A charming 'Homestead Rescue' and the missing pieces of 'Alaskan Bush People'

This week's episode of "Homestead Rescue" is called "Bearanoia," which is perhaps the folksiest title yet. In case you missed it, "Homestead Rescue" is a cable television program starring the Raney family of Mat-Su, who travel around the country helping seemingly incompetent people live off the grid.

This week's family, the Garcias, live in Bear Creek, Colorado, and when we meet them, they're clearing off their solar panels after a snowstorm. Despite the snow on the ground, Marty Raney still wears his shirt unbuttoned basically to his belly button.

The Garcias are like something out of Green Acres (or, for the youths, something out of a Taylor Swift song): Lorinda is a city girl, married to Don, a country boy. They live in a fancy-looking house that seems straight from Sunset Magazine on the outside, but is a typical half-finished homestead on the inside.

This week's episode was much more charming than previous weeks, partly because the Garcias were totally game for the cameras and manufactured drama over chicken coops. But mostly because Lorinda was adorable when Matt Raney taught her how to shoot a gun, so she could be less "bearanoid" around their homestead.  

It also seemed like the Raneys and the Garcias actually had fun working on projects together, unlike other episodes where the relationship between handy reality TV stars and homesteaders appears more hostile.

The season finale of "Homestead Rescue" will air Friday at 9 p.m. on Discovery Channel.

Finally, there was yet another "special" episode of "Alaskan Bush People" that featured both cast and crew visiting some never-before-seen footage. In the special, the narrator says that 2,000 hours of footage are shot each season, which means if my calculations are correct, somewhere there are 8,000 hours of the antics of Browntown just sitting around getting dusty.

Really though, out of 8,000 hours of footage how have we not explored more storylines on screen? Is 13-year-old Rain being home-schooled? If yes, by whom? How does she look so much like a normal teenager? Does she subscribe to Seventeen Magazine? Maybe Teen Vogue? Why not show Matt's alcohol problem progressing over the past four years? Did it happen suddenly while in Juneau? Are the Browns living entirely in the cash economy or do they have a bank account?

These are all questions I would like answered with that 8,000 hours of footage.

While I don't recommend it, if you do choose to watch the special episode, you should just turn it into a drinking game. You should drink any time the following things happen:

• Billy says "cotton-picking" instead of an expletive.

• Matt or Gabe fall into a body of water.

• Noah looks like he just ran away from an old-timey photo shoot and/or is actually a ghost of someone who died in the mid-1800s.

• Whenever someone's face is blurred out because they clearly didn't sign the liability waiver.

• Bear does a barrel roll for absolutely no reason.

With both "Alaskan Bush People" and "Homestead Rescue" over for the season, it's gonna get weird over here at Reality Check as we go down the path/cable channels less traveled for our Alaska reality TV fix.

Emily Fehrenbacher lives in Anchorage, where she reviews Alaska reality TV. You can reach her at realitycheck@alaskadispatch.com or on Twitter @ETFBacher.