Episode Summaries

Episode 9 (8/12)

Recap to come.

Episode 8 (8/5)

Okay, everyone’s busy, so I’m going to cut to the chase…even though there were some teasers last week, no one tapped out in this episode! 

Jax played our emotions like a world-class soccer player perfecting her flop during the big game, getting sick, only to quickly recover and live another day happily celebrating the catch of a 1,300-calorie fish.

With a rank smell emanating from his food cache, Ziga realized that not smoking his moose meat had been a lazy mistake, and he quickly turned his shelter into a Nashville BBQ joint.

Meanwhile, Nero had plenty of time to work on a morale project, making a wreath for his hobbit-like door, since he basically received a DoorDash delivery of 89 whitefish.

Aaron went blueberry gathering (again) with his oversized glove and luckily came upon two rabbits in his snares, which was serendipitous for him, as he’s proven to be a lackluster hunter.

And Andrew, wanting to improve his fishing potential, built a coracle (boat) to transport him to the middle of the river, but was unsuccessful in anything other than looking like one of the three men in a tub.

Episode 7 (7/29)

This week’s recap will be brief for everyone out there spending time googling any connection between excess earwax and not pooping for two weeks…

This episode was definitely the “(White) Man or Bear”-inspired hour, where the Bear is always chosen, especially by Will and Jacks. We learned about the bullying and prejudice Will faced growing up and the trauma Jacks experienced as a young woman. 

Aaron, on the other hand, was concerned about getting the Yips as his snares consistently failed him and his moose hunting skills fell short. “I look like a damn rookie,” he exclaimed but reminded us that he is here to win the money, not to enjoy himself or be enlightened. At one point, he even said that he had nothing at home, which might be a surprise to his dad and sister.

Will’s accumulation of earwax and poop, alas, stopped him from, in his words, harvesting a black bear, so we’ll have to look elsewhere for this, as he tapped out with stomach cramps and gas. 

Nero built a Cirque du Soleil-inspired food cache to keep his beaver meat safe from all the varmints.

Jacks 😳

Episode 6 (7/22)

Looking like a character from Game of Thrones, Ziga took a day to carve up his first moose kill, exclaiming, “So much meat!” Amazingly, no animals absconded with the meat displayed in a gruesome tableau spread across tree branches, so he carried it back to his camp (lugging four legs that each weighed over 100 pounds!), hid some in an in-ground food cache, roasted some of it, and proceeded to eat it like a 10-year-old at Medieval Times for the first time.

Andrew lost 28 pounds, but is looking healthy with a creative teepee/lean-to hybrid shelter and plenty of food, reeling in a fair-sized burbot, AKA poor man’s lobster. Is it me or is he just such a lovely man? Or is it the accent and the poetry quoting that make me yearn for a Merchant Ivory Productions Alone season?

Will is the guy in high school that you wanted to like, but he was just annoying enough never to make the sleepover invite list. I mean, come on, carving a wood sign in his native language that’s name is twice as long as the English word is just showing off. But (no pun intended) I do feel for him as he enters day six of no poop…

We were rooting for you, Pedrosa, but your 22-pound weight loss made a medical evacuation a foregone conclusion. You were lean and mean and ready to go the distance, but alas, bad soup and lingonberry, willow, and birch tea proved no match for a super-low heart rate. Next time, a dad bod is the move coming into the competition.

How fast and far we fall, Nero goes all “baby back baby back baby back beaver ribs,” munching down on his first kill right before he bashes in the head of a second beaver. Jeez, we know you think ”food tastes better if you have to work for it”, but does work have to involve murder and mayhem?

Episode 5 (7/15)

Aaron’s lost 25 pounds since the start of the competition with no GLP-1 prescription in sight… Hmm, I guess Mom was right about eating less and exercising more! Several days in and still with no fish, he exclaims, “Greasy move!” to Mother Nature as he mistakes a log for a fish on his line. Interestingly, this was the first of many allusions to and invocations of Mother Nature by almost all of the contestants in this episode. Is the History Channel trying to garner favor with us after showing too much killing in the last few episodes?

Ziga went on a philosophical journey, pondering the age-old question whether it is better to take the life of one large animal or many small ones. In the end, after whittling a pair of chopsticks and asking the circling ravens for help, it seems Mother Nature answered him, delivering a moose.  

Nero, perhaps feeling guilty for the last episode’s beaver slaughter, freed a poor Snowshoe Hare caught in one of his snares because he already had enough food. Wow, from villain to hero in less than a week!

