So
we have a new season of The Island that started tonight on Channel 4
and it wasnt long before there were tensions amongst the tribesmen.
We started off with Bear dropping off 14 men on an uninhabited island in the Archipelago. Once near shore all 14 men had to swim fully clothed with al of their equipment and belongings. Some struggled with the swim but were helped along by the more stronger swimmers. At this point i felt we had a good start to the series with the men showing solidarity from the get go.
Sadly that
solidarity would be short lived, with the men bickering and arguing from
an early start. With the men agreeing to move in land to find a place
to call home, Building contract manager Paul lead the way and to much
backlash from the other members of the group. However in this instance i
can see why the decision was made to get to a beach landing. For one it
offers a good starting point for food, secondly there is always a
massive amount of sea trash washed up ashore including drift wood all of
which is useful to build shelters with, start fires and collect water
with the various canteens and bottles. But it has a major impact, the
island is dense with unbroken forest and energy sapping mangroves. While
the tribe will use vital energy to get to the beach i still feel it was
the right decision to make and in any case being near the Islands
natural resources will make life easier for the tribe.
Moving
on from here, the tribe had an uncomfortable night with no shelter to
keep them warm and comfortable it was a sleepless night for the majority
with the men up at 0430am.
As
we progressed through the program it was becoming clear who the Alpha
males were and the ones who had bitten off more than they could possibly
chew.
Graphic Designer Joe
is the youngest of the tribe and has very little travelling experience.
This was evident as only three days into the experience he was already
thinking of going home. Persuaded to stay another 24 hours it wasnt long
before he was causing issues and made Family man Vic feel rather
alienated and somewhat deflated in the fact he did all he could to help
the young Joe with his feelings and emotions and tried to get him
involved in tribe life to take his mind off of things.
Suffice to say
Joe has now painted a target on his back and has made himself out to be a
totaly disrespectul oike. If im honest i doubt seeing him last very
long in this experience and at this stage i would prefer him to just go
home and end his experience now. Sadly it seems this young lad has
decided to take on this challenge to impress his long term partner of 5
years. It seems he forgot the fundamental part of what this show is
about and what to expect.
Sadly
the infighting doesn't stop here, Paul and Andy got into a spat over a
few things but most notably it was down to what was the best way to
build a shelter and the best site selection. Regrettably Andy lost on
every count, firstly selecting a site that would flood with the tidal
surge and would render the tribe being eaten alive by all sorts of
critters. This obviously put Andy in a mood and he sulked off.
When it
came down to it Paul had the best site selection and the best strategy
of how to construct the new shelter much to the dislike of Joe who was
whining that he had to go up a hill to deliver the required resource and
sadly couldn't grasp why it was built on high ground, im sure he will
get it eventually when he stops thinking about his partner for more than
a second.
Moving on from
this the camp descended into chaos, with Andy and Paul at eachothers
throats it was inevitable that heated words would be exchanged and sadly
Paul overheard Andy say “If he goes even better” which as you can
appreciate would irk me to be honest. If any one needs to leave the
Island it would have to be Andy for me. This is clearly not the place
for him to be and is not the sort of experience i see him thriving in.
As
the show closed out it ended with the tribe in crisis talks to try to
quell the discontent between the tribes men who wished to leave the
experiment. Out of the three who wish to leave, those being Paul, Andy
and Joe, two certainly do need to go and should never have even bothered
to sign up for the experiment in the first place. Those two being Andy
& Joe.
At the moment Joe
is not in the right frame of mind, he is a young lad of 22 and has in
my opinion very little life experience. This is evident from the fact
that he has not gone more than 24 hours of no contact with his long term
partner of 5 years, and this is certainly his weak point, his
kryptonite should i say. He isnt going to last if he cant get his mind
off of home and on to the task in hand. Yes i know its hard to be away
from your loved ones for long periods of time, iv been there myself on
several occasions during my military service. 6 months plus in hostile
environments and countries you know little about, with a very reduced
level of home comforts, yes i was trained to go away but sadly there is
no training to help prepare you for the fact you wont see your loved
ones for months on end, Joe is only going to be away for 6 weeks. If
he’s struggling now to manage these feelings and refuses to take the
help from his fellow tribesmen he will set him self up for certain
failure. I hold little to no confidence in Joe at this point and predict
that he will leave the experiment in the coming days.
