Notes about Everwood Season 3, Part 5 (Episodes 17-20)

#317-“Fate Accomplis”

In 2005, viewers waited weeks and weeks for Ephram meeting Madison in the coffee shop. I dreaded it. I don’t like Madison, and I really don’t like the baby storyline. The coffee shop contrasts the two. Ephram’s a bubbling, rambling happy guy, while Madison struggles to keep it together. Ephram goes a little Dawson on her after she tells him she doesn’t want to discuss what was hard for in the last several months. Ephram reminded her of her childish treatment of him in season two. Of course, though, she tells him. Ephram blows his future up for reasons of contrived drama. Andy confessed to Ephram his part in keeping the pregnancy from him. Ephram cuts Madison out of his life, and he skips his audition to spite his father. Ephram possessed a calculating vengeance. He’s deliberate, methodical, and a villainous. Suddenly, the piano and New York becomes sickening to him. His last refuge is Amy, but his trust in her will end next episode.

Meanwhile, Amy worried about fate versus free will. Instead of experiencing her life actively, she experiences it passively until her mother reminded her of the importance of choice in one’s life. One’s choice determines one’s path. An infinite number of varieties exist in a second. Amy wants to feel security about her relationship with Ephram. Ephram, though, returned to Everwood “messed up” and “not in a good place.” The character’s a total drag in much of the final episodes of the season. Also, Rose has a cold, which will become cancer so soon.

This is the episode the late Chris Penn guest-starred in. His story highlights Hal’s deteriorating relationship with Bright. Chris Penn’s character’s son dies after he, Chris Penn’s character, accidentally shot him while pheasant hunting. Harold gains perspective. Him and Bright share a tender moment in the kitchen while they clean out the refrigerator. Bright also expresses his admiration for his father, telling his Dad he sees him as a good doctor and a father. The Bright-Harold scenes are great. Chris Pratt’s awesome.

#318-“Fallout”

Ephram lost trust in Amy after Amy let him know that she knew about the baby prior to his NYC trip. He froze her out. Ephram’s main story, though, is finding his son in Marin county. He did, after child placement services broke the law to let him know. Ah, bad writing. So, Amy and Ephram essentially break up after he learned she didn’t tell him. The baby’s an annoying plot device. The story organically progressed to Andy and Ephram getting along and being at peace with each other. The story organically moved Amy and Ephram together. Television dramas need, you know, drama. Thus, the writers needed to break it all up. I still don’t think any of it worked. Emily Vancamp’s a treasure in these episodes, though. Her scene with Tom Amandes in the car, after the break-up, is magnificent. Ephram seeing where his son lived and deciding to leave without confrontation is really good. (I’m a sucker for father-son stuff).

“Fallout” stands out for Andy. Delia asks for a new bedroom. Andy can’t deliver what she wants as she wants it, first because of Ephram, and second because he feels envious of Jake’s relationship with Nina, which leads to their first major fight—undercut by comedy when Andy breaks the only thing Delia liked about her room after he finished it without her. Nina, ever Andy’s voice of reason, reminded him his responsibilities as a father: he cannot let Ephram spiral out of control, though Andy felt powerless to punish or scold him because of his own terrible mistake in the ordeal, and he needs to be there for Delia. So, there’s a wonderful scene between Andy and Delia in the fourth act. Andy lays down the law as father of the house, but then he sits with Delia and listens to her explain the many dramas happening in her class and with her friends, who likes who, and so on, and he can feel secure that he’ll always have Delia. I adore that scene.

#319-“Acceptance”

Every beloved TV couple needs a good break-up episode for them. “Acceptance” is the break-up episode for Amy and Ephram. 

Why did they break up? TV executives think keeping characters apart has more interest and drama than keeping characters together. They broke up because they couldn’t stay together. There’s no drama if they stay together. For example, Pacey and Joey became a couple at the end of Dawson's Creek's third season. Nearly every episode in season four contrived a reason for Pacey and Joey to break up. When they finally break up in "Promicide", it is because Pacey couldn’t handle Joey’s promising future. 