Meanwhile, big talker and short muppet movie director Will shows us his amazing shelter, but then starts talking about how he misses his wife, the love of his life, and we start seeing a tapout on the horizon. After fainting and recovering at his shelter, he reminds himself (and us) that it’s important to eat and drink water. Okay…maybe time for a concussion check?

Once again, Mother Nature gets involved as Jacks sits on the riverbank, waiting for the ephemeral being to tell her what to do. Ultimately, after coming across a dead beaver and seeing a swimming one, she decides to undertake Operation Go for the Beaver, presumably kicking off the hunt in the next episode. 

Episode 4 (7/8)

Looking as if he stepped out of an episode of Portlandia, Aaron, in his red plaid flannel shirt, makes a vise and a chimney in this episode, all the while chopping down the biggest trees he can find to make his shelter. Of course, he then goes a step too far with his mountain man role-playing, holding a still-beating fish heart in his hand for the camera. It’s a fine line between I can shelter and protect you and full-on psychopath.

We then see the Blair Witch Project-influenced filming of Nero’s night shoot of his horsetail-woven smoker. And the horror continues with a very graphic bludgeoning and skinning of a large beaver. Okay, History Channel: less Silence of the Lambs and more “meanwhile, offscreen”.

Hopefully the kiddoes were all asleep when you watched a close-up of Pedrosa tucking in his shirt and zipping up his pants while telling us he was going to “check his snares.” Be still my heart! Next, like everyone else on this episode, he sees the snow and says, wow, I better finish my shelter. It’s almost like winter has come a season early — what calendar are they looking at?!

I enjoyed listening to Andrew’s Richard Attenborough-influenced voice-over with his very British-like declaration that he “hates hunting with snares, as it’s not sporting.” And then we see the animal kingdom take its revenge after Andrew tells us he’ll “spare us the gory details” of how he broke a rabbit’s neck only to have it stolen in the night by a foraging bear. 

Poldi started strong, managing to eat three meals a day, but soon his ego and lack of preparation began to show, and he started spiraling, letting “the negative thoughts creep in…” For a minute there, it looked like he had a future as a fish thrower at Pike Peak Market in Seattle, but then he realized he wasn’t enjoying himself, and there was so much work still to do on his shelter, what with the surprising (!!) arrival of winter, so he tapped out on Day 14.

Episode 3 (7/1)

No one tapped out this episode, but we did get to see the truly manic side of some of our contestants.

Bombas better watch out cuz Will has a new product coming out: smell-absorbing grouse feathers for your socks and boots! And this is just one of the many wilderness tips he shares with us on this episode, but even for him, eating rabbit testicles was a step too far. “Ew, I think I’m going to eat around it,” he says, then quickly goes to check his gill nets. 

Pedrosa (Clementino) may not go the distance, but he will definitely leave with the honor of having the cleanest pots. And after exclaiming that he’s a terrible hunter and fisherman and doesn’t deserve to be here, he promptly catches a rabbit, and all is well… the lady doth protest too much, methinks?!

Our youngest contestant and fastest talker, Poldi, catches so many fish and rabbits that he’s forced to build a smoker to cure all the meat. But you’ve gotta wonder why, with all that fat and protein, he still serves up and eats the rabbit gut bag (semi-digested stomach contents for those of you who looked away)? Avocado toast it’s not!

Poor Jacks is covered with bug bites, some looking very red and fresh and some scabbed over. Later in the episode, she’s definitely in Castaway/Wilson territory, naming and talking to her various cameras. The minute Cameron starts talking back, we know the bites are infected!

Ziga is our alpha male of the season, parading through the wilderness shirtless, exclaiming berries and sun are what he needs. Or maybe it’s what he thinks his followers need? When, in actuality, what he really needed were the duck, squirrel, and hare he later caught and ate. 

Episode 2 (6/24)

Things started tough for Poldi on Day One as he accidentally ate a mosquito, but then he brought home the bacon with a Surf and Turf dinner (aka grouse and Northern Pike).

Things also looked dim for Aaron, who kicked off his Alone time with a squirrel lunch before successfully hauling in a 40-inch-long Northern Pike. So, is calling your binoculars Binos a Canadian thing or just an Aaron thing?

Retired school principal Dave seemed on the right track when he tethered himself to his Leatherman tool, but quickly fell from grace when he burnt up his ferro rod on Day One—and then made the ridiculously bad decision to let his existing fire go out. The worst part of the show was when he bludgeoned a beaver to death with no way to cook the meat. Jeez Dave, not a great example for the kids… “Shame, shame, shame” all the way to tapping out on Day Four.

