Nature is Insane — why Alone is the best show on TV
Something special happens around episode 7 of every season. One of the competitors goes batshit tribal. Before you say “saneism against native people!” know that I am certifiable batshit and proud myself. I love it when they lose it too. That’s representation, baby! They become uncivilized and it’s beautiful. It’s real.
In Series 11, Timber, a clean-cut hustleholic dad, straps his moose horns to the keystone around — you guessed it — episode 7. He gets real, wolf-howling, warpaint, etcetera.
Streaming Timber’s unmuzzling while eating microwaved lasagne on the couch is to sense at once the normalness of insanity and the insanity of normalness. You might reach for the phone with a fuzzy plan to ask your friend to come homesteading with you.
Then your Whatsapp beeps. It’s Lana. She’s got the ‘flu. It’s probably Covid. Must get a temp first thing in the morning.
You switch off the TV and start prepping for bed. As you do so, your focus on Timber scatters. You brush your teeth. You bathe in bathroom lights.
The carpet tickles your feet on the way to bed and you notice the feelings coming back. The wildness. But this time judgment comes too: He was losing it. It was the isolation in nature. Nature is isolation.
Nature is isolation.
Of course he went nuts. Who wouldn’t?
Nature is isolation is insanity
In the solitude of darkness, and the haze of your fatigue, this logic sings you to sleep:
🎵 Nature is insane 🎵
You tap out.
In your dreams, your bestie, Akil, is cracking jokes:
Season twelve of Alone should be “Alone: Metropolis”. The empty streets of the apocalypse, sewer rats for dinner. Not even an IOF Zombie for company. Episode 1 — That’s when they’d crack…
You know they’re right.
…and “batshit tribal”? Is that supposed to be an insult? That’s what we do to process grief, honey. That’s what our full moon ritual is for! U wanna pay $25 to the Hatha lady for that? The 4-year-olds in the sand pit got looser than her!
And you know they’re right.
And your alarm goes off.
**Of course Timber wasn’t the first to connect to spirit. Of course it was an indigenous person, Michela, a Metis-Cree woman, connecting to the land and spirits in every 👏🏼single 👏🏼episode 👏🏼 in everything she did …aaaand I noticed the white guy with his shirt off instead.