Ephram and Amy could’ve broken up because of college. They would've chosen different schools in different places; however, the baby nonsense happened, which scattered Ephram's brain and broke the trust he had with every person he trusted in his life. He can't imagine being in a relationship with anyone he knew. Ephram suggested that he and Amy spend time together after he froze her out, but he worries that she'll believe his overture means that they'll restart their relationship. 

Instead of the writing addressing any of that with Amy, their breakup returns to the Princeton essay he wrote for her earlier in the season, and the infinity necklace he gave her. The Princeton essay represented his belief that they didn’t have a future. The infinity necklace represented he’d care for her all his life, or something. Essentially, they break up because it’s network TV drama and they can't stay together. Next season, the only reason they end up together is because The CW chose 7^th Heaven over Everwood. If Everwood returned, it’d be Madison and Ephram. Emily Vancamp’s terrific in the break-up scene, though. The lasting line is, “You always thought about me, while I always thought about us.” Ephram was terribly written in the last six episodes of the season. I suppose one could argue that his character’s inconsistency stems from his suddenly turbulent life where nothing makes sense, but he was a frustrating drag.

Rose learned she had cancer in “Acceptance”, which sets up the super emotional final three. First, the audience had to endure an absurd and nonsensical “Rose thinks she’s pregnant!” story. Her and Hal’s mutual desire for a child continues into season four, complete with another maddening instance of plot lunacy for the sake of drama. I think the writers tossed in Rose getting cancer because they needed another medical crisis for May sweeps. Season one had Colin. Season two had Andy’s mentor. Season three had Rose. It’s a great, great arc: sappy, sad, sentimental, melodramatic, and without it the writers wouldn’t have written the magnificent “Good to Go” (formerly titled “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” because of a graduation gift Ephram’s mother bought before she died, in case she died, for him. Inside, there’s a letter for him).

#320-“He Who Hesitates”

First, Amy’s still openly heart-broken about her break-up with Ephram. Memories of them together bring tears to her eyes. After her mother and father reveal the bad news about her mother’s cancer, the loss of Ephram stings less. It’s not overt, but it’s a crafty way of depicting the perspective shift when a parent, or a grandparent, or any precious loved one receives bad news. Hannah mistook Amy’s sadness as Ephram-based until Amy told her why she felt sad in an excellent scene and an excellent piece of acting by Emily Vancamp. One’s world explodes when one hears his or her parent has cancer. For teenagers, especially, cancer forever alters their personal world. The news shatters her. The scene prior to Hal and Rose telling their children is moving. Harold apologized for hesitating to help her, but Rose told him she’d forever see him and feel protected and safe. The dissolve to the four Abbotts seated together in the room, sharing and absorbing at the same time, is wonderfully edited, touching, poignant. Classic Everwood. More tears will fall in “Good to Go.”

“He Who Hesitates” is a transition episode. Andy can’t seem to convey what Nina means to him. Nina sensed something changed, but nothing advances between them. Ephram sold his studio for Europe money. He ominously told Andy in "Fallout" that he would "leave soon." Andy found out what Ephram sold. His studio represents his future. Ephram reiterated his hate for him. Andy was dismayed by Ephram’s resolve to leave Everwood, potentially for good. Meanwhile, Bright searched for apartments while working through his complicated feelings for Hannah. Hannah realized that she and Topher lack a spark as Bright realizes that importance of personality--that one’s interior overwhelms the exterior.

Finally, Brenda Baxworth, Everwood’s legendary ancillary character, returned as a real estate agent for Bright. Brenda, one will recall, sold Andy the Everwood train station. She once owned a restaurant. She tried to bar Andy from eating at her establishment after Colin Hart died. Brenda taught Amy’s ballet class. She did not appear in the series after this episode. She went the way of Wendell.

