by Emily Caruso

If you’re anything like me, sitting in the depths of your basement alone on a Saturday night flipping through the channels can only mean one thing: bad television.  However, throughout my channel surfing I have discovered a show so incredibly awful, it might just be worth your time.

Being the social butterfly I am, I’ve stumbled upon the show Naked and Afraid on The Discovery Channel several times while sitting alone on a Saturday night. Feeling scared and afraid over the title alone, for some time I shied away from the show. But out of a combination of sheer boredom and curiosity, I somehow found myself watching it.

The show, playing new episodes on Sundays at 9, is not your stereotypical survival show that The Discovery Channel typically offers viewers.  Naked and Afraid goes past the grotesque, seemingly juvenile stunts pulled by fan favorite Bear Grylls in Man vs. Wild, who on occasion drinks his own urine and sleeps in animal carcasses to survive. As if watching people fight Mother Nature and endangering their lives wasn’t enough, now add in the fact that the contestants on Naked and Afraid are–as the title implies– naked.  Two strangers, a man and a woman, meet up in their birthday suits in the middle of nowhere ready to battle the elements and attempt to survive for a seemingly endless 3 weeks.

At the beginning and end of their time in the wild, contestants are ranked on their survival skills, hoping to see an improvement by the end of the show.  However, I would just like to point out: how exactly are these people being ranked? For example: I saw a man in one episode that was ranked at 7.1 for his overall survival skills in the beginning. His score seemed decent; however, after a good five minutes into the show, viewers watched as he refused to swim in the ocean or eat bugs as a survival tactic, resulting in him starving for four days.  I don’t know much about surviving in the wild, but shouldn’t you at least be brave enough to swim a good six feet out in to the ocean and be willing to eat anything you get your hands on?

On top of these random “survival experts” called contestants, there’s the awkwardness being naked.  Not only did I feel uncomfortable as a viewer, but I could also tell that some of the people on the show felt just as uncomfortable (if not more). I even watched as some of the people hit on one another upon first meeting. With a culture primarily focused on violence and sex, The Discovery Channel is right on point with getting viewers on this one.