sabrina are hosting their own party at Sabrina’s. Sabrina ends up having to conjure up things to distract her classmates, and they believe it’s all just a “special effect” for Halloween.
ABC
2. Boy Meets World
Funnily enough, the Boy Meets World Halloween episode didn’t even air in October. It premiered in February of 1998, but it spoofed the slashers of the time like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. The episode’s tone was much darker than viewers were used to. It throws out everything people know about sitcoms as they film with a single handheld camera. It’s really genius. With the inclusion of scream queen Jennifer Love Hewitt as well as the nod to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, it’s clear that the crew were fans of the genre.
FOX
3. That ’70s Show
That ’70s Show has a few Halloween-themed episodes, but the most creative is the Alfred Hitchcock-themed episode, Season 3, Episode 4, “Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die.”
The group watches Hitchcock films, joking about how funny it would be if they were in a Hitchcock film and didn’t know it. The rest of the episode is spent spoofing various Hitchcock films. Instead of providing the spooks, it gives the giggles.
FOX
4. The SIMPSONS: Treehouse of Horror
Every year The Simpsons air their Halloween special, “Treehouse of Horror.” Beginning in 1990, the non-canon episode features spoofs of horror, sci-fi, and supernatural stories. It’s become something that die-hard fans of The Simpsons look forward to, and with 36 years’ worth of episodes, there’s no shortage of entertainment.
“Treehouse of Horror V” (Season 6, Episode 6) is widely considered the best, and it’s easy to see why it tops everyone’s list once you watch the segments. It spoofs The Shining and includes a crime-and-punishment-themed segment in which Homer breaks a toaster, sending him through different timelines.
Halloween parodies have been around for decades, with Hollywood putting their spin on everything from Boy Meets World, The Simpsons, and Happy Endings to sitcom favorite That ’70s Show. While the holiday has inspired plenty of memorable television moments, few episodes have managed to blend classic horror with sitcom comedy quite like the Fox series’ Alfred Hitchcock-themed Halloween special.
“Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die,” the fourth episode of That ’70s Show’s third season premiered on October 31, 2000. More than two decades later, it remains one of the sitcom’s most creative holiday episodes, transforming the familiar antics of the friend group into a hilarious tribute to one of the most influential filmmakers of all time.
How That ’70s Show Turned Alfred Hitchcock Movies Into Sitcom Comedy
The episode begins with the gang watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie marathon, which gives Kelso an idea. What if they were living in a Hitchcock movie without realizing it?
They play it off as a joke; however, his suggestion sets the stage for an episode packed with references to five of Hitchcock’s most recognizable films: Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest.
Rather than recreating the movies scene for scene, the sitcom takes the most recognizable moments and gives them the kind of twists that could only happen on That ’70s Show.
The result is a Halloween episode that rewards Hitchcock fans without alienating viewers who have never watched one of his films.
The Psycho Shower Scene Gets a That ’70s Show Twist
FOX
One of Hitchcock’s most famous films gets a particularly memorable nod when Kelso finds himself in a situation reminiscent of Psycho.
The 1960 thriller, starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, is best remembered for its infamous shower scene where Marion Crane is attacked at the Bates Motel. The sequence became one of the most influential moments in horror history, helping establish the level of suspense and shock imitated today.
Kelso gets beaten up by a child and finds his way into the Forman house to take a shower. At the same time, Laurie Forman is returning home covered in bird poop (a nod to Hitchcock’s The Birds). Instead of attacking him with a knife, she attacks him with a scrub brush. She then makes the water temperature even hotter, making him shriek.
The creatives behind the episode turned a scene associated with one of film’s most notorious murders into something considerably less threatening and sexually awkward.
Kitty Forman Learns the Hard Way That The Birds Wasn’t Just a Movie
Fox
While Hitchcock’s Psycho is known for its shower scene, The Birds gave audiences a different reason to fear ordinary things.
Released in 1963, the film follows a California community terrorized by seemingly inexplicable attacks from birds. Hitchcock transforms creatures that people encounter every day into an unpredictable threat.
