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It’s day three in the punishing Alaskan wilderness, and the contestants on Outlast are dropping like wet flies. Nobody on the four teams — ALPHA, BRAVO, CHARLIE, and DELTA — has eaten. In fact, the remaining survivalists on the Netflix reality competition show seem more likely to be eaten by the 800-pound brown bear aggressively stalking their camps before hibernation.
They’re all weak and miserable. It’s raining nonstop and 30-odd degrees, and the only protein they’re able to scrounge up is earth worms and one measly squirrel thigh.
Team CHARLIE already lost Andrea and has one less hand in the hunt. Not long after, two more flares are shot off into the sky. The game has also broken team BRAVO players Corey and Tim, who bemoan that they are soaked to the bone and are tired of their self-appointed captain Javier’s micro-managing. “I have a whole new respect” for Mother Nature, Tim says before being whisked back to the comforts of civilization.
Whenever a flare goes off, the other players can’t contain their glee. They’re fighting for a whopping $1 million prize pool and as more people quit, they’re that much closer to the cash and escaping this stunning hellscape.
The teams have located clean drinking water, but food is still scarce and the top priority. Jordan from DELTA goes to the river to fish salmon but comes up empty-handed. He wanders over to neighbor camp CHARLIE and tries to mentally mess with them by lying about how much food they’ve eaten. “We’re killing it,” he boasts.
Everybody’s Hangry
Nobody on CHARLIE buys his used car salesman schtick, especially Nick, a wrestling coach who is used to his students making up bone-headed dog-ate-my-homework excuses. “I don’t like being manipulated,” he says. “I don’t believe anything that dude said. No, not with me honey. Go back to where you belong and starve.”
ALPHA is subsisting on an Olympic slug/snail soup concoction, and Lee, a special forces Marine, can’t take it anymore. His body is breaking down. He can’t breathe in the nasty weather and whenever he coughs it feels like a fork puncturing his lungs. “I got nothing left,” he sobs. “It’s a struggle to get to daylight.” He taps out and shoots off his flare.
It’s like dominos falling. Four gone in less than four days. DELTA is the only team with four players left, so they are feeling confident as the frontrunner knowing that the rule is, you can’t win the game alone, only as a team.
Finally, on Day 7, the sun makes a brief appearance, and the players are rewarded with gorgeous rainbows. “It’s a huge relief,” Javier says. But you can’t eat a rainbow. The remaining players haven’t eaten in a week, and the situation is getting dire.
Thankfully, they get a helicopter resource drop, with a new directive: Build a raft from the materials provided and paddle to a nearby island where they’ll find five crab pots. Turns out, they’re in fertile fishing ground where Dungeness crab is plentiful. One trap can yield twelve 3-pound crabs. Life-saving and sustaining.
Basically, the first team to make it to the island will determine who gets to eat real protein and will wield a ton of power. They have a three-hour window to get to the island when the tide is right.
Seth builds a raft for CHARLIE that’s light and buoyant but will only carry one person. Angie thinks she should go for the crab pots because she weighs the least. Nick doesn’t trust her, and they get in a nasty fight over his blatantly obvious sexist beliefs. Angie is triggered by a male yelling at her. Nick wants Seth to go. Seth is the tiebreaker in their trio and decides Angie should go. “I got this,” she promises.
Feeling Crabby
Over at BRAVO camp, Javier is barking orders at an annoyed Brian, who will paddle their makeshift raft to the island. They only have two in their group now, a clear disadvantage, and their camp is also the farthest away from the crab pots.
BRAVO is on the same side of the river as ALPHA, so Javier makes a deal with Justin that whoever gets to the crab pots first will share them. They shake on it.
But it doesn’t look like either of them will get there first. Justin is moving about as fast as one of the slugs they’ve all been eating, taking way too long to build ALPHA’s raft. Jill and Amber, who are rapidly morphing into a hillbilly version of Thelma & Louise, are growing impatient with their teammate’s painstaking pace. Jill fights with Justin like they are an old married couple. She screams and he ignores her and keeps moving like a snail.
Not surprisingly, DELTA builds the best raft thanks to Joel’s engineering chops, and Jordan climbs aboard and starts paddling out. But he’s super arrogant, as always, so when he spots Angie on his tail, he inexplicably stops to do push-ups to taunt her. “My confidence level is sky high,” he brags.
Who will get to the traps first? It’s much more exciting than it sounds because whoever gets to eat will clearly have a crab leg up on the competition. Speaking of, that sounds delicious for dinner, perhaps with a little drawn butter. Perfect time to take a short break from binging Outlast because the episode ends right here. To be continued…