An Unnecessary Season of Television: Season 6 of Dawson's Creek

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The attractive season six cast of Dawson's Creek

Aristotle wrote that the beginning of a play is complete when a dramatist has established a situation that implicitly contains the conclusion. Few would describe TV executives as Aristotelian. The beginning of any TV show is complete whenever a studio believes it has a premise that will drive years of profits (and stories). Its conclusion depends on when advertisers no longer want to advertise, or whenever the metrics, in the streaming age, indicate x show is no longer profitable. Art is beside the point.

The sixth season of Dawson’s Creek taught me that not all TV storytelling — not all popular culture — is art. William Gass, the late High Modernist writer, believed that “since the works of popular culture are mired in competition, are fad-producing, have little to no sense of beauty, are devoid of finish, complexity, stasis, individuality, coherence, depth, and endurance, it is a mistake to compare them to works of art.” TV shows exist to sell ads and for those ads to sell to us, whether those ads air in traditional commercials or whether they’re embedded within an episode as product placement. “Popular culture is the product of an industrial machine which makes baubles to amuse the savages while missionaries steal their souls and merchants steal their money.”

Dawson’s Creek once produced a complete episode of television, during its sixth and final season, that exists only as a commercial for No Doubt’s 2002 record Rock Steady. The episode resembles an MTV special devoted to the band’s newest release: it features three full length performances, an array of merchandising shots, and multiple close-ups of the Rock Steady jewel case. Scant storytelling — Dawson and his girlfriend trying to find a spot in the arena to have sex; Pacey and Audrey hating each other — happens between the promotional elements of the episode.

The last season of Dawson’s Creek represented TV in its purest form: it was without meaning, without substance, and only existed to sell products to a demographic valued by advertisers — thus the stories, the thing for which audiences endure ads, is a mish-mash of nonsense, plot devices, and contrivances to place characters near things they can buy, whether it is a No Doubt CD or a then-gigantic retail chain (K-Mart). The writers completed the con by exploiting one’s investment in the characters and the world of the characters to sell those products. While Joey and Pacey eat K-Mart nachos together while being all cute together, the viewer rejoices in their cuteness and cannot help but think that eating K-Mart nachos would have improved the experience.

The favorite geometric shape of most individuals is the circle, and many have made it his or her own favorite metaphor. The circle of life. Time is a flat circle. The circular structure of Vladimir Nabokov’s “The Circle” and of James Joyce’s famous book of the dark. Dan Harmon’s Story Circle. Dawson did not share the same zeal for the circle as the metaphor for a life. “Life has no opposite,” he says to Joey in the series finale after Jen’s death and after an extended run of episodes that purposely returned, i.e. circled, the characters to where they began in season one. A circular narrative structure doesn’t quite serve a coming-of-age story unless the writers thought of their circle as spiritualized, like Nabokov did, and Hegel before him, because the spiritualized circle is, really, a spiral, and the circle uncoils in the spiral form, which sets the circle free. Kevin Williamson wanted to depict important first milestones in a teenager’s life: adolescent anxiety and hand holding and sweaty palms and first kisses. Kevin Williamson, naturally, killed Jen Lindley because it was the last milestone his young characters had to experience: the death of a close friend. The writers who wrote the world of Dawson’s Creek in the seasons after Williamson clearly thought of their narrative as a circular, not the spiritualized one of VN’s, or even of Dan Harmon’s story circle where a character or characters return to the same place having changed, but as Viconian wherein history repeats and recirculates, as evidenced by new Joey and new Dawson in Creek Daze; but even Williamson couldn’t resist a Viconian indulgence near the end of “…Must Come to an End” when Joey and Dawson watch her brother, Alexander, climb the ladder to his sister’s, Lily, bedroom, i.e. Dawson’s old bedroom, which suggests a Viconian cycle/circle, that Lily and Alexander will make each other miserable for the rest of their teenage years like how their older siblings made one another miserable.

