Extracted Pulls Off Unexpected (and Underwhelming) Finale, Proving the Series Still Needs Work

I couldn’t root for any of the teams during this first season of Extracted.

Whether it was obnoxious entitled survivalists like Anthony, or off-putting family members like Austin, it’s no secret that I’ve struggled with parts of this series.

Essentially, it leans into society’s worst traits, pitting mismatched teams of survivalists and their families in direct competition for a relatively paltry amount of money that they have to split.

But whatever. Much to my chagrin, scripted broadcast is slowly dying before our eyes, and the demand for putting out more crappy reality television shows to save money has increased.

Extracted is pure trash television. You’re not particularly fond of watching it, but it passes the time.

And it’s been quite a frustrating watch.

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Now, Extracted concludes with a surprisingly underwhelming season finale that reveals that the series has a lot to work on if it earns a renewal.

Did anyone else expect more from the final competitions?

The season’s climax, especially the back half, was Jake’s family refusing to move their camp and making everyone do it.

It was mystifying that all the teams felt that their strongest competitor should just bite the bullet and put their own person at a disadvantage to give the others a better shot.

Extracted is not a group sport. It still is a competition. The entitlement they all displayed in expecting a competitor to hamstring itself for the betterment of everyone else willingly was absurd.

Jake’s family made the best call. If everyone goes down, they go down together.

But nothing really came from this move. It would’ve put everyone back at square one, and as demoralizing as it was for the survivalists, it was a maneuver meant to break spirits and cull the herd.

However, it’s virtually meaningless in the end, and I’m convinced it’s because it came too late in the game and also because Jake’s Team made the “undesirable” choice.

That’s when the finale starts to feel like they want to undermine any clear front-runners in order to give the underdog a win.

The survivalists’ having to leave their camps had no real stakes, so it could’ve happened earlier in the season when it would have mattered more.

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But we did have to deal with the survivalists, who were tired and worn out when they realized they would have to row to their boxes and figure out a code to get to the next mission.

Hayley emerging as the “comeback kid” when she practically knocks on the hospitalization’s door should have foreshadowed how the season would end.

With her vitals as terrible as they were, she should’ve exited the competition regardless of what Karly and Natalie wanted.

If anything, keeping her out there with such poor vitals when, supposedly, they would be starting from scratch with their camps, felt like a liability waiting to happen.

But somehow, by some miracle and editing that bypassed her hardships, she garnered enough strength to go at it for another day. Then, she put her apparent rowing skills to use, becoming an unexpected frontrunner in securing her box.

And on top of that?

Somehow, it seemed like an agreed-upon term amongst the trio; she got her box open on the first try because even amid her delirium and disorientation from everything, her first thought was the “shark” nickname that her friends apparently called her.

It was such a glaring difference from Jake, who went through however many names and random words before he even thought about his child. I don’t know what to make of a dad who didn’t even consider his kids’ names first.

And don’t even get me started on how Woody settled on Trump before “Trust,” the latter being a puzzling choice altogether.

Woody’s family not choosing his wife’s name when it had five letters was one of the dumbest moves I’ve seen on reality television.

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It’ll bite them in the butt, but after this man threw a whole filet into the water because he couldn’t start a fire, were we really rooting for him?

That’s what made this such an underwhelming watch. It came down to luck of the draw because Extracted spent too much time trying to punish the actual survivalists, who relied on experience and skill to keep the lesser ones afloat.

Extracted doesn’t pad its challenges in a way that caters to wildly different skill sets. To avoid having people adept at survival from steamrolling through the others, it stalls the series with unnecessary contrivances.

One minute, cutthroat antics and manipulation garnered support, like Natalie and Karly’s constant manipulation of male teams by weaponizing sexism and chivalry at once.

But then, more powerful teams, like Jake’s or the antics of Jackoben’s team, garnered criticism with the presumption that they should somehow be “team players” or make things “fair.”

Extracted isn’t designed to be fair, but it still wants to play into that anyway, which simply doesn’t work.

In the end, the prospect of Jake’s obnoxious team getting a win any more than Hayley’s obnoxious team didn’t excite me either, but if it came down to who was the most deserving after all of this, it was probably Jake.

Presumably, the girls’ beating a sexist, arrogant male team is more satisfying.

Nevertheless, if Extracted doesn’t at least balance its survivalists with experiences versus some with none.

Better yet, if it leans more toward choosing all survivalists, akin to Alone, and then having them duke it out fairly in a legitimate competition, it’s not going to be fun to watch.

Also, the competition definitely needs to improve. Just saying.

Over to you, Extracted Fanatics.

What did you think of the finale? Let’s hear it below!

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