‘Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing’: Sarah Has ‘Nothing But Contempt’ for the Show’s Format
The latest Naked and Afraid spinoff shakes up the format of the long-running survival reality show by adding an element of competition. But not everyone is wild about the change, including some of the cast members. Sarah Bartell completed three previous Naked and Afraid challenges prior to signing up for Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing. However, she says she has “nothing but contempt” for the new version of the show.
Sarah Bartell weighs in on ‘Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing’
Sarah was one of 12 past Naked and Afraid participants who returned to compete on Last One Standing. The multi-phase challenge began with six pairs of survivalists fighting to last 21 days in South Africa’s remote Oribi Gorge. In a twist, if one person opted to tap out, their partner was also eliminated.
Next came a two-week group competition. The remaining survivalists split into two teams, where they had to compete both with and against their teammates. The final phase will be an intense, three-day journey to extraction. The person who comes out on top walks away with a $100,000 cash prize and the show’s first-ever perfect 10 Primitive Survival Rating.
With the element of competition and the promise of a six-figure payday at the end, this version of Naked and Afraid is far different from past iterations of the show. Typically, participants must work together in order to survive. However, Last One Standing changes the dynamic, pitting the survivalists against each other in a way that is clearly wearing on some of the cast.
The fresh take on Naked and Afraid makes for good TV as the players form alliances and squabble amongst themselves. But for those involved, it’s a different – and not necessarily positive – experience.
“The format of Last One Standing … struck me from the start as contrived, overly-dramatic, and frankly, an extension of my running theory that American television is intentionally dumbing itself down in an attempt to reach a wider audience,” Sarah wrote in an Instagram post she shared on June 6.
She initially declined to participate in ‘Last One Standing’
Sarah was so put off by the twist on the traditional Naked and Afraid format that she at first declined to do the show.
“I initially said no to the challenge, but then stopped myself to ask one simple question – ‘Where will it be filmed?’”
Once she learned that she’d have a chance to go to Africa if she signed on, Sarah said yes.
“Africa has my heart, and at the very least, it’ll be a good adventure. I might even leave with $100,000,” she recalled thinking to herself. “Africa is always an adventure. I love it there. Every moment I’m in Africa, I feel like I’m in the midst of the grandest exploration of self I’ve ever experienced. And who among us couldn’t use an extra $100,000 in this sh*tty economy?”
Sarah was eliminated from the ‘Naked and Afraid’ spinoff
Unfortunately, Sarah won’t be going home with the show’s top prize. She left the show in the June 18 episode. Her exit came after nearly a month in the wild and during the show’s first elimination challenge. She and the other six remaining players had to follow a trail to a hidden cache, which would then lead them to a final meeting point. The last person to the final destination was eliminated.
Sarah did a good job of finding one of the seven trails leading to a cache. But then her former partner Steven Lee Hall Jr. decided to follow the same trail as she did. He got to the cache first. That forced Sarah to scramble to find the one remaining cache and complete the specified task. She didn’t do it in time and ended up being sent home.
Ultimately, she had mixed feelings about her time on the show. Sarah wrote that she “experienced some of the darkest moments I’ve ever had on a [Naked and Afraid] challenge, often adjacent to some of the happiest moments I’ve had on a [Naked and Afraid] challenge, and it’s something that I’m still processing, even now.”
She added that the show’s format forced everyone to go “against the usual nature of our instincts as survivalists.” The editing of the episodes focused on “the narrative of greed and deception” rather than moments where people worked together, she added, while the “social jungle” of the competition was challenging for her to navigate as a neurodivergent person.
“I felt emotionally safer pitted against the leopards at times than I did against a few of my peers,” she wrote. “Leopards, at the very least, are unashamed of what they are, and honest about their intentions.”
New episodes of Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing air Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Discovery Channel.
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