The circle of storytelling in television can be a forced and wobbly thing. New writers, new showrunners, and departing creators inevitably separate a show into disparate parts. The conclusion implicit in the beginning of Dawson’s Creek happened at the end of its first season when Dawson and Joey finally kiss. Kevin Williamson completed his small, sweet story then; however, television, like evil, goes on, no matter what, as Holland Manners explains to a broken and soon hopeless Angel in the hell-avator in “Reprise”. The circle, like a circular pool of water in a rainstorm, can expand, and behind-the-scenes drama between cast and crew can, and does, further complicate any semblance of organic and coherent storytelling. The series Williamson returned to end in early 2003 was no longer his and no longer existed. Oddly, Dawson’s Creek ended twice in season six. The WB asked Williamson to return and complete his dream, but his return effectively cemented season six’s irrelevancy. Not even the series creator and screenwriter of the two-part series finale watched the previous twenty-two episodes. For him, it did not exist. He simply carried his five characters five years forward in time, from where he last left them, to continue a story interrupted by his departure after season two.

The writers of season six tried to complete the circle as early as the sixth season premiere when Joey and Dawson finally sleep together, and, again, in the original finale to the series. The original finale returned the gang to Capeside where they helped Dawson finish his movie, which is a recreation of the first episode of the series. A deluge of bad storylines, ancillary characters, and clear cast disinterest fills the space between the beginning and end of season six. The writers only returned to the eternal themes of the show after the cast chose not to renew their contracts for a seventh season. The viewer can tell when the shift occurs: Pacey and Joey spend a night together locked in a local K-Mart and remember that they were in love for an entire season of television and were the most beloved and popular couple in the show. They then realized that they might have a future together. From there, the writers returned the characters to their past. Dawson and Pacey slowly regain their lost friendship until Pacey, like he always does in Dawson’s perspective, screws up. Dawson visits Mr. Gold’s film class, the same film class he once schemed his way into during season one, for one day as a guest speaker and a Hollywood director (yes, at nineteen years old, Dawson became a Hollywood director). Joey finally traveled to Paris six years after Dawson convinced her to stay in Capeside for him.

The writers had no choice but to return the story to its past when they knew they needed to end the story, because what the show became meant nothing, and what it was was nothing, and the only way to restore resonance and meaning for the viewers was to return it to the time when it meant something to them, to the time of the Williamson/Greg Berlanti years, before everyone gave up and before the show lost itself when it moved the central setting to Boston and left Capeside behind.

The series finally ends outside Capeside — in New York City and in Los Angeles — where Joey and Pacey, and Dawson, now live their lives, as it should have, because they’re adults, and Capeside represents all the wonderful trappings of a fantastical adolescence that will only dissolve after time, that probably could've never really existed except in one's fanciful nostalgia. The story should’ve left Dawson and Joey silhouetted in one another’s arms, in Capeside, in “Coda”, as they face an uncertain future away from Capeside and from each other and from all the safe things and people they’ve known their whole lives.

Notes about Everwood Season 3, Part 4 ("Surprise" & "A Mountain Town")

#315-“Surprise”

Season three’s crux is the “Surprise” and “A Mountain Town” two-parter. “Surprise” begins in-media-res. Amy looks sad. The house is dark, full of random folk, plus the Brown family and the Abbot family, waiting to surprise Ephram (because Julliard granted him an audition). Hannah’s in tears and unwilling to talk about her test results. Harold is eager to discuss a matter of importance with Andy. Once the teaser ends, the story returns to a week before the surprise story so that the viewers can see how the characters got to that place.

