Sarah Palin's Alaska Series Finale Recap: Squalid Gold
Bulletin: It's not a great weekend to be Sarah Palin. Update: I'm going to make fun of her lame show just the same. That's journalism, and everyone knows it. Join me for the finale of Sarah Palin's Yukon adventures, where Piper smarts off, everyone giggles over gold, and Sarah ends her reign as TLC's second-worst wearer of North Face vests. Democracy wins.
But first (and for the last time), your Sarah Palin's Alaska opening credits: Sarah playfully shoots a Nerf bazooka at a Kodiak bear; Todd chooses Mt. McKinley to be his running mate in Alaska's 2012 Frontier Mensch election; Piper renames herself PWOWW and punches four Gosselins in the face; Willow sheepishly asks a snowmobile to winter formal; and, in a triumphant final showing, Bristol performs a perfect paso doble atop a felled antelope. None of that happened, but I already miss this show. (Which I invented.)
We spend the majority of this week's episode lookin' fer gold. Really. Sarah has a plan to make jewelry for her mother using gold she and her family mine, so she and the lesser Palins "pan" for the shiny stuff using up-to-date methods. This will teach the family important lessons about gold prospectors and perhaps other Scooby Doo villains, too.
Piper starts yapping about hawking her finds on eBay, and Sarah is revolted. She says, "We haven't had that discussion, Piper" as if to suggest that a simple conversation about merchandising is necessary before Piper's enterprising career can begin.
Later, Sarah's brother Chuck, Jr. jumps in a boat with a diver friend and heads to the bottom of the sea, because that's where gold is kept sometimes. He notes that Sarah, who is responsible for sending air and hot water to them, is their lifeline. Sarah thrives on the pressure and doesn't kill them, which makes for terrible TV. Doesn't she understand that a grisly underwater death is necessary if this show is going to get a season two? Ah, too late.
You'll be titillated to learn that the Palins end up extracting more than $1,150 worth of gold. Fancy, yes, but they use it to make a bear pendant for Sarah's mother and a goat pendant for Sarah's dad. She jokes, "Do you think he'd wear a pinky ring?" which is a nice joke of the anti-homosexual nature. Everyone chortles.
Other highpoints things in this record-settingly boring episode: Sarah spots a pack of muskox and notes that they act "how we should be as a society." These societal muskox turn away from the cameras and run off, and I agree that Sarah should follow their lead. After that, we watch her family watch an airshow, which is now the most layered meditation on voyeurism I've seen since Rear Window. What if the airmen were watching us on mini-monitors in the plane? Freaky. Suddenly this is worth an honors thesis. Someone should write it and bring up "the male gaze" arbitrarily, like Bret Easton Ellis. That's how you know you're being important.
Aside from the second hour of the finale -- which is really just a clip package of season highlights with new, maddening commentary -- that really ends Sarah Palin's Alaska. What have we learned? Besides that Alaska is cold, mountainous, fulla floatplanes, and the perfect terrain for Piper's ice-sorceress wit? Nothing, of course. That's what. But we did realize that Sarah Palin really likes Alaska, and if she's so darn giddy about it, she should stay there. Mission accomplished, TLC.
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Comments
Her lame show! had 3.2 million watchers a week ---your column is lame! How sad that some people have no sense of adventure---you sound like the male version of Kate G--who is nothing but a spoiled, selfish wench! Only worried about material things-----the show was not cancelled--she decided that would be the last show--because more than likely she will be running for President! and most of this country--you know us regualar people --will be voting for her!
Your article is one sided and makes most of us sick!
Yes, that is journalism circa 2011 - mainstream reporters tying Palin to a murder without a single shred of evidence. Take a bow, folks.
I hope TLC picks up Jen Waidner's Hyphens and Exclamation Points as a replacement program. By that same token, I can't get behind Christian Toto Misunderstands "Mainstream".
By mainstream I mean Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric, ABC's David Wright and I'm sure I'm forgetting a whole bunch of others. That clear enough for you?
Hi Bristol!
It's amazing Louis that you come away with such a twisted n hateful opinion of an adventurous family oriented show. Your writing is "classless" and deviously opinionated codswallop! You sound like just another pestiferous basement blogger with troll like tendencies that hates everything you see, feel, and touch. Seriously, if you didn't learn anything about Alaska it's because you chose not to, fixated by hate and vitriol..and that said, makes you completely unqualified to opine justly and nothing more than a jejune mooncalf. Move over lame stream media....we have another Jackanape in the house of disdain for anything Sarah Palin and Alaska! You've lost your grip and falling fast Man....
Lord love a duck, babies, it's satire! Do you not understand the concept? Obviously not, since you apparently have no bone where the funny is. You Palindrones just absolutely kill me, with the whole "no one can make a joke at out leader's expense!" nonsense. She sets herself up for jokes, barbs and comments just like everyone else in the public eye. Settle down before you pop a vein.
Oh, and Louis? I lurves yew!
Can't be her. It was a canard-less post.
If we're lucky, Palin will be the new Jim Jones.
OK, I know that was in incredibly poor taste, but these Paloons out there have just got to stop. I don't even know how they can have lives outside of spending every waking our praising their leader.
I'm so glad that China does so well these days. If those Palinoids get that Barbie from the parallel universe someday into the White House the days of the USA as a so called superpower are finally over anyway. By then she's the first President whose term will be broadcast live as a reality show on Fox News and as a horror series on AMC.
As the comments prove, once again, some figures in American life have supporters so loyal it seems they can do no wrong. Back off, Virtel! Palin advocates won't be swayed by snarky journalists or tedious television. Or her ignorance of U.S. history and government process. Or her unapologetic use of cross-hairs to target political opponents. Nope. To some, she'll always be golden.
Toto-ly.