IMHO these Alaskan reality tv shows are as fake as plastic tits. I'm not trying to suggest the people themselves are fake but they are not truthfully represented on the shows. If you live in town 8-9 months a year then haul on out to your remote cabin an try to present yourself as one of the last "sourdoughs life style Alaskan" that lives off the grid that is not truthfull. Not much different than someone in the lower 48 with a remote shack they spend the fall months in...i.e. I live in a nice home in the suburbs on a nice retired school administers retirement from spring until September then I open camp and spend Sept. thru March living there without electricity, running water,etc. 80% of what I eat was game taken in the fall smoked an hung in the shed. Does that make me a " Last Pennsylvanian" ? No it makes me a retired school administrator that likes solitude an does not mind roughing it a bit.
Some are fake. The Alaska Bush People would die pretty quick in the real world. The Seldens live in the Goldstream Valley in a dry cabin off of the grid and they don't go into town except about once every other week to the farmer's market. What the shows don't really show you is how expensive a charter is. Some are made into characters. Marty Meirotto from Mountain Men is a freaking beast and a half in real life and they show him to be weak and tentative. People freeze to death in Fairbanks all of the time. One guy died at his house on Chena Ridge that was off grid and dry and nobody figured it out for over two years. Gary Green on the Edge of Alaska is real but the rest of the dialogue and elements of that show were as fake as you could get.