Hitfix’s Alan Sepinwall posted a blog about the death of the stand-alone episode. Marvel’s Jessica Jones inspired the post. Sepinwall urged show runners not to forget about the stand-alone episode. The era of heavily serialized shows has created a blur effect. Episodes don’t stand apart. Each is connected. Without one, the narrative’s not whole. The emergence of cable dramas, streaming site dramas, and the premium channels changed the form and structure of television drama. Stand-alone, sometimes referred to as filler, episodes emerged in network dramas not as a choice but as a necessity. 26 episode seasons were normal in the 90s. The major networks continue giving shows 22 or 23 episode orders. None of the network dramas I regularly watch produces distinctive stand-alones. The Vampire Diaries works in three acts during a season—essentially three mini-seasons in a season. Not one Arrow episode stands out as an episode of network dramas of the past would (Buffy and ANGEL, or even Dawson’s Creek).

An old friend and I used to write a weekly humor series that we posted on various websites for friends to read. We were heavily from LOST, The X Files, relevant popular culture at the time, the pop-punk and independent music scene, as well as a little Charles Dickens. We wrote 22 little episodes between 2005 and 2006. We mostly wrote stand-alone silliness. Our main character got too high and wanders naked into the backyard of a home in Edgemont, PA! Our main character and his faithful friend, a dog named Puppers, wanted Wendy’s, but he didn’t have enough change. Him and Puppers walked the streets of Philly in search of loose change for a Wendy’s meal. We renewed ourselves for season two and stuck with the stand-alone silliness, but with more of our overarcing mythology involved. By season three, we started off silly, but we shifted hard into constant myth-centric narrative that wasn’t very good because it narrowed our fictional wonderland of characters. Writing our stand-alone episodes built and revealed the world moreso than our grandiose and nonsensical mythology. So it was with ANGEL, Buffy, and The X Files, and a number of other series in the 90s and early 2000s—even Everwood.

Season three of Everwood’s main arc is the slow, slow march to Ephram learning about his son in “Fate Accomplis.” It’s also about him and Amy experiencing normalcy, being in love, after two emotionally intense seasons. Andy accomplished what he wanted when he moved his family to Everwood after Julia’s death. If Everwood had 13 episodes for season three, the writers wouldn’t have a problem cutting the non-essential parts of the season. Andy and Amanda? If not cut, then significantly reduced to an episode or two episodes. Nina and Jake? I think that would’ve been reduced. My point is a shorter episode order would’ve narrowed the world of Everwood. I don’t think an Everwood in 2015 would’ve given us “The Perfect Day.”

Every time I watch “Surprise” and “A Mountain Town” I’m aware of the tonal shift of the writing. I noticed a difference between “Surprise” and everything between it and “Complex Guilt.” The two parter is what they wanted. I would not want a reduced Everwood season that expedited the major drama of the season, which is tearing asunder Ephram and Andy—and Ephram torching his hard-earned future. Aside from the Amanda-Andy atrocity, season three’s full of good moments, scenes, and stories that allows the viewer to transport to the fictional little town. It’s a world that would not be as complete and full if the writers focused much of the storytelling on the baby drama that really drains the season. If not for the late Rose’s cancer arc at the end of the season, I think Everwood would’ve been downright bad in season three.

“Surprise” is much better than “A Mountain Town.” Hannah learned that she won’t suffer the same agonizing death as her father, but she’s so blown away by it she can’t speak. Harold told Amy the truth about Madison. Emily Vancamp played it as a quiet shock. No histrionics or hysteria (it’s the opposite of Gregory Smith’s performance in #317 and #318). Rose becomes the catalyst for Bright to change his womanizing ways after a sexual harassment incident at work. Bright, so trapped in uninspired stories in season three until Hannah colors his world in “The Perfect Day”, begins apologizing to the women he wronged, thereby becoming the man he thinks Hannah deserves. And the Andy-Amanda affair finally ends! Ephram barely appeared in the episode, as well. He’s going to be a drag.

