Watching my cousin watch herself on TV

Andrea “Louie” Larson watches “Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls”

Last night, I watched my cousin Louie watch herself as a contestant on “Get Out Alive With Bear Grylls,” a show that took several people to New Zealand and challenged them to do survival skills. One of these in last night’s third episode involved chopping up old logs to get grubs, and then eating these grubs.

Seeing this on TV, Louie said, “I cooked my grubs. They tasted like burnt popcorn. I would eat another grub” in the future.

My cousin Louie is funny. On the show, she and her father, my uncle Lucky, were racing against others to make and paddle a boat out to a distance in the water. After they were the first of the contestants to launch their own boat, host Bear Grylls commented, “Lucky and Louie, they’re on the move,” to which Louie in real life responded, “Not in a good way,” as their boat went, she said, only “five feet from shore–five feet.” She explained that they kept trying to paddle their tanking craft, but a show crew member told them, “You must come back. You are less than 20 percent out of the water.”

As they filmed this reality show, the cameras followed the contestants much of the time — there wasn’t much privacy — and when cousin Louie saw a shot of herself in only her underwear, she said, “Oh, my gosh, my underwear — they’re really gonna show that right now?”

Lucky and Louie survived last night’s episode and so will be seen on upcoming weeks on Mondays at 8 Central Time.