Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People recap: Welcome to Browntown

Alaskan Bush People

Do the Alaskan Bush People get paid? We asked! Read our interview with the Brown family.

Alaskan Bush People

On Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People Season 2, Episode 3, “Welcome to Browntown” (Jan. 16), the Browns set up their home site. A mishap at sea has a search and rescue team out to find two of the boys.

ALSO SEE: Episode recaps, news and more from Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People

Greetings, friends! I’m currently in Los Angeles covering really important stuff at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, so I’m a little behind on my coverage of the Bush People this week. I was eating and drinking (mostly drinking) at NBC’s party, and got back to my hotel room 15 minutes late for the episode. Since I’m without a DVR (I am totally living off the grid!) I couldn’t record it or comb through all the details of the episode. But I swear I’ll watch it again in its entirety and update this recap for you good people who’ve been so kind as to come here.

Alaskan Bush People Season 1 Recaps: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | The Wild Life

Season 2 Recaps: Episode 1 | Episode 2Episode 3 | Episode 4Episode 5 | Episode 6 | Episode 7 | Episode 8  | Wild Times | Episode 9 | Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 12 | Episode 13 | Episode 14 | SHARK WEEK! | Episode 15 | Episode 16 | Lost Footage | The Wild Year

So I join the episode when the boys have to swim out to retrieve the skiff, which, once again, someone failed to properly secure with rope. It would’ve been awesome if Matt was the perpetrator again, but the blame falls on Gabe this time. This skiff is more trouble than it’s worth. At least they didn’t pay Used Boat Guy anything extra for it.

The family is building a temporary trapper shack on their land, a small log structure with moss stuck in between the logs for insulation (see all of Season 1, Episode 1). They’re under the clock to get this shack done, but yet it seems like their priority is to instead build an elaborate outhouse so the womenfolk can pee in private. Then men discuss their own process of marking their territories. Does Bear shit in the woods? Indeed he does.

Family MacGyver Noah takes on the superfluous task of building a shower out of logs, some scrap PVC pipe and an elevated plastic storage tub full of water. Noah says that adding the lid to the container creates water pressure. He has no understanding of air or fluid dynamics, since putting the lid on the container actually prevents the water from flowing. Maybe there are holes in the lid, but we can’t see them. A very light trickle of water comes out of four holes in the pipes, barely enough to moisten an envelope much less cleanse a human body. Suffice it to say, faucet manufacturer Moen won’t be calling Noah for an engineering internship anytime soon.

Ma Brown “washes” dishes with collected rain water, and rain water collected from the evergreen trees gives her dishes an extra fresh pine smell. I’d like to see this method vs. Palmolive in a side-by-side comparison.

Birdy and Rainy play together with dolls, pretending that they are their brothers. Birdy’s impression of Matt is awesome: “This sucks! This sucks! This sucks! [Falls asleep]”

Gabe busts the chainsaw, making everybody go to the axes and hatchets and slowing everything way down. Gabe is so far leading the race for this episode’s Brown Family Dumbass title. Billy fixes it, marking the first time in this entire series he has actually done something productive.

Gabe and Matt take the skiff out to sea to drop crab pots. They go back to retrieve the pots later, and they don’t come back for hours. The Browns freak out, and they have the show’s producers radio for a search and rescue team to find them. Now, the “bush” thing to do would be to let them drift helplessly out to sea, where they would be intercepted by a Russian fishing vessel and be forced to labor on it for the rest of their lives. That’s Bush Justice for being stupid at sea. But the search team (maybe it was a real search team, maybe it wasn’t) finds Gabe and Matt and delivers them safely to shore, clinching Gabe’s Brown Family Dumbass of the Week championship. They were careless and the tide took them out. The only logical reason for this is …

THE SKIFF IS CURSED! That’s why Used Boat Guy wanted to get rid of it! BURN IT! TAKE THE CHAINSAW TO IT! USE IT AS A TOILET! Never set sail in it again! Fairly warned be thee says I.

At this point, I’m so completely bored with this episode, because the only drama onscreen lasted all of two minutes. I can only truly be entertained by this show when bad things are happening to this family, or when they’re interacting with local weirdos who may or may not be actors. It makes me a horrible human being* but a fairly passable TV critic.

Which is why the producers of this show — none of whom are idiots — will keep devising new and interesting ways for the Browns to be in constant peril or making asses of themselves for our entertainment.

*Theoretically

26 Comments

  1. More folks should should take a closer look at the browns and their pioneer philosophy. The pursuit of green paper to keep up with the Jones’s and serve the “man” sucks much more than the bush when you really get down to brass tacks. It was this greed that made idiots steal billy browns inheritance of 800K and throw him on the street 47 years ago.

  2. I would like to go to brown town and teach them ths other side of cooking like mexican food tortillas and i would love to hook up with matt

  3. Ğot cut off dont know thecomputer that well anyway would love to meet mat one down nine more to go

  4. I would like to go to brown town and teach them ths other side of cooking like mexican food tortillas and

  5. Is there a way to mail the browns anything?

    I would like a mailing address Id like to send some things I know they need.

    Fred

  6. By the way everyone I have seen the integrity with my own eyes so you people that think that are real think again

  7. Love this show and all your different personalities…great family values. Don’t let any negative remarks bother you because you can’t please everyone. I believe you have a huge fan base. I think Ami will get her wish for grandchildren soon, her sons won’t stay single for long with all the publicity. God bless all of you and stay safe.

  8. Does anyone have the GPS coordinates of “Brown Town” on Chichagof Island? I cannot find any sign of this family and I am actually beginning to doubt it really exists. I promise I will not make contact or disturb them in any way, I just need to see it or them on their beachhead from my own boat using my own optics and then I am gone. I do not want to see them in Hoonah, which I actually never have, I do not believe they are legally homesteading this location as we are depicted by Discovery

  9. I really enjoy the series an am eager to see the next episode. Why mock someone who is doing things different?? I am sure many many people would give up the hustle and bustle of politics and the nanny state we currently live in to move to a place where everyone isn’t money mad and trying to tax you all the time………

  10. This series, if that’s what you can refer to it as, is the most foolish try at being entertaining! I wonder how many teenagers follow this idiocrafy and find it entertaining? You really have to admit that there is absolutely no form of entertainment for any age group!!! May the Good LORD bless your sponsors for providing some kind of a living for the “Browns”. with out this income they would should starve our collect welfare.

    Sorry, but this is just my opinion , but they could at least collect welfare.
    Thank you for at least giving me the opportunity to express my thoughts and evaluations. Ed Mc Lean

  11. I want to move to brown town . Is that possible and if so can i have the details on how to make this happen please ?

  12. Of course Gabe missed the shot. The rear cover was still down on the scope! Everything must have looked black to him… 🙂

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About Ryan Berenz 2166 Articles
Member of the Television Critics Association. Charter member of the Ancient and Mystic Society of No Homers. Squire of the Ancient & Benevolent Order of the Lynx, Lodge 49, Long Beach, Calif. Costco Wholesale Gold Star Member since 2011.