That ’70s Show puts its own spin on the premise through Kitty Forman who discovers that feeding a neighbor’s birds isn’t as harmless as she initially thought.
It’s a particularly fitting reference for Kitty, whose maternal instincts and determination to keep everything under control often put her in situations that are anything but peaceful.
Fez and Hyde Become the Stars of a Rear Window Mystery
Fox
Perhaps the episode’s most entertaining Hitchcock reference involves Fez and Steven Hyde.
After Fez injures his leg, he spends more time observing the world around him. Like L.B. Jefferies, the photographer played by James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Fez becomes convinced that something sinister is happening inside a neighbor’s home.
The 1954 Hitchcock thriller follows a wheelchair-bound photographer who suspects that a man across the courtyard has murdered his wife. Unable to investigate it himself, Jefferies attempts to piece together the truth from what he can see through his apartment window.
In the sitcom’s version, Fez and Hyde spy on their neighbors, Bob and Midge Pinciotti, after becoming convinced that Bob killed his wife.
The supposed murder investigation is exactly the sort of overblown conspiracy that could emerge when two bored teenagers have too much time on their hands. It’s absolutely ridiculous but that’s what makes it so great.
Eric Forman’s Fear of Heights References Vertigo
Fox
Eric Forman gets his own Hitchcock-inspired storyline when an incident involving a fall leaves him afraid of heights.
The plot references Vertigo, Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller starring James Stewart and Kim Novak. The film follows a former police detective whose fear of heights becomes entangled in an increasingly disturbing mystery involving obsession, deception, and identity.
In That ’70s Show, Eric’s experience is considerably less glamorous. His fear becomes another obstacle for the perpetually anxious teenager, whose tendency to overthink everything makes him an ideal character for a parody of Hitchcock’s psychological suspense.
Where Hitchcock used vertigo to explore the darker corners of the human mind, the sitcom uses it to create another opportunity for Eric to embarrass himself.
Kelso Gets His Own North by Northwest Moment
The episode also references North by Northwest, Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller starring Cary Grant as an advertising executive who becomes caught up in a case of mistaken identity and is pursued across the country.
The film’s most famous sequence involves Grant’s character being chased through an open field by a crop-dusting plane.
Kelso’s storyline draws on the film’s mistaken-identity premise, with a paperboy pursuing him over a debt Red Forman forgot to pay. It’s a ridiculous misunderstanding, but the reference is unmistakable for anyone familiar with Hitchcock’s work.
The joke also feels right for Kelso, whose mix of confidence and questionable intelligence often lands him in situations he doesn’t fully understand.
Why That ’70s Show’s Halloween Episode Still Works
What makes “Too Old to Trick or Treat, Too Young to Die” so memorable isn’t the number of Hitchcock references crammed into the 22-minute runtime. It’s how naturally the crew weaves those references into the characters’ everyday problems.
The episode doesn’t abandon the sitcom’s established personalities. Instead, it uses the films as a guide for stories that feel entirely at home in Point Place.
The episode also arrived at a time when Halloween specials were an established television tradition, with sitcoms regularly using the holiday to experiment with different genres and storytelling styles. By combining a classic horror homage with its own brand of irreverent humor, That ’70s Show managed to create something that felt both nostalgic and distinctly its own.
Unlike some television parodies that rely entirely on viewers recognizing the original material, the episode remains entertaining even if you’ve never seen a Hitchcock movie.
After all, the gang might be too old to trick-or-treat and too young to die, but they’re never too young (or old) to find themselves in the middle of a Hitchcock film!
The social media account Stay Golden TV, nobly dedicated to The Golden Girls, dutifully drew our attention to a pressing issue: What on earth was hanging on the wall in the home of America’s four most beloved senior citizens (Dorothy Zbornak, Rose Nylund, Blanche Devereaux, and Sophia Petrillo)? The account posted still frames showing what appears to be a male appendage sculpture conspicuously hanging in the background.
