Love in the Wild – Ep. 7: The Dirty Half-Dozen

Bare Down: The final 3 couples battle to win that trip around the world...and look good doing it.

This week the three remaining couples met Darren not in the jungle but at the beach in their skivvies.  He then told them to swim for it by which he meant a boat anchored maybe 50 meters offshore.  No problem, right?  No, none – except that Miles from Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes, didn’t know how to swim.  Fearing that he might drown, he was outfitted with a life jacket and training wheels.  Having retrieved a map from underwater, all three couples started paddling like mad (on paddle boards) in a race to find five coin-filled bags and deliver them to an oddly named gentleman at a place called Coco’s Bar in town (Ed. Note: In Cahuita, for those curious).  While Mike was smacking Samantha in the head with a paddle, Skip, stoked by the sight of Teresa’s rear end staring him straight in the face, rowed his team into an early lead.  Meanwhile, Heather was doing her best to keep Miles from ending up face down in the kiddie pool.  Having been first to retrieve a fourth bag at the pier, Skip and Teresa were feeling pretty good about themselves at this point in the adventure. The only thing between them and the win was recovering the fifth bag and delivering it to that dude at Coco’s.  But, then the unthinkable happened. Teresa lost the fourth bag somewhere between the pier and forever.  And just like that their lead completely evaporated.  Yes, they backtracked, crossed paths with a mapache, went back into the water at the pier, but it was all for naught.  They were toast.  It was a two-team race after that.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 6: Bad luck turns into good luck, which turns back into bad luck

Last night episode began with a ‘big ass’ armadillo sighting.  Among some indigenous peoples, this apparently is a sign of good things to come.  If only Steele was conversant with aboriginal folklore, he would’ve known when he saw that ‘big ass’ armadillo – that his luck was about to change.

THE ADVENTURE

Have you ever had to find a carved stone mask hidden in a fichus tree?  Well, neither have I.  But, that’s exactly what the remaining five couples had to do last night.  Then, they had to find 4 more hidden variously on a rock pile, a guava grove, on top of a boulder, and behind a waterfall.  I won’t bore you with a tedious blow-by-blow description of the adventure.  Suffice it to say, Steele and Erica miraculously came in second, Skip instructed Teresa to find a horse with a “nice ass,” and, upon sliding into a mud pit, Erica emerged to say she detected the smell of horse**** in the air.  Along with another night at The Oasis, winning couple Samantha and Mike also won immunity and two tickets on a zip line.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 5: The Ol’ Switcheroo Trick, eh?

Uh oh, the ol' switcheroo.

At some point between episodes 4 and 5, somebody somewhere decided that the show had become just a tad too cozy.  Attachments had formed, couples had coalesced, but the show wasn’t even halfway done yet!  So, this week producers decided to mix it up a bit, to gum up the works.   Once Darren had described the week’s adventure in minute detail to the six remaining couples, he pulled the ol’ switcheroo, announcing that, before setting off on said adventure, the men were to pick brand new partners.  It didn’t come as much of a surprise when last week’s first and second place finishers, Derek and Ben, respectively chose Erica and Samantha to be their new partners.  Likewise, it was hardly a shock, that, despite his good looks, all the girls dreaded the prospect of being picked by Steele, fearing the curse.  (Cue thunder and lightening.)

Love in the Wild – Ep. 4: Jason, The Horse Wimp-erer

Remind me.  Had we seen the contestants chatting in the aftermath of the previous week’s Couples’ Choice Cermenony to start an episode before?  Well, that’s what happened last night.  It was illuminating too in so far as Derek told everyone within earshot, including his partner Jess, that he nearly dumped her for Samantha, explaining that – hey, he could always ‘circle back’ if things didn’t work out with Samantha.  When wiry little Mike got wind of this, he tried to impart the hands-off message to Derek.  May have even worked, too, in the end.

Jason and Jessi looking bitter (and blurry.)

Thanks to creepy Night Vision Goggles-O-Rama, we got to watch a couple of the new couples dispensing with pleasantries and getting right down to a snog  (Yes, I’m writing from England) in bed.  We also got to see Ben bring Brandee breakfast in bed on the occasion of her 26^th birthday, and the sad sight of Jessi blowing off Jason’s gift of a bouquet of freshly cut jungle flowers.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 3: Snakebitten

…So, let’s see now, with Vanessa having been given the boot last week and Peter having been redirected to the caves at Lascaux, eight couples entered last night’s episode…

THE ADVENTURE

Steele rowing Kym to her doom.

Darren informed the sixteen competitors that they would have to race down a path leading to the shore of Lake Arenal, where, having first located a map, they would then jump into one of eight waiting canoes.  Their destination?  The ominously-named Snake Island (Ed. Note: For the record, not a real place in Costa Rica).  Derek and Jess pushed off first, while at the other end of a very short spectrum, Ben and Brandee couldn’t even find the gol’dern map.  Hitherto happy loving couple Samantha and Mike ran – er, paddled into (for the first time in three episodes) choppy seas, when Mike, being of the XX chromosome variety, insisted on rowing to the right when everybody else was rowing – correctly, I might add – to the left.  It was like watching a guy refuse to ask for directions – for fear that it would impugn his masculinity – while driving the family Winnebago off a cliff.  Samantha managed in the end to get all their oars in a row but not without losing a little faith in his stewardship of both the canoe and their budding romance.  Mike, however, wasn’t the only man in hot water in the lake.  Adam, who’d spirited Heather away from Miles in last week’s Couples’ Choice Ceremony, just couldn’t get a handle on the subtleties of rowing, thus sacrificing precious brownie points with the aforementioned Heather.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 2: Peter’d Out, Karma’s A *****