Andy
is simply put a lazy and arrogant man. With little to no respect for
any one but himself. There is no room for people like this in the camp,
and people like this only do one thing and infect negativity to every
one. Yes i know he is tired, so is every one else. Pointing the finger
of blame to others for getting some rest and some sleep is hypocrisy to
the ninth degree when he took himself off on his own to get some sleep.
Not only could he have been washed out to see but there are many
predators on the island who would like a nice meal of human. A builder
he professes to be, but in his site selection for the camp this was just
proven not to be the case. If he cant accept the stark fact that people
will disagree with him over his decisions and goes off in a sulk he is
going to alienate himself from the group quickly and at this point it
seems definite that he is going to leave the experiment. I feel this is
the right decision for the camp dynamic and upon his departure the tribe
may be able to get things done more quickly and the amount of bickering
will reduce.
At this
juncture the first episode has got me hooked again just as the first
series did. This time it seems the production team have placed a much
broader range of people in to the mix this time. With two builders (or
soon to be one) a paramedic and a doctor the tribe are set up in the
best possible way they could be. But they must stop this infighting now
or risk deep fractures within the group that could derail them
permanently.
Switching gears
now, i read an article that stated the Island is sexist. I fail to
understand how it is perceived as such in any way shape or form. Those
whom perceive it in such way are blinded to what the program is trying
to show. This has nothing to do with which sex is the strongest or best
at this that or the other, its trying to see if male and female groups
could survive in such a situation and how they would do so. The first
series was based around how a group of men would manage in a survival
situation, there was no dynamic around women and it wasn't aimed at
excluding them it was just that the experiment was built on around how
men would survive. This series we now have two tribes a male and female
tribe so to say the show is still sexist is a little bit hard to defend.
There is no difference in having two tribes of male and females and
having one tribe thats mixed no difference at all, both male and female
are still doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. We need to
get away from this whole idea that men make women inferior and vice
versa as its a load of rubbish. Im not saying sexism doenst happen it
certainly does but please dont try to make out that sexism is happening
when it clearly is not.
Lastly
i want to go into food sources. There were many complaints made to
Ofcom during the last series in regards to Caiman crocodiles. Yes a croc
was killed and eaten on the show and yes the killing was shown as well.
I have to say the young lad who dispatched the animal did so with
massive dignity and speed that the animal wouldn't have been in any pain
at all. The problem we have today is far far too many people are seeing
animals as something that needs to be protected but at the same time
used for food. You cant have both im afraid. We have also become very
very sensitive to the slaughter of animals as well for the preparation
of food. Im sorry you feel offended by this but sadly you must realise
that the Lamb, Beef, Pork, Rabbit etc that you have on your plates
regularly didn't just turn up in that plastic packaging on the shelf
magically, it was an animal that was born and bred for the sole purpose
of feeding us. Its a simple fact of the food chain, we sit at the top
and we eat all those below us. I know that twitter will explode when an
animal is killed, such as a croc and it is going to happen. But think of
the fish or the bird or the insect, they are all living creatures and
we should remember its all part of the food chain.
There
was talk by some that they wanted the guys who killed the croc in the
first series to be prosecuted for killing the animal. What an utter load
of baloney. I have no idea what goes on in these peoples heads but i
really do wonder how long they would last if they were faced with such
an event. If im honest they wouldn't last long in any case as they would
want every one who ate an insect shot at dawn. Its ridiculous. If you
are so offended by the mere sight of an animal being killed for food,
then id suggest we all become vegetarian and let all the lambs and cows
and all the chickens and fish live in peace. We are born as carnivores,
we are not born as vegans its a simple fact of life. We eat meat, meat
must come from somewhere, if thats a cow or a lamb or a chicken so be
it, its food thats how we should look at these animals, they are a
source of food and some even provide more than just meat.
All
i will say is this, if you moan about the killing of an animal on a
survival show i would seriously ask yourself the question, would i
survive in the same situation and do i need to wake up a realise this
happens every day without me even knowing about it?
Im
looking forward to the womens Island tomorrow, as ive already seen how
things are going to play out with one woman screeching at the site of a
snake. I wait with anticipation for tomorrow nights show.
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