I’m not sure if half the contestants were dropped off at a different location, but there are so many mosquitoes and bugs visible in this episode! In fact, Ziga said, “The flies will eat me alive!” It definitely seems like they do things differently in Slovenia, as seen in his tribute to the Leather Face campsite, which features dangling livers, kidneys, and stomach tissue. Also, he’s our only contestant without a ferro rod (not including Friction Fire Dave), so instead of boiling water, he declares it’s perfectly okay to filter river water with a cloth. In anticipation of starting a cooking fire, to dry them out, he sleeps with pieces of wood, referring to them as “teddy bears.” 

We saw a wee bit of Andrew this episode, who showed us that alder cones may be edible, but they are not going to be anyone’s favorite snack. In fact, he shared, “I think I’d rather starve.”  He informed us he’s definitely the tortoise, not the hare, which may explain why he’s not featured very much in the first few episodes. 

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Episode 1 (6/17)

Well, Episode 1 should have started with a warning that “Many squirrels, rabbits, and grouse were killed to make this episode,” rather than the “No animals were harmed in the making of this film” statement you usually see. Okay, I’ll get off my PETA podium and move on to the snark!

Okay, David, this was predictable and anticipated by our pool participants. Tapping out in the first few days because you miss your kids, using the “I want to be a good dad” excuse instead of owning up to the fact that you can’t fish or hunt, is pathetic. Yep, I said it, no holds barred on this one… 

After seeing Jack’s performance in her first few days in the Arctic, I’m predicting a decline in people signing up for her Wildcard Wilderness classes. I mean, on Day Two, she’s already complaining the Airbnb is “brutal,” and she’s sleeping in to avoid venturing out, which, in retrospect, may have been a good idea given she loses her sweater on her first walkaround. My scoffing escalated with her ridiculous declaration that “I don’t know anything about this place!” and her multiple references to  having lost her mom five years ago (I’m assuming she meant she died and not just that she wandered off misplaced?) Living the van life for 3 years didn’t seem to give her the baseline preparation she thought it would. Let’s be honest, “roughing” it on the road when you’re dry and have indoor plumbing is a far cry from sleeping under a dripping tarp!

Forgetting he’s a contestant for an Arctic minute, our frustrated documentarian starts filming his own meta-doc inside a doc, showing us the 65 pounds of AV equipment they’re each given. And then, back to the harsh reality when we hear Nero singing “Catch a rabbit by the foot if it hollers, bludgeon it” …isn’t that how the beloved childhood rhyme goes? Is it me, or have you ever seen somebody get so excited about an EMPTY wine bottle? Too bad it didn’t contain a message from Jacks asking for fresh towels.

Will’s TripAdvisor location rating gets a 0 out of 10, as he shares, “…thought I heard something, but it was just bugs!” Then, 3, 2, 1… until Home Depot and Lowe’s start selling mouth drills. And, oh yeah, I’m already searching Etsy for a berry picker!

Goooooooooal! And Portugal scores a hat-trick of killing small animals. Oh, wait, wrong show. Every episode has to have a nut job, and I think I’ve identified this season’s. Verbally chastising himself, asking “Why am I so stupid? while continuously reminding himself to keep his ego in check is classic schizoid behavior. (Yes, I’ve watched a lot of procedural crime dramas.) Okay, you can give Clementino a pass on these chaotic early days, but keep in mind his demented self-care of moisturizing his lips with squirrel fat. Don’t say I didn’t tell you…

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Pre-Season (6/17)

Episode 1 airs tonight, Wednesday, June 17, at 9PM EST & PST, 8PM CST on the History Channel. If you don’t have the History Channel on your cable lineup, you can watch the episode the next day on the History Channel app or check out this link. Season 13 kicks off with a familiar location and more testosterone than previous seasons, with only one female participant. Wow, this is our biggest pool ever with 30 participants from around the country. Here are some quick stats on your picks. To see more detailed info, click on the Charts button below.

Aaron & Will both received the most votes from our pool participants to be the last man standing, while David and Clementino received no love from our pool, with nobody thinking they’ll go the distance.

And poor David received the lowest overall votes (meaning everyone thinks he’ll go out early), so it will be interesting to see if our pool participants guessed right or if he proves to be a dark horse.

Like in previous years, I’ll be writing snarky, sometimes humorous episode recaps for your reading pleasure. Enjoy, and may the best guesser win! Click the button above to see charts that show who’s winning, the guesses of all participants, and who everyone ranked as the best and the worst.