Well Deserved Praise

To me, this movie is perfection.

Let's be realistic.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Based on my understanding of Alaska's universal welfare program, all the characters qualified for The Alaska Permanent Fund. Can anyone confirm that?

I think this would have been a pretty good show. The cinematography is great, the landscapes are picturesque, and the characters are interesting. The Hailstones, in particular, are fun to watch. The lifestyle they live and the father teaching his children to subsist is pretty cool.That said, the show is difficult to watch because of this guy, Erik, who is basically committing the wholesale slaughter of innocent animals. The guy is obsessed with meat, washes his hands in animal blood, and then tells himself its "subsistence" living right before saying he's going to sell the pelts for $20 - $40. The guy straight up kills any living animal he can find using a high powered assault rifle. Even canines. It's sad that he thinks its okay to step into the wilderness then kill everything in sight to "survive". If you really have to kill everything to survive, you shouldn't be there. Erik is simply destroying nature with zero respect. He doesn't deserve to be on NatGeo.

This is a really entertaining show and my husband and I have binge watched the whole series in the last week. It's been great entertainment while we have a newborn at home. We love the concept and watching the real life goals for people living in the wilderness. That being said, a few of the subjects are hard to watch. Firstly, Andy is an abusive jerk. Laughing at Kate's pain after smashing her hands and blaming his stupid screw ups on her. It was disappointing to see him return to the show.Sue Aikens is so dang annoying. She brags constantly and talks about herself in the most self-righteous tone and verbiage, it's so hard to watch her segments. She talks about every little thing as if it's life and death and then how strong she views herself for conquering it. She's the only person on the show that has consistent electricity, doesn't use firewood or fire of any kind, has food from the grocery store frequently, and yet she brags more than anyone else about her subsistence lifestyle. She's also a horrible shot. It may be the editing, but she also has her machinery break down all the time in ways that shouldn't happen if she is consistently maintaining them. She's vulgar, self-righteous, and incredibly annoying. Everything about her and her childish hats make us want to fast forward through her parts of the show. I CANNOT fathom why her face would be the face of the show. Glenn is the most reliant on the land but frankly he's kind of creepy sometimes. His naked swimming trips don't help that. Jessie was just a dirty slob that yanked his dogs around with complete disregard for them and fed them atrocious slop. Even Andy was better than him with his dogs. The Hailstone's and the Salitan's were the best parts of the show and we thoroughly enjoyed their parts. They solidified our desire to travel to Alaska in the next few years.

I love the premise of this show and was really looking forward to it when I found it on Netflix. I've been binge-watching it and thoroughly enjoyed the first season. Erik, Sue, the Hailstone family, Glenn, Cody, and Kate are all amazing people. Andy is a royal jerk and the show would have been better off without him.The editing is horrific. Jerky cuts, silly on-the-handle-of-the-axe shots, re-using footage from completely different situations, etc, but I was able to look past that. What did me in was the false creation of drama. Life in the Arctic is tough and dramatic enough without cooking up utterly ridiculous situations.SPOILER: the scene that killed it for me was when Sue, a savvy woman who had survived, alone, for many years fell and hurt her back. Yes, boiling willow can help, but I refuse to believe that someone so experienced and self-sufficient, who spends thousands of dollars stocking up on all of her supplies to see her through Arctic winters, does not have a single bottle of aspirin or some such on the premises. Ridiculous, unbelievable, and I'm done. Such a shame.