This was one of the better seasons of Naked and Afraid. The castaways came together with less drama than usual and most of them solved the problem of surviving for 21 days.
It was a clever idea to strand them without any tools nor a map. But that leads to the real controversy of the season, just how many if any of the items they found were planted?
From the description of the island as being 8 deg north of the equator and a shout-out to the Panamanian government in the credits, the island is readily identified as San Jose Island. It's right next to the southern end of the Panama Canal, and it's surrounded on three sides by the Panama nation itself, so it's believable that a lot of trash washes up. There's even a small private airport, so the crashed plane seems real. After WWII, the US army used the island as a testing range, so some of the military stuff seems legitimate too.
So how much of the stuff they found was planted? I myself have found plenty of discarded lighters, rope, plastic and other debris while beachcombing. I believe that small boat owners will also often carry an axe to do things like cut lines in an emergency.
But things like finding steel wool to start a fire, a live 12 pound fish flopping around on the beach, a damaged pelican just waiting to be turned into dinner, and a perfect float to create a raft on day 21? It does seem like some of the things they found were incredible strokes of luck.
This is not to say the castaways weren't actually suffering and struggling to survive. You can't fake insect bites like that. It's a very nasty jungle even for people who are properly equipped. So I'm not taking anything away from what the castaways went through. I'm sure it was real. But did the producers help them out at critical times? If so, did the castaways know about it?
It was a clever idea to strand them without any tools nor a map. But that leads to the real controversy of the season, just how many if any of the items they found were planted?
From the description of the island as being 8 deg north of the equator and a shout-out to the Panamanian government in the credits, the island is readily identified as San Jose Island. It's right next to the southern end of the Panama Canal, and it's surrounded on three sides by the Panama nation itself, so it's believable that a lot of trash washes up. There's even a small private airport, so the crashed plane seems real. After WWII, the US army used the island as a testing range, so some of the military stuff seems legitimate too.
So how much of the stuff they found was planted? I myself have found plenty of discarded lighters, rope, plastic and other debris while beachcombing. I believe that small boat owners will also often carry an axe to do things like cut lines in an emergency.
But things like finding steel wool to start a fire, a live 12 pound fish flopping around on the beach, a damaged pelican just waiting to be turned into dinner, and a perfect float to create a raft on day 21? It does seem like some of the things they found were incredible strokes of luck.
This is not to say the castaways weren't actually suffering and struggling to survive. You can't fake insect bites like that. It's a very nasty jungle even for people who are properly equipped. So I'm not taking anything away from what the castaways went through. I'm sure it was real. But did the producers help them out at critical times? If so, did the castaways know about it?