Watching The Colony, the new Discovery show from Deadliest Catch‘s Thom Beers in which 10 strangers will survive for 10 weeks in a post-catastrophe Los Angeles, you realize what it’s like to feel terrified and useless. Or, at least I do. I just sit there asking myself questions, like:
• Can you imagine if this show had been on Fox instead of Discovery? Gone would be the people with actual skills (engineers, a doctor, an ER nurse, a contractor ex-con, etc.), and in would come the contestants from Paradise Hotel (which, full disclosure, I was also once obsessed with).
• What exactly would I bring to the table? It’s kinda sad when you realize that there isn’t a spot for “conversationalist” in the Sanctuary, the abandoned factory the volunteers are squatting in, because the shows’ experts know you wouldn’t have made it through the apocalypse. Had I somehow survived and convinced the survivors to open their doors by yelling “I’m on the show, too!“, I’m pretty sure I’d become a mascot to either Vladimir or John when I wasn’t taking a self-defense class from Leilani. Vlad has a little Colonel Trautman (First Blood) in him, which I respond to; John seems patient enough to listen to me ramble on about how I thinkI’m attracted to Joey because he looks like the badass cousin of Greatest American Dog winner Travis — once he’s done converting wood to fuel and I’m finished with pantry inventory and the laundry.
• How do some people (Leilani) know how to make cheese? (And what are they going to feed those goats?)
• Why are they so determined to leave Sanctuary? Seems to me you’d be safer in the factory than in the proposed “battle wagon,” which could break down or be easily surrounded by the marauders.
• So the Discovery-cast marauders know they can’t physically harm the volunteers, but what’s to stop a scared, sleep-deprived volunteer from taking a swing at a marauder? And am I a bad person for wanting to see that happen at least once?
What are your thoughts on The Colony? Would you have survived?
“you realize what it’s like to feel terrified and useless” … yes everyday I come to work
I think I’ll have to check this out now.
I love the colony! So far most of the females have just been standing around or doing laundry, so I might have a chance of staying there. I would have already gotten kicked out for punching Michael though.
I’m just waiting for a Stanford Prison Experiment – esque situation to pop up.
This show is like “The Road” meets “Man vs. Wild.” Never seen anything like it before.
What we see on TV, are the clips that pulls us into the story. There is a certain amount of role-play involved, or perhaps, we didn’t see that particular clip where someone said, “Let us in, we are part of the show”, but despite the over-reactions of Mike and John, they played their parts as if these ‘strangers’ were just that, even though they probably had a clue who they really were. As I’ve watched the episodes, I don’t see myself as a passive participant, quite the opposite; and would have brought elements to the show that would have been more or less, what we’ve seen already.
If there is a ‘The Colony 2′, I’d love to be a part of that. If anyone knows how exactly to get more info, please post it.