Sarah Palin's Alaska Recap: Mortal Karibou: Annihilation

Unfortunately, the highpoint of Sarah Palin's Alaska this week was its promise of a Gosselin-Palin crossover campout next week. Damn it. We don't live in next week yet! The quail haircuts and Piper vs. Madelyn Pay-Per-View Bare-knuckle Beatdown will have to wait until then. The good news is this: Sarah Palin shot a caribou square in the boob last night, and her father whinnied with pride. It's enough to make a grown man (caribou) cry (fly backwards in a bloody heap). To the recap!

The episode begins as Sarah and her father line up rifles on a hill. There's a caribou in the distance, and Sarah's fixing to shoot the varmint for subsistence. There on the horizon, it wags its furry breastbone like a cocky, photographer-baited Levi Johnston, and Sarah's gettin' a lil' peeved.

"Something's not right here," we hear her father say.

Then, the screen turns to black.

"Three Days Earlier..." the screen reads.

Oh, what. Sarah Palin's Alaska, you are not Damages. You can't pretend we're going to learn pertinent information from the past now. You can't flash back and forth like Marty McFly in a handsome hunting vest. You can't. Doc Brown begs of you.

But it does. We flashback to some pre-hunting trip festivities and watch as Sarah hangs out with Piper in her Wasillan manor.

"We're going to shoot caribou for a couple days!" she clamors at us. (We knew that already thanks to our glimpse of the future.) "In a remote area. In many remote Alaskan areas, there are no grocery stores nearby!"

She's bringing her father Chuck along for the trip.

"He's 72 and has more stamina and perseverance than anybody else I know," she promises us. That's good, because this show is a blitzkrieg of bloodlust, viscera, and Willow's disinterest, and I want to be sure he can keep up. Also, "stamina"? Is he a logrolling champ? If he's not, Sarah's feeding us (liberal) lies with the buckshot still in 'em.

We meet Chuck, who's puttering around a shed and coughing about all his good times hunting. He's also excited to invite his friend Steve Becker, a guy who's "a kick in the rear end." Ooh. That might just be a colloquialism, but it could also mean he's a violent gamekeeper with a thirst for ass-booting and obvious homosexuality. Excitement, lambs!

Nope, wait: He appears and it turns out he's an average dude in a camo jacket with good values and a welcoming rural accent. Ugh. Hate him, girl.

The trio flies on a floatplane to "remote camp" (8:51 a.m.) and starts to hike the vast, chilly terrain.

"When I spend the night in bear country, there are two things I always want with me: a loaded rifle and my dad," Sarah says to us. Why does this woman talk like stationery at a wilderness gift shop? I want to hang everything she says on my fridge and write "Don't forget to buy strawberry Quik, Ma!" on it.

As the three hunters walk the hills, we're suddenly treated to the episode's finest moment: Sarah's dad trips and tumbles down the slope. Don't worry, he's fine! Except he also somersaulted like a Flying Wallenda, and that's an LOL for us. I added my own Wipeout sound effects on the second and third viewings. Fact is, Chuck, If you had real "stamina," you'd land on your feet with hips squared and arms vertical. But you'll never be Dominique Dawes, Chuck. Everyone knows it. Let the dream die.

Though some caribou are spotted in the hinterland's far reaches, the trio decides to call it a night and try again tomorrow. After another 15 minutes of Kafkaesque bleakness in the cold, Sarah and her cronies get ready to shoot a beautiful beast (the genital-flailing Levi one from earlier, which was from the future but is now now).

She shoots once. Misses. Twice. Misses. Thrice. Misses. We hear her father repeat the line, "Something's not right here," and he's referring to her gun. Thank God the producers messed with the episode chronology so we could learn the motivations of such an important piece of dialogue. God. Anyway, Sarah steals Steve's gun and shoots the Playgirl stag right in the breastbone. Success!

"DER YA GO, BABY," Chuck (or Steve?) hoots.

The three adventurers scamper over to the dead animal. Before they tear it up and beat each with other with its twitching limbs, Sarah says the following:

"In the words of Ted Nugent, we thank that mighty animal for living a good life and now sustaining a nice family."

This just got personal. Sarah Palin, you leave my Motor City Madman out of this vanity circus. He is a mighty animal himself. He sometimes has facial hair like a caribou, and I believe you just shot him, somehow, and not in a way that he would aggressively advocate.

In the episode's last act, we watch as Sarah and her father help cut up and cook the caribou as Piper looks on.

"Piper, want to see the heart?" Chuck asks.

"It reeks," Piper replies. "And this is a really small caribou."

"Your mother shot a small one, shhhhh," Chuck says.

Thank God we have Piper, the Caribou Queen, to tell us the meagerness of Sarah's accomplishments. That sort of made this episode worth it. See you next time, Palinheads, in the future when it becomes the now (in the future).