Dual Survival: Trouble in Paradise

First, don’t forget that there will be a new episode of Dual Survival on tonight, 9:00pm EST. The new one is titled “The Green Hell” and the description says:

The hosts fight to survive on the Amazon River.

And now, on to “Trouble in Paradise”.

This episode took place on a remote Hawaiian island. The set-up is that a boar-hunter falls, and then has to make his way back out to the coast for rescue.

They are starting to hit their stride with Joe Teti. Yes, there are still painfully awkward moments, and the “bickering” is still too contrived-sounding, but there is less of it.

As they start out, they are in really thick brush, though even “brush” is too light a word for it. As Cody and Joe work their way through it, we get this shot of Cody’s foot using all his senses to make his way through things.

Traction

They then head for where they think the coast is, mainly by trying to go downhill. Joe climbs a tree to check direction (and fortunately picked one that gave a good vantage). But once they figure the heading they want, they don’t tell us how they maintain that heading.

Working Through Heavy Underbrush

Here’s what Joe has to say about it.

Joe: If you get into an area like this, you can get turned around in a heartbeat.

They could have at least mentioned using the sun.

When I am out exploring new areas, while I have a compass with me, I rarely use it (it’s tucked in pretty deeply my backpack). Just knowing the time of day can give you a pretty good bead on compass directions, and for Cody and Joe’s purposes, the sun would be sufficient.

For an hour or two it won’t move too much (as long as it is not right around local noon) that you cannot rely on it to keep a pretty steady bearing.

Then Joe just “happens” to come across the broken boar spear, with a really nasty-looking spearhead. That’s some serious iron, dude.

As evening approaches, Joe and Cody get into one of their useless squabbles. Of course, in the producer’s eyes, this brings viewers. But in such a situation there are also survival techniques to solve the issue involved.

The issue was that, for Cody, priorities numbers 1 and 2 in a survival situation are always shelter and water. Cody was going to do the shelter and wanted Joe to look for water. Joe instead thought that attaching the spear head to a shaft was more important (and there were wild boars around). As the narrator put it, Joe and Cody were

Locked in a battle over survival priorities.

Hey, guys. Here’s a technique: figure out how much time you have (yup, Joe is wearing a watch), estimate how much time each of the various tasks will take, and then assign them.

Anyways, before the end of the day, Joe makes a really cool spear.

The Finished Spear

Meanwhile, Cody manages to build the shelter, look for water (not finding any), and also make cordage and a gourd-carrier with it.

If they had the time to do all that, why the intense argument? The thing is management techniques and planning can be just as important as some of the more basic skills like fire-starting.

There was one cute moment as they were descending a particularly steep spot.

Joe: If you need a hand just let me know.

Cody: I have two feet.

Yes he does. And he knows how to use them.

Tactile Superiority

The shod often don’t realize just how much bare feet really can be used more like hands. (Obviously, we aren’t chimps with fully-grasping feet, but bare feet can be used for a lot more than just anchoring points for rigid containers.) In that picture, Cody is doing a bit a grasping, and is really using tactile feedback to test his footing.

Later, after they’ve found water that they have no way of sterilizing, they finally find some bamboo and give a really nice demonstration of using the green segments to boil up water.

Here’s Cody drinking.

Cody Drinking

But then here’s Joe.

Joe Spilling

OK, now that’s worth a major argument. Here, clean water is at a premium. They’ve just put a lot of effort into making some, and what’s Joe doing? Spilling a major portion of it onto the ground. That’s a resource that they should be extremely careful about. (Also, by the way, they never seemed to actually use Cody’s gourd to carry any water. The script-writers really need to work on their continuity better.)

[OK, no it’s really not scripted (I think). But it is clear that they go into each episode having decided in advance just which skills they are going to “demonstrate” for the show. Fitting those into a narrative, though, is sometimes a bit rough.]

Then we finish up with the big hunting scene, when Joe decides to go after a boar. You know, because one of the dual survivalists is ex-military. And it’s time for another disagreement, with Cody’s beef (or should I say “pork”?) being the danger of it. He got the same way in the last episode with the rattlesnake.

The big question shouldn’t be whether to take some sort of risk; the big question should be how big is the risk, and when you do the task, have to mitigated the risk to a minimal level. For a rattlesnake, stand off at a distance and whack the thing. For the boar, we got to see Joe carefully planning the funneling and the snare.

Their “discussion” shouldn’t be about Cody just digging in his heels claiming that the hunt is too dangerous:

Cody: Just because you’re top of the food chain doesn’t mean you can’t get the shit knocked out of you.

The discussion should instead be, “What risks are there, and how are you managing them?”

And Joe really did manage the risks. In the end, the boar was trapped by the snare and wasn’t going anywhere. It was relatively easily (and safely) speared from a good six feet away. And then after it was speared, we got to see Joe pull out his knife and pith it.

After that was the scene everybody is laughing about.

Macho Dude

Right after the pithing Joe does this weird, intense look around as if expecting enemy soldiers to come streaming out of the woods. It’s really pretty funny. I’m sure he was told by the producers to look “military” or “macho” after finishing killing the pig, and that was the best he could do. But he needs to work on it . . .

[And they weren’t about to kill another pig to reshoot the scene. I should also note that, for any of these kills, they do not let the unused meat go to waste—it is brought back and donated or whatever, as per Cody’s Facebook page.]

Anyways, like I said, the episodes are slowly getting better. There’s still some problems with the producers being way too fond of conflict (to the exclusion of good survival management technique). But I’ll keep watching.

So, once again, “The Green Hell” is on tonight.