The Island 2015

"The Island" is the American version of a UK program, "The Island with Bear Grylls". The British version often touts the courage and resourcefulness of the British, while the American version says no such things about Americans.

Bear Grylls stays out of the action, except to annoy you with some commentary, while a bunch of men try to survive for several weeks on an island. They have minimal provisions and must supply all their own food, which of course means they'll basically starve.

One amusing moment came when they found taro plants, but they had all been uprooted and the tubers were gone. It was amusing, because they assumed it was animals that had eaten them, perhaps not knowing that their island had been inhabited recently by people. It was used by a group of men for the first season of the UK program and a group of woman for the second season of that program. The women were especially diligent in uprooting those plants, since they had a vegetarian in their group. There was also a more convenient water source found by both British groups, which the Americans could have found easily if they had watched the UK show. Hah, the Americans were punished for not torrenting. :)

There was a retired policeman in this American group, and the others exclaimed "cool!" when they found out. They should have said, "Oh shit!" You have to consider the kind of people who become policemen. It takes someone like Eric Cartman to want to do police work. "Comply and die anyway!" This retired cop had an anti-social personality disorder. He first tried to take the role of "water police", but when the others failed to comply, he distanced himself from the group, both physically and mentally, and ceased to cooperate with them. As he admitted and others observed, he has a dark side. He tried to get them to not kill and eat a cayman, explaining that in his years of being a cop he was around the worst of humanity (other cops?) and so he grew to realize that only animals were worthy of respect. Or something like that. He's not a vegetarian, though, of course.

I suppose there is some survival knowledge to pick up here, but not much. One of the men asked the retired cop, "Hey, why don't you open that heavily pressurized container of boiling water? I want to see what happens." Not his exact words, but very close. If you watch the show, you will learn the answer to this and other stupid questions. If they had seen the episodes with the British women, they would have seen them perform the exact same "science experiment." It was even with the same kind of container on the same island!

Most of the men work well together, and you get an uplifting feeling with their successes. Overall, the show is "meh" but probably watchable if you like these kinds of programs. Other similar shows include Alone, Naked and Afraid, Naked and Afraid XL, and of course the UK's "The Island with Bear Grylls".