Stay Golden TV found the once-popular relic in question for sale, and therefore we were able to see other listings for ourselves. The item is, in fact, a copper lobster mold / wall hanging. Such objects have been manufactured internationally by different makers. Upon getting a better look at the relief, the claws become clear to see. However, even so, these molds unquestionably resemble phalli.
As Stay Golden TV pointed out, until high-definition remasters were available for streaming, it was difficult to discern anything but the curious piece of decor’s silhouette.
Fans Spotted What Looks Like a Penis on the Set of ‘The Golden Girls,’ but There’s a Catch
One user seems to have hit the nail on the head, “Definitely falls under the category ‘They Knew What They Were Doing.'” The wall hanging indeed represents a perfect example of attention to detail in set design.
Another netizen joked, “It’s a LOBSTER. Blanche probably had her own personal penis one though.” After all, our girls were no strangers to naughty antics.
Yet another observer astutely remarked, “Archie Bunker had the same lobster in his kitchen.” He is, in fact, correct.
This seems like the perfect time to inform all those grateful to the girls for being friends that Dan Watt’s Bea Arthur: The Documentary – “I’ve Done Everything Except Porn” was released this month. Catch a screening if you can.
Fed up with ads, tracking, and sluggish interfaces, some smart TV owners are turning to AI agents to strip away bloatware and take back control of their TVs.
CBS News’ editor-in-chief has pledged to “speak for the seventy-five per cent” of people on the center right and the center left; the reality is different.
No matter how well-matched a couple is, every relationship brings with it some kind of compromise. In our household, one such compromise has resulted in me being a near scholar of the survival reality show Alone. I’ve hated camping for as long as I can remember and, in general, share Socrates’s preference for the city over the countryside. My Esteemed Partner is not the opposite by any means, but she would probably like to do more outdoor activities than we actually wind up doing. When we discovered Alone during the pandemic, that created an important release valve. She gets to indulge her fantasies of roughing it in the wilderness, while I get to apply my “always-on” analytical mind to a show that is in fact almost a parody of neoliberal individualism.
The premise is simple and cruel, taking the “skills-based” reality show paradigm to its logical limits. Contestants are dropped off in the remote wilderness, in the same region but far distant from each other. The winner is the one who is able to endure the isolation and deprivation the longest. All the contestants are in some sense survival experts, in many cases either living off the grid, providing instruction in survival, or both. Hence they have many skills that can help them extract some kind of living from the land. But few have the experience of extended periods of complete social isolation — perhaps we see here why the show became a hit during the pandemic? — and all of them are tormented by a complete lack of knowledge as to how many other contestants are still going and how long they may have to hold out.
Winning does not require holding out against death. Contestants receive periodic medical checks and can be extracted if their condition has dangerously deteriorated. (To my knowledge, no contestant has actually died, but part of me wonders if someone has and they just never showed the footage or acknowledged their existence.) Instead, they are holding out against the temptation to give up — an ever-present option. They are equipped with a satellite phone that allows them to “officially tap out,” the term of art for giving up. Within the space of an hour, a team shows up to film them sharing the vital life lessons they have learned from the experience and then to clean up their hard-won shelter so that it is as though they were never there.
The post-“tap out” filming is an exceptional moment — up until then, the contestants must film themselves. We occasionally get a glimpse of the quite imposing suitcase full of camera equipment they have to lug around in addition to their survival gear. Sometimes this gives them an advantage, for instance using the camera’s light for other purposes or setting up motion-detecting cameras to track animal habits. I assume that they have enough downtime that the work of setting up the shots, etc., doesn’t become excessively burdensome. But I suspect the act of filming is a double-edged sword. It gives them an imaginary friend to talk to (one contestant this year constantly addresses the camera as “you guys,” by which I assume she means the home audience), but sometimes the irony of constantly performing for an absent interlocutor seems to promote the inevitable spiral into abject loneliness.