#316-“A Mountain Town”

One understands the episode’s importance upon hearing Irv’s narration, the first of season three (and the last of the series, I think). The narration’s from his book. In his book, he paralleled his life with The Doctor’s, and he also contrasted their lives. Season four has an episode in which Andy reacts to the contents of the book. The production moved to New York City for the episode. Ephram won’t find out about the baby until the next episode, which makes his open desire for his Dad and Delia to be part of his future in New York for his Julliard education heartbreaking for the viewer and Andy. I don’t particularly like “A Mountain Town.” It’s a bad kind of deliberate. Ephram could’ve told Andy he wanted him in his life at any point in the season, but the writers waited to maximize the drama of the baby fallout. It’s their last decent conversation until season four. Greg Berlanti, though not involved daily in season three, has a fatal flaw in his writing: soap opera melodrama. Arrow has some strengths, but its weakness is contrived melodrama. Berlanti pitched the Madison/Andy baby nonsense before he stopped running the show, which left Rina Mimoun with a pile of shit to work with in season three. Madison was a terrible character. She should’ve gone the way of Tommy in season two. She was a bad idea the writers wouldn’t let go of because, I assume, they loved Sarah Lancaster. I don’t like the melodramatic-as-General-Hospital Madison/Andy scene. I don’t like her running into Ephram Manhattan on a weekday afternoon. The A story is a contrived, soapy, and melodramatic mistake. Season four basically drops it. If The CW brought it back for season five, Berlanti would’ve forced Madison and all the bad melodramatic ideas back into the show. The audience had to wait 2 months for the Ephram/Madison conversation in the café. The writers couldn’t blow everything to shit with the shittiest idea in the series.

What else happens? The stories in Everwood are of the vignette kind. Bright continued atoning for his past. Amy told him how’ll he know when he genuinely loves someone and wants to settle down with her, which foreshadows his crush on Hannah. Edna and Irv reunited. Irv finished his book. The episode closed with an oft-quoted Everwood line: “I look towards the doctor, and I can hope to hope.” (I may’ve missed the accuracy of the line). I don’t like that line either. I expected more from Irv’s narration. I understand the line—it is rooted in the heart of the series—but I don’t like it. It’s written for specifically for the impending Andy/Ephram drama. And, well, I’m going to continue rambling and repeating myself if I don’t stop writing here.

Running Wild with Bear Grylls "President Barack Obama" Review

-Bear Grylls and the President of the United States adventured in the Alaskan wilderness to highlight the effects of climate change.

Over a century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt met in secret with the naturalist John Muir under a grove of sequoia trees in the Mariposa Grove, which then remained under the state’s control. John Muir pushed for national park designation for Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove for a significant part of his life. Muir considered Yosemite the earth’s cathedral. A tyrannical Protestant father, who forced him to learn the bible by heart, raised him. Muir felt closer to God upon his first look at the majesty of Yosemite than he ever felt learning the bible out of fear his father would beat him. For two or three days the two men camped in the grove, discussed other parks for national park designation, as well as protecting the unprotected land of Yosemite. Roosevelt spoke the next day in Sacramento about “the greatest day” of his life camping in Yosemite Valley. Soon, the land returned to federal control and became part of Yosemite National Park.

Running Wild with Bear Grylls and President Obama probably won’t accomplish what Roosevelt’s time with Muir accomplished, but the spirit of the thing’s similar.

-Bear entered the terrain via helicopter. He landed on high ground and then he repelled down a rock-face to meet the president. Bear usually waited for the first rope repel, but one assumes that the President’s handlers shook their heads “no” if Bear pitched him and the President repelling down a sheer, steep rock-face. Obama leisurely walked from his helicopter through a grove of trees. He and Bear met in the wide open Alaska wilderness, surrounded by lovely mountains and verdant, green trees.

