How to make Naked and Afraid Even Scarier? I’ve been naked. And I’ve been afraid. Thankfully its usually not at the same time.
But that’s the premise of a show I recently saw on Discovery called Naked and Afraid. In it, two complete strangers, one man, one woman, must survive for 21 days with no food, clothes or water in some dangerous and hostile wilderness. What sucked me in more than the nakedness, was the dynamics. Trapped in horrid conditions, people’s worst comes out. There’s fighting, passive aggressiveness, and fragile male egos. In one episode, a man who hadn’t eaten in days refused to eat a fish his partner had caught because HE was the hunter and she was supposed to tend the fire.
But I think that the show could be even more dramatic if, instead of strangers, they cast married couples. How many issues that had been carefully contained would come tumbling out as they are forced to live in a wet cave full of rabid bats? You would finally break one day while eating bugs with a stick. “Your Mother dresses like a neon slut bag”, you’d rumble. “You have the ass of a deflated flank steak”, he’d groan. All the putrid rage and hidden hate would come tumbling out in some bug infested swamp. Secrets like the time you used his old college fraternity t-shirt as a mop. That you never liked his family. That you never really liked him either.
The danger of sharks and scorpions pales in comparison to the danger of a married couple letting loose years of long buried secrets. Maybe that’s way too dangerous. Even for reality TV.
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