I really like this one. It's about survival and they could in fact have died if they had stayed on the water for a few more days which makes this a true survival story and not just one of the episodes where the people were found in 2 days and were not in any real danger.
It's curious how well done the episode is compared to most other episodes. As always the acting is not ideal, but here it's not a huge issue. In other episodes the actors just scream and shout to make it all look overly serious. Here the same screams and shouts are subdued by the narration. They have the 2 former teens, and then one dad praying for their survival at home. These 3 people have so much to say that the awful acting scenes are often shown while they narrate the story which works perfectly. You can see the actors scream, but only hear the narration. No high school drama club ruling the day here.
Furthermore it's always nice to see what the people did at home. The dad was really suffering. This filled out the runtime. As these episodes are always 48 minutes most of them feel 5-10 minute too long. This one feels just right as there are plenty of things to explore. It's not just "2 kids on a boat for 48 minutes".
But of course the show has some serious issues besides the bad acting. For one they exaggerate the danger. Every time someone is rescued at the end of an episode the narrator says "they would have been dead in a few hours". Yeah, right. They even say this with people being rescued after 48 hours. No matter how long people have been missing it's "they only had hours left". Of course any viewer who has watched more than one episode understands that this cannot possible be true for all cases. It can't be true for every single case no matter how fast they were found. These kids only had days left to live that's horrible enough. No need to say the usually overly dramatic stuff to create fake drama. I'm not sure how to rate this stuff? It's not true, but it's not like there is another survival show like this one I can watch instead.
Then there are issues with other claims as in all episodes. Like the dad saying that search and rescue stopped searching for the teens. Now, in this very show they say in the helicopter crash episode that search and rescue on sea goes on way longer than anyone can realistically stay alive. They still search for dead bodies on the ocean way later and overall just assume some miracle kept the people alive. Here, according to the dad, they stopped searching right away? This is not how their rules for this work at all. I'm not sure why the dad said this, but it's just not how it works. I read a few articles to look into this question. Seems like the dad was likely misconstruing their words. The search, as I read it, never stopped, but rather they prepared for alternative outcomes. And why would it stop after a few days? It logically makes no sense at all. Imagine the media backlash if you said the kids were 100% dead by now, then stopped searching for them and yet they were found alive days later. You'd have whole departments being fired on the spot and media raging about it even 20 years afterwards.
It does seem like the show adores drama and plays up stuff that doesn't need it. We just want to see survival. But it's something you have to accept here. Maybe a new show can avoid it? Let's hope.
It's curious how well done the episode is compared to most other episodes. As always the acting is not ideal, but here it's not a huge issue. In other episodes the actors just scream and shout to make it all look overly serious. Here the same screams and shouts are subdued by the narration. They have the 2 former teens, and then one dad praying for their survival at home. These 3 people have so much to say that the awful acting scenes are often shown while they narrate the story which works perfectly. You can see the actors scream, but only hear the narration. No high school drama club ruling the day here.
Furthermore it's always nice to see what the people did at home. The dad was really suffering. This filled out the runtime. As these episodes are always 48 minutes most of them feel 5-10 minute too long. This one feels just right as there are plenty of things to explore. It's not just "2 kids on a boat for 48 minutes".
But of course the show has some serious issues besides the bad acting. For one they exaggerate the danger. Every time someone is rescued at the end of an episode the narrator says "they would have been dead in a few hours". Yeah, right. They even say this with people being rescued after 48 hours. No matter how long people have been missing it's "they only had hours left". Of course any viewer who has watched more than one episode understands that this cannot possible be true for all cases. It can't be true for every single case no matter how fast they were found. These kids only had days left to live that's horrible enough. No need to say the usually overly dramatic stuff to create fake drama. I'm not sure how to rate this stuff? It's not true, but it's not like there is another survival show like this one I can watch instead.
Then there are issues with other claims as in all episodes. Like the dad saying that search and rescue stopped searching for the teens. Now, in this very show they say in the helicopter crash episode that search and rescue on sea goes on way longer than anyone can realistically stay alive. They still search for dead bodies on the ocean way later and overall just assume some miracle kept the people alive. Here, according to the dad, they stopped searching right away? This is not how their rules for this work at all. I'm not sure why the dad said this, but it's just not how it works. I read a few articles to look into this question. Seems like the dad was likely misconstruing their words. The search, as I read it, never stopped, but rather they prepared for alternative outcomes. And why would it stop after a few days? It logically makes no sense at all. Imagine the media backlash if you said the kids were 100% dead by now, then stopped searching for them and yet they were found alive days later. You'd have whole departments being fired on the spot and media raging about it even 20 years afterwards.
It does seem like the show adores drama and plays up stuff that doesn't need it. We just want to see survival. But it's something you have to accept here. Maybe a new show can avoid it? Let's hope.