A belated Valentine's Day gift from me to you: I watch 'Alaska Women Looking for Love' so you don't have to
The odds are good, but the goods are odd. Especially when your dating pool is Kodiak. We only got one season of Alaska Women Looking for Love on TLC, where six women head to Miami in search of the perfect parter (that sentence is an oxymoron).
We only got six episodes. After watching it, I understand why.
You know the old saying in Alaska: you lose the girl, you just lose your turn.
It's so funny watching knowing that AWLFL is supposed to be set in a specific location. We're in Kodiak, but we get shots interspersed from Anchorage and the valley pretty consistently throughout the first episode. The show also says Miami is the first place that all of the women have gone to the Lower 48 (apparently not true).
Meet the Kodiak women – Tina, Jenny, Sabina, Heather, Haley and Lacy. Except, not all of the women are from Kodiak. Sabina and Heather actually lived in Anchorage when they filmed.
In Heather's first scene, we see her run across the Seward Highway with her nine-year-old to get water at the infamous water spout. When I found her Twitter account, the last thing she posted was from October, about a Build-a-Bear manager who refused to let a Washington teenager name her bear Charlie Kirk.
We have Sabina, a waitress at the time who is now a realtor in town. The cutest and honestly the most authentic conversation in the first episode happens between Sabina and her mom, Natasha, when Sabina is telling her about the women's upcoming trip to Miami.
He has to be a very nice person, Sabina says.
Would you like to have a belly?
Hmmm...
Guys with a belly are so kind!
Sabina's dad walks into the kitchen.
Sweetie, you look so wonderful, look, Natasha says as she rubs at her husband's belly. This is what I prayed for. Here it is!
Perhaps the most interesting cast member is Jenny. She's a former youth ministry leader and has been a pastor's wife for 17 (!) years. She got pregnant at 13 after having sex one time (!!!). I honestly wish we would have gotten to know her more. It's hard when AWLFL is the format.
This is not TLC's first attempt at an Alaska focused reality TV show. Sarah Palin's Alaska aired on the network in 2010, three years before, and was also canceled after one season. The only difference was the governor's series got three more episodes than AWLFL. We'll cover Sarah's show eventually.
Lacy is the assistant manager of the Kodiak Paradise Lodge in Port Lions. Haley is a teacher, and Tina is a welder.
Most of these episodes just feel like a repeat of the last. It's a constant comparison game. This house we're staying in is so cool – it doesn't have dead animals on every wall like we do in ALASKA. Our feet are so hot because we're walking around in Xtratufs, because we're from ALASKA. These Miami clothes are so skimpy, we're not used to that because we wear coats and hats all the time in ALASKA. We can only lay in the sun for five minutes since we're from ALASKA.
Why are people looking at us?
I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess because there is a camera crew following you all around the beach.
The continuous AK mentions aren't necessarily the women's issue, it's a producer issue. Heather and Sabina spoke with ADN in 2013, back when AWLFL came out and said they were encouraged to wear their gear, and specifically told to bring their boots.
Where AWLFL falls flat for me is the constant AK mention. Like oh my god, please, we get it. It was enough that I tried counting how many "Alaska" mentions. I genuinely kept losing count.
Before the women travel to Miami in episode two, a few of the women go on dates that are just plain awk. They are painfully aware of the camera crew, and as a viewer, you can feel the constant and obvious "talk about where you're from!!!" prompts from people behind the scenes.
In Florida, the women stay at a nice rental house they can Party It Up in, head to a drag show and the night club (and apparently end up buying a $500 bottle). Haley celebrates her 22nd birthday, so Tina wrangles 22 men to come to her 22nd birthday party.
Tell me a little bit about this Alaska place here, Heather's date asks.
It's cold and dark.
So this is like complete opposite, complete 360 for you.
Same thing!
It's funny watching stuff like this with Duncan. He came in during episode three; I'm guessing this lasted *a* season? he asked me.
People in Alaska don't go on dates.
Girl, what? You kissed your date and said, "awesome." As Duncan said, that's a personal problem, bestie. You have no rizz.
It makes us seem sooooo isolated and remote, which yes – obviously, some places are, but the definite statements are a little bit silly. "Alaska women aren't like that," or "men from Alaska are all like this" (news to me: You can't wear a dress in Alaska. Again I say, girl, what?).
It just feels like a lot of absolute statements based on personal experience, not necessarily reality. It flattens what is eccentric and cool about living here – at least to me.
(total watch time: 4 hours, 15 minutes)
A happy little Vegemite
Two weeks ago, we chatted about Below Deck on AK IRL, since one of the cast members is from Alaska and I love her.
Sam Davenport
My brother told me he binged season 12 of BD from Anchorage to Denver, so I took a page out of his book and saved season 11 for our California trip. We sat on the tarmac for 3+ hours on the way home and ended up having to deplane, but we could stream the whole time. EJ slept 90% of the plane rides so naturally I watched episodes 1-3 on the way down (those were the only eps available on Alaska Airlines), and 4-12 on the way back.
Thank you for being here
A new favorite quote, thank you Captain Kerry
by u/hussafeffer in belowdeck
and thank you for making me a happy little Vegemite!
Everyone who reads, likes, shares, comments, and has a subscription of any kind to AK IRL helps support me and what I do. If you've ever wondered, what does a paying subscription support? Well, I bought TLC's Alaska Women Looking for Love (I could not find it available for free literally anywhere else) so I could binge it and write about it, and I had funds because of paying subscribers. Genuinely, that is so cool. Thank you!
For the Current: Survivor fans flock to Chena Hot Springs for idol challenge
Last week, I chatted with some folks who braved the snow and cold for their shot at winning the "Survivor" 50 Idol Challenge.
[A] 90-minute drive through a snow storm didn’t stop me from finding the idol in my home state of Alaska… located at the Aurora Ice Museum at Chena Hot Springs, the idol itself was ironically [encased] in a solid block of ice.
You can catch up here.