I’m sure there is a lot to say about the subcultures that have grown up around the show, its effect on survivalist circles, the almost uncanny recurrence of the theme of a man leaving his very pregnant wife behind to be on the show, etc. I don’t know anything about that — I just know what I see on screen. And what I see is so perfectly, sublimely ideological that I almost suspect that Adorno is an executive producer. The surface-level content of the show is radically individualistic. Each of the contestants is completely isolated and forced to rely on their wits, their knowledge, and the limited kit of survival items they have cultivated. The contest appears to be a pure meritocracy, judged not by a fallible human being but by nature itself.
Yet seldom has there been a less “natural” setting. They are undertaking a task no human being has attempted or even would attempt. The places they are forced to survive in have, as far as I can tell, never been permanently inhabited by humans. Had they chosen to live there, they would not have done so in radical isolation, but in a group. There are no indigenous lifeways that involve shivering alone in a makeshift shelter north of the Arctic Circle or hunkering down under a tarp in the middle of a freak rainstorm in the South African desert. The scenario is, in short, completely contrived — it would only “really” come up as a result of a highly technologically-mediated event like a plane crash.
And their existence is itself highly technologically mediated. Their “tap out” phones depend on a network of satellites connected to the GPS system. They have an elite medical team on call at a moment’s notice. And the reason we can even see what they are doing is that they have a wide range of camera equipment — including extremely durable batteries and advanced solar cell technology — to capture them as they essentially generate endless video “content.” The material they are filming will be distributed on cable and streaming networks, but what they are doing is not essentially different from a TikTok influencer. In fact, many of them already are influencers — the “getting to know you” segments often include YouTube clips of their survival feats — and as the show has gone on, awareness of the past episodes and the surrounding social media discussion has deeply shaped how more recent contestants prepare. After the first few seasons, it became common for current contestants to name-drop past stars of the show, both as models and cautionary tales. The most radically individual experience is thus profoundly socially mediated.
The show is not without its pleasures. There is amusement in seeing an arrogant contestant brought low by his failure to catch any fish day after day. There is morbid fascination in getting a window into the minds of these certified weirdos (who else would even attempt such a thing?). And there can be moments of profound empathy when a bedraggled contestant drops out, unaware that they are one of the last two remaining and that their opponent is also hanging on by a thread.
As when watching obscure sports on the Olympics, one becomes an insta-expert, confidently judging the contestants’ choices. (My go-to commentary: Hunting big game? Always a mistake, absolute hubris. Fishing, only fishing!) But having seen almost all extant episodes, I cannot accept the notion that this is a contest of skill or merit. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. One rule of thumb, for instance, is that the person who builds the most effective shelter will always tap out shortly thereafter. As I have said, the contestants who get their food situation permanently “locked down” (by killing a big game animal and drying all the meat) wind up with an albatross around their neck — their sole task becomes to protect their horde from the various rodents and scavengers. And in the end, no one ever has “enough” food for the long haul. Winter comes, nature closes up shop, and the show becomes a “starvation contest” — a phenomenon that has itself entered the contestants’ patter. Along the way, competitors are more likely to be eliminated by sheer happenstance — as when an otherwise highly skilled Australian competitor’s boot came unglued shortly after he landed — than by any discrete mistake.
In the end, it is an emotional game, and few of us have the emotional resources to stand up to the boredom, deprivation, and isolation of this competition. Those who do seem to be either vaguely insane or — I don’t know how else to put it — a little bit stupid. A recent winner fit the latter description, letting every disappointment and setback roll over him, only once losing his temper (upon finding that the persistent marten he had nicknamed “Sassy” had yet again stolen his food cache), mostly passing the time by reciting self-help slogans and other banalities. He was not just the last man standing, he was the Last Man.
And yet one did not begrudge him. Indeed, we were rooting for him to prevail against the last holdouts. There is a certain satisfaction in seeing the person that the system has selected for. I have no doubt he would be an exemplary middle manager, an unflappable customer service rep. But at the end of the day, we were rooting for Sassy, the true winner — who received a life-changing jackpot from this man who had been forced to generate social media content at the outer reaches of the GPS network.
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