Reality Survival Show Canceled; Nobody Tells Contestants

Whatever the latest version of Survivor is on reality television, it invariably involves putting a bunch of better than average looking millennials into the wild to eat bugs and pee in rivers. Everybody masturbates to something different. Don’t judge.

British Channel 4 produced a show called “Eden” where they stuck twenty-three urbanite men and women into the remote Scottish Highlands with nothing but the shirts on their backs and told them to build a sustainable community. Every city kid dreams they could make it out in the woods. It’s archetypal wish fulfillment, if the women are decent looking. 

The producers sent a team of four camera men into the wild along with the cast members and cut off all communications. Somehow the footage got back to home base and four episodes were aired last summer. The initial ratings were strong based on the premise and promotions, but steadily dropped from there as the idea of watching unwashed people bitching about being on the longest worst camping trip ever became a turn off.

Channel 4 canceled the show after four episodes. They did not cancel Eden. Like evil corporate characters in any Crichton novel, they decided not to tell the Eden cast members that their year long survival quest was no longer being broadcast. All the costs were front loaded, and who knows what comes back on tape at the end of the year. Found footage horror stories are all the rage. Imagine watching Ian die for real from lockjaw over the course of months. 

According to reports, half or more of the Eden contestants bugged out. The remaining stuck it out by raiding local small Scottish villages of candy and liquor and presumably fucking one another ceaselessly while re-watching Braveheart in their minds. Somebody got the bright idea to pilfer chicken feed supplies since none of them accomplished the growing of anything, only to discover that chicken feed contains stones for good gizzard health. Not so much human dental work. Many self-extracted for emergency tooth removals.

Channel 4 announced to the survivors who straggled out of Scotland after a year, and to the media, that Eden wasn’t something they could merely cancel. It was a grand social experiment. Like the Kardashians. Would we have ever known how much black dudes love fat-assed Armenian midgets? The media outlet has vowed to air the collected footage in a special sometime on down the road. Likely after the dead are buried and the lawsuits settled. 

Eden about sums up reality television. People who long to be famous in any way will do anything to be famous. That includes turning their lives over to sadistic producers wishing for horrible things to happen. The contestants won’t be upset about the incurable bacterial infections, the future kidney failures, and the loss of half their molars. They’ll be devastated to learn it wasn’t see on television. Cue the Oompa Loompas.