Alone - Season 3

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⭐9/10

Starting our watch of my new favorite show in earnest, though we skipped a few seasons to start because we've heard first few are a little rough. 

This show and this season are absolutely awesome. It takes place in Patagonia, and I actually had a bit of familiarity with survival tactics in this area because I read The Wager which is a survival story that takes place there. It's a beautiful, harsh location, and one of the best features of this show is that it's nice to look at. 

We get a terrific cast of characters from nature hippies to mountain men, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses. I love the contrast that we get every season, especially in age, where young people have more energy and can recover better, but don't have that experience or knowledge that the vets have. This is a American show with American contestants, but I do wish there were a few people from different cultures who might bring something different. One of the most striking things about the Wager is how indigenous people thrived in that hostile environment, so I was thinking it would have been cool to get someone with maybe Patagonian ancestry in there who still practice aspects of the lifestyle. 

This is the first season of the main series I've watched, and the first one where the time alone gets to some crazy lengths. You see some super interesting results, seeing a guy essentially go crazy in front of your eyes to the point where he's hoarding food despite being skin and bones, seeing people push their bodies to the limit. I guess that would also be my criticism, that this is more a suffering contest than a survival contest, being basically a test of wills, who can endure starvation the longest. You see people eat 7 fish over two months and there's definitely a sense of guilt, seeing them suffer for our enjoyment. 

Still, seeing them edure all that makes that final episode so much more rewarding. For a lot of these contestants it's the loneliness more than the survival, so seeing them reunited with their families brought on genuine tears from me. A very beautiful moment and one I don't think can be quite replicated in the newer seasons when they know when they've won after a set amount of days. I've heard the later seasons are much more enjoyable to watch, but I can't imagine beating that final moment for the winner. 

I continue to be thrilled that this show exists. Knowing that all the best is supposedly yet to come makes me very excited. 


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