-So, what are the chances a bear pursues Bear and Obama? Bear explained how to scare away birds. They touched on the common rules for walking in bear territory. Back out of the bear’s territory; make loud noises and be ferocious if the bear enters your campsite. Bear Grylls and Les Stroud have a long history of tearing nearby threats in whatever location they’re at. Les fled from a jaguar in an episode. Bear—I don’t know—eluded wolf packs. Neither ever, on camera, experienced a jaguar or wolf fight.

-The duo arrived at Exit Glacier, which is part of the Harding Ice Field. The ice field shrunk by 1200 feet since 2008. The President wanted to show Americans the physical effects of climate change. He thought the image would affect more than a paper full of facts. Of course, people see whatever they want to see. One’s ideology will supersede whatever contradicts that ideology. Conservatives reject climate change. I presume some liberals reject it too. New Jersey governor Chris Christie said, “America’s not the world” when explaining why climate change isn’t his problem nor the Republican party’s nor the country’s. “America’s not the world” may be the stupidest thing I’ve heard from a politician since the George W. Bush era. Sure, America’s not the world, but America’s part of the world. The great naturalist former president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, believed preserving the natural wonders of the world—nature itself—for ages and ages to be of the upmost importance. Roosevelt wanted to protect the trees and the landscapes from industrialists. He saw the Grand Canyon and claimed people would only mar what nature sculpted over centuries and centuries. People could never do better than nature. Once it’s gone…it’s gone.

-Obama and Bear discussed climate change more, particularly how to combat it. The President mentioned solar power energy, electric cars, as solutions to controlling and reducing the effects of climate change. They knelt at a rivulet. Obama felt the water, noted its coldness, and Bear explained that soot from the collapsing rocks (caused by the receding melting glacier) would, eventually, give one diarrhea. Bear said they could drink it, but a substantial amount would make them ill. One hundred years ago—and definitely two hundred years ago—no soot greyed the water.

-Between the climate change conversations, they took selfies, and Bear asked about Obama’s daughters. One thing viewers who’ve never watched Running Wild before should know—viewers who may’ve tuned in to find more reasons to hate the President or who may’ve wanted to see how he did in the wild—is: nothing especially interesting happens on Running Wild. Bear’s old show, the classic Man Vs. Wild, was great adventurous fun. He huddled inside a camel’s stomach, he used a wolf carcass to make a toboggan, etc., etc. Running Wild largely works as a publicity vehicle. It humanizes the celebrity while promoting their brand. This episode with the president is the same. It humanized the Commander-in-Chief while promoting his Climate Change agenda. Obama’s asides showed his sense-of-humor, his regular joe-ness, and so on, as well as his further orations about the importance of working to protect the earth.

-Bear and the President made camp. They built a small rock wall to protect the fire. Obama successfully sparked the fire. At camp, Bear digs into the personal side of his guest. So, him and Obama discussed the First Lady’s regard for nice sheets, how he balances being the leader of the free world and being a father, whether he got lost in the White House (he didn’t; he explained that it’s an old capital that lacks the grandiosity of other political buildings), his first visit to the White House, with a human interest reminder that he’s the child of a single mother (and he made it to the White House). The President asked for Bear’s life story. Bear told him about following his father and his love for the outdoors. Bear asked him what he’d like his legacy to be (giving healthcare to millions of Americans that lacked it, restoring an economic on the brink of global collapse, and climate change).

-For lunch, they ate salmon half-eaten by an unseen bear.

-The President made Bear a S’more. Bear brought up drinking one’s own urine during the dessert portion lunch. Petitioners wanted Obama to drink his own pee. Now, I’ve watched Bear and Les Stroud drink their own urine multiple times. The key is distillation.

-Overall, it was the tamest/safety episode of Running Wild. I expected as much. Bear did the craziest thing—repelling--before he met Obama. They walked through a dense forest, but the forest near my house looks more dense than the forest they walked through. Bear mentioned bears frequented the forest in large numbers, but no bears came near them. They ate two small slabs of grilled fresh meat, S’mores made from store bought products, and then Bear leisurely walked the President back to the secret service.