Jessica and a frightened Derek on Costa Rica's Hanging Bridges

And, then there were nine – nine couples, that is, what with Dawn and Jared having been eliminated last week.  This week, the newly-minted – and not-so newly minted – couples were informed by affable Scotsman Darren McMullen that they’d have to circumnavigate a slew of bridges slung perilously across gorges, chasms and voids – and even a bat cave for good measure – in pursuit of six so called tethers.  Said tethers were not only charged with “symbolic” significance, but also tested the couples’ ability to work in tandem so as to avoid certain death in that they literally connected boy to girl like an umbilical.  Like last week, the winning couple would get a night’s luxe accommodation at some place called The Oasis and, as an added bonus, the next day, a scenic helicopter ride and romantically situated lunch for two with an outstanding view of the majestic and still quite lively Volcan Arenal.

Love in the Wild – Ep. 1: The Adventure Begins…

On last night’s premier episode of the new NBC reality series, Love In The Wild, we got to meet the twenty contestants for the first time as they stood nervously in a leafy grove in the middle of the jungle in Arenal.  In brief video segments, we learned that basically they had all embarked on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure to find true love, having apparently run out of legitimate opportunities in the concrete jungle back home. At the young ladies’ choosing, they then all paired off and set out on their first, so-called adventure together – essentially an obstacle course – during which they raced to bring samples of air, earth and water back to the show’s genial host, young Scotsman Darren McMullen, waiting sweatily at the finish line.

Turn on (at 8), tune in (to NBC), and, for God’s sake, throw away the meds

Hi.

Hello there.

My name is Nick Silver. (In some, slightly grittier, parts of this big blue-green ball we call La Tierra, I’m also known as Dirk Shank, but that’s a story for another time, another place, a fatter paycheck.) By way of introduction, I have been tasked with the awesome responsibility of blogging, for the benefit of Tico Times readers far and wide (those high and low are welcome to read along as well) on a new reality series called “Love In The Wild” premiering tonight at ten on the peacock network, otherwise known as the National Broadcasting Company – NBC for short.

I’m an expat. Living in Costa Rica, who, after years of high art preening, has finally come to appreciate the true meaning of TV, i.e., that it works best as a kind of sedative., preferably one administered by a busty nurse. Nothing outside of prescription medicine (prescription medicine in Costa Rica – perish the thought!) quite takes the edge off like a couple of hours in front of the ol’ flat screen. In my case, I’ve so come to appreciate – and depend, really – on this aspect of TV that I’ve sworn off Lexipro for good. Valium, too. OK, so I got a death grip on the Prozac. Go ahead and sue me. As for my shrink, that kook Dr. Vargas – well, he can take a hike in the proverbial cloud forest, too, for all I care!

As to the critical question of ‘why now?’ – well, the show is premiering tonight for one thing. Plus, there’s no time like the present; I remember somebody telling me that a long time ago.

Why this show? Good question. Well, it’s elementary, my dear Watson. (Insert yawn here.) It just so happens the show is set in Costa Rica, our collective home away from home, hence you’re supposed to care. Don’t worry, though: it ain’t another iteration of the CSI franchise, this time set in the crummy streets of San Jose. No, no. Instead, it’s a charming lark among the camera-ready flora and fauna of Costa Rica – ergo the title, by which is meant – or so I gleaned from very briefly glancing at the show’s website – photogenic locales like Volcan Arenal, The Blue River, and Tommy’s Bait and Switch on Isla Coco.

Apparently, the dealio is as follows: 10 fetching adult girls and 10 strapping adult boys – 20 homo sapiens in all – have been flown in from The States to see if they can’t make a love connection while testing their mental and emotional intelligence in the leafy and humid environs of prime Costa Rican jungle. Dunno ‘bout you, but to me it sounds like a reanimated Frankenstein’s monster made up of bits of Survivor, Temptation Island, Get Me Out Of Here – I’m A Celebrity, and The Bachelor. Then, of course, every week – ah, you know the drill by know – the castaways are winnowed by a factor of two until, at the very end, by means of a series of diabolical competitions, the canny producers at NBC will hope to have produced a modern day version of Tarzan and Jane., minus the chimp. (Of course, Tarzan and Jane will announce their separation soon after the wrap party.)

Sadly, I have some bad news to impart. If, like me, you were hoping to see the one and only Chuck Woolery hosting in a loin cloth, it pains me deeply to inform you that instead we have to countenance yet another British interloper as MC. This time it goes by the name of Darren McMullen, a Scot by way of Australia, who, at least based on his online vlogs, will be a genial and sometimes cheeky host in the manner American audiences might associate with Craig Ferguson. China overrunning American manufacturing is one thing, but the British invasion of American media must stop at once, I say! Enough with the Pierses and the Simons and now the Darrens. I can’t take it anymore!

Anyway, I’m gonna be turning on and tuning in to NBC tonight at 8 – that is, as long as power doesn’t go off – and trading in my meds for a piping hot bag of Jack’s microwave popcorn – that is, as long as the power doesn’t go off – while the premiere episode of “Love In The Wild” unfolds before my bloodshot eyes. Why don’t you join me? Loosen the ties on your straitjacket and sit a spell. Trust me, you